Heritage of a region, a country or of humanity belongs equally to all the inhabitants, because its significance gives it a particularly democratic tinge. Heritage management requires a series of activities to be carried out continuously by specialists, which consist, in all cases, in its study (research), protection, valorisation (restoration, organisation of public exhibitions), dissemination (museums, cultural centres, communication and educational activities) and updating of each of the previous tasks. In this way, knowledge is preserved, constructed and socialised through expressions whose relevance reaches the education, the quality of life, the economic and cultural development of the whole population.
Heritage as the sum of society’s contradictions
This is the starting point of the imaginary constructed, widespread and deeply rooted in public opinion about the meaning of heritage. From these statements comes the concern to observe how it is used and how it corresponds to everyday reality. In this contrast, between imagined and real scenarios, heritage appears as an example of the sum of society’s contradictions. On the one hand, it enjoys great social prestige, nominally it belongs to everyone, everyone wants to own it, it has an immense legislative arsenal to protect and promote it and at the same time it has a huge number of professionals and institutions that accumulate specialised knowledge so that, day by day, it is increasingly considered, observed and highlighted.
Generally speaking, the population living in an area does not participate, nor does it have massive access to the above-mentioned benefits proposed in the name of and in association with heritage management. This tends to be oriented towards the promotion of cultural icons developed as emblematic, leaving on the sidelines, or forgotten, most of the heritage existing in the same area which can offer a closer, more diversified and representative view of contexts and situations.
Heritage serves as a basis for wagers and ambitions that obsess not a few politicians, entrepreneurs (and would-be entrepreneurs), craftsmen, artists, designers, urban planners, academics and religious people, as eventual inventors and enhancers of traditions, memories and identities. The efforts, thus mobilised, seek to consolidate the invention in order to preserve and expand it on the basis of the created and intercepted stereotypes that become commodified experiences. In this huge field of controversy, each of the actors gets his percentage and share of power, reason, successes and, among the most fragile, of sorrows.
In the meantime, in practice, heritage becomes the pretext for so much activity and confusion, stirring up seas of ink, images, speeches, concrete and iron whose conceptions, purposes and uses are, in the end, distant and indifferent to the fate of the heritage that is cited as motivation at every opportunity.
The good fate of heritage goes hand in hand with the ideals of an ever better world for all.
The public image of heritage, its highly positive valorisation, allows it to be invoked for actions associated with promises of progress and well-being on a territorial scale and popular cohesion around the elements promoted for their iconic consideration. To this end, the options of assets eligible for heritage management tend to be numerous in each district, although the selection for its enhancement as an exceptional heritage asset depends on the realities of the present, for which considerations regarding its location, infrastructure, monumentality, economic, political and ideological interests.
The significant prominence, which in many facets of society results from the interests that generate heritage and its management, shows that, beyond any specific situation, they are ultimately expressions that coincide with the general orientations of the prevailing social system. On the basis of the realities of the present, any substantial change far outweighs proposals that consider heritage only in its entirety, since the results of its management are the product and reflection of a prevailing social order that it highlights. The progress and setbacks in the integral management of heritage in a territory constitute and will constitute a sample of the model and general principles that govern the organisation of the social fabric as a whole, so that its development and destiny are a structural part of all that is collective, such as, for example, issues of health, justice, sport, culture, education, economy, technology, among others. In short, the good fate of heritage goes hand in hand with the uncertain but desirable prevalence of the ideals of an ever better world for all.
