Undoubtedly, being declared a UNESCO World Heritage City involves international recognition that is an honour and distinction. However, it also involves a series of obligations that the cities alone cannot assume.The maintenance of historical quarters, the existence of a medieval structure that hinders vehicle traffic and parking; a morphology and typology of historical buildings that has to be preserved but is not well suited to some of today’s demands; environmental degradation caused by unfortunate modern interventions; the great quantity of heritage buildings and monuments that have to be restored, rehabilitated and made profitable, the extremely high added costs when it comes to introducing or renovating infrastructures; the abandonment of urban areas in decline with the subsequent speculative pressures to rebuild them, and all those problems arising from the clash between a configuration from the past and modern life cannot be tackled by city councils on their own.
In view of the great difficulties involved in preserving these values and the economic funds required, September 17th, 1993, saw the setting up in Ávila of the Spanish Group of World Heritage Cities as an Association made up of the Spanish municipalities with historical quarters that were included, at that time, in the UNESCO World Heritage list: Ávila, Cáceres, Salamanca, Santiago de Compostela, Segovia and Toledo decided to combine their efforts and work together to defend and promote their historical and cultural heritage. Later on, the cities of Cordoba, Cuenca, Alcalá de Henares, Ibiza - Eivissa and San Cristóbal de La Laguna joined the Association.
The Group was created in order to work together to defend these cities’ historical and cultural heritage, and to preserve and promote certain lifestyles required by their historical quarters, undertaking common projects and proposals, establishing policies enabling an exchange of experiences and tackling common problems.
All of this while preserving each city’s own personality and recognising that a historical quarter’s richness lies in its individuality.
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By means of the initiatives carried out within the Association, an image was created in relation to quality and beauty, an image that receives special emphasis in the field of tourism.
Promotion, which is so important in order to attain the objective of profitability proposed by UNESCO, is one of the Association’s important achievements. Thanks to its joint work, the Association has been able to optimise efforts and budgets, in addition to the individual work carried out by each of the city councils. From the very beginning, the Association clearly saw the possibilities of offering potential tourists -rather than competing for themsupplements to Sun and Beach tourism, proposing this other alternative of Cultural Tourism and Historical and Artistic Quality provided by our cities.
However, the city councils’ work is not limited to tourist promotion. The added pressures derived from the number of visitors oblige them to undertake the maintenance of historical quarters and the monuments therein. Therefore, it is also significant the work the Group carries out to improve such cities, by pedestrianising streets in historical city centres, creating car parks in strategic places in order to improve monument accessibility, improving visual impact by hiding cables, promoting cultural and leisure alternatives, all aimed at quality tourism.
This Group was created in a spirit of combining demands and commitment. Starting from a common problem that transcends the ideology of the political group governing each of our city councils and making the most of our experience in different fields of action, we have proposed solutions that help us advance in our commitment towards our cities’ residents and, by extension, towards all of our visitors.
Sonsoles Guillén Ruiz – Ayúcar
General secretary
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