Madrid enters the World Heritage list

Madrid will wear the Unesco mark. The urban complex where the Retiro Park and the Paseo del Prado are articulated enters the World Heritage list, with more than 1,200 unique sites. The decision, reached this Sunday with the unanimous agreement of the organism, implies the registration of the 49th Spanish milestone. The country is one of the countries with the most records, only behind Italy and China, but so far neither of them were in the capital, the only major European city outside the club. They did exist in the rest of the region: the El Escorial monastery, the town of Alcalá de Henares, the old town of Aranjuez and the Montejo beech forest. On the same day, such coveted status was granted to the Indian temple of Kakatiya Rudreshwara, better known as Ramappa, to the Chinese city of Quanzhou, a port of Persian descent,and the Transiranian railroad.

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• PHOTO GALLERY: Madrid, World Heritage

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• The only European capital outside the Unesco list

The ambassador of Spain to UNESCO, Andrés Perelló (PSOE), has been in charge of defending the project and activating the necessary diplomatic resources to obtain the support of at least two-thirds of the committee, 15 votes in a chamber made up of 21 countries. The proposal reached the plebiscite this Sunday with the prior rejection of the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), an advisory entity to UNESCO, which showed its reluctance to unite both properties under the same inscription, and requested to discard the park with the aim of study just the ride. Faced with this request, Perelló was forceful: “What they ask of us is that Madrid tear out a lung. The Prado and the Retiro are a happy union, whose marriage certificate is certified with a cartography of more than three centuries old ”.The award-winning boulevard's origins lie in a 1565 boulevard, which coincided with the establishment of the court in Madrid. And we would have to travel to the Age of Enlightenment to place the opening of the Retreat to the public.

The statue of Apollo, in Madrid's Paseo del Prado, this Saturday.Víctor Sainz

Spain received the support, among others, of Brazil, Ethiopia, Russia, Uganda, Oman, Nigeria, Mali, Thailand and Kyrgyzstan, led by Saudi Arabia. It was Princess Haifa Al Mogrin, a delegate from that country, who introduced a series of amendments to the ICOMOS study, paving the way for more sympathy. Most were committed until the last moment, when Perelló summed up in just three minutes the benefits of the Madrid candidacy. "When you say: 'From Madrid to heaven', I wonder why they want heaven if heaven is already in Madrid," declared the ambassador, whose speech has been broadcast live, from the Prado Museum auditorium, to the rest of the delegations, who connected from their respective countries. The representatives of the international organization, for their part,They were meeting on the banks of the Min River, in Fuzhou (China), where the 44th UNESCO World Heritage Committee takes place, postponed in 2020 due to the coronavirus.

Unesco classifies the Madrid complex according to three criteria: witness a considerable exchange of architectural influences, constitute a representative example of some type of construction or complex and be associated with living traditions. The international organization evaluates 25 global proposals every year. The support for the initiative by the Spanish institutions has been unanimous, a communion that this Sunday resulted in an unusual family photo in front of the Jerónimos Church. The Minister of Culture, Miquel Iceta; the Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares; the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso; the Government delegate, Mercedes González; the mayor of the capital, José Luis Martínez-Almeida; the vice mayor, Begoña Villacís,or the general director of Cultural Heritage in the Corporation, Luis Lafuente, were some of the public officials gathered in the Prado.

The Paseo del Prado and the Retiro Park already aspired to be UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1992, but the candidacy did not reach the final stage of the process. In the image, pedestrians on the Paseo del Prado.Víctor Sainz

The vote has been on the verge of being postponed at the request of the Unesco rapporteur, who wielded a lack of time to assess a "complex candidacy". Only the interventions of Nigeria and Norway have managed to resume the session, the latter country in favor of discarding a project that dates back to 2014, when the then mayor of the capital, Ana Botella, announced her intention to present the Prado-Retiro axis to the list of World Heritage, something that was gaining strength throughout the following legislature, with Manuela Carmena at the head. In April 2018, the city's Historical Heritage Council, chaired by Lafuente, gave the go-ahead to these intentions and set their formal presentation nine months away. The Unesco evaluator visited the city during the first week of October 2019,he met with Almeida and toured the aspirant route. But ICOMOS issued an unfavorable report last month that seemed to silence Madrid's aspirations.

View of the Paseo del Prado from the Cibeles fountain, engraved by Isidro González Velázquez (1788). National Library of Spain

The text recommended taking the park out of the equation - by not finding "historical justifications" that related it to the walk - and denounced the atmospheric pollution of the environment. The City Council, however, stood firm and defended its position before the rest of the members during a meeting in the capital. He presented them with a list of measures aimed at minimizing the use of private transport, announced under the name of Madrid360, which include the pedestrianization of 10 kilometers in 48 sections of streets. And he alleged that the Retiro palace and gardens were installed there due to the pre-existence of the Paseo del Prado, which already had a longitudinal grove at that time, as shown in Pedro Teixeira's 1656 plan. Philip IV,I would have considered this boulevard as a great hall for the royal recreation ground. Sources close to the mayor of the capital point to Lafuente as the main defender of unifying the park and the landscaped walk, although this entailed risks.

The Unesco committee has recently added more unique sites to the World Heritage list: the Ḥimā cultural area, in Saudi Arabia, for its “rock images that describe the flora, fauna, ways of life and hunting activities human over a period of 7,000 years ”; the Cordouan lighthouse in France; the series of frescoes from the 14th century in Padua (Italy), including those made by Giotto in the Scrovegni Chapel, or the Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt, a place that hosted a colony of artists between the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Germany; and the set of famous

spas located in 11 cities in seven European countries: Baden bei Wien (Austria);

Spa (Belgium);

Františkovy Lázně, Karlovy Vary and Mariánské Lázně (Czechia);

Vichy (France);

Bad Ems, Baden-Baden and Bad Kissingen (Germany);

Montecatini Terme (Italy) and City of Bath (UK) are the other projects that have received a benign verdict after examination.

More applications are expected to be addressed until July 28.

The port of Liverpool loses its status

Unesco advertisements often provoke parties. A new place becomes part of World Heritage - as this Sunday the Madrid urban complex of the Retiro Park and the Paseo del Prado - a country rubs its hands thinking about more prestige, more money and more tourism, and the occasional Traveler takes note, in case the site is worth a visit in the future. However, the same body that grants such recognition can also withdraw it. It had only happened in two cases in history: the Elbe Valley in Dresden (Germany) and the sanctuary of the Arab Oryx (Oman). But, since last Wednesday, the mercantile sea port of Liverpool is the third site to dissipate recognition, due to the “irreversible loss of its outstanding universal value”.Madrid could suffer the same fate if it does not implement the ICOMOS recommendations before December 1, 2022.

The mercantile seaport of Liverpool had entered the World Heritage list in 2004. Although, in 2012, Unesco already sent the city a first notice that this might not last forever: concerns about the development of the huge urban project called Liverpool Waters led the organization to transfer the place to the category of Heritage in Danger . “Since then, the project has continued, as have other urban developments within the site and in its buffer zone. The Committee considers that these constructions are detrimental to the authenticity and integrity of the site ”, reads the Unesco statement that finally, nine years later, culminated their fears. There were 13 votes in favor of the decision, five against and two invalid.

Liverpool Mayor Joanne Anderson called the decision "incomprehensible", according to the BBC. He argued that UNESCO has reached this conclusion "a decade after the last time he visited the city to see it with his own eyes." He added that he is studying the possibility of appealing it, together with the British Government, adding: "" Our world heritage It has never been in a better condition, as it has benefited from the investment of hundreds of millions of pounds in dozens of buildings as well as in public spaces. "The BBC itself recalls that the city has faced great changes since 2004 and that, among other projects , the largest open shopping center in the UK was built and Everton FC, one of the two major football clubs, plans to build a huge stadium on the waterfront.