Making our Rural Landscape visible. A way to defend Anonymous Cultural Heritage

Abstract

[EN] As a result of the energy transition, the traditional rural landscapes are being threatened by renewable energy macro-projects, often promoted by foreign companies. In response to this threat, our project aims to bring to light the Cultural Heritage hidden in these landscapes, built over centuries by wise hands and minds, using the natural resources available back then, in order to highlight their value and later defend them from this menace. The specific case of the surroundings of El Perelló and l’Ametlla de Mar, in Baix Ebre (Tarragona, Spain), a site with Neolithic, Iberian and Roman settlements, with a calcareous geography, situated between the mountains and the Mediterranean Sea, is analyzed. A rural landscape, built in a human and family scale, protected by the mountain of “Tossal de Montagut”. An agrarian mosaic drawn by sinuous walks and dry-stone walls, with beautiful and geometric traces, in which houses, wells, hunter shelters, farmyards, etc.., appear. A series of domestic elements that constitute organic ensembles and define a settlement in balance with nature. A place that, if we give in to the threat of these projects, will become into an industrial estate, and whose Cultural Heritage will be destroyed. We propose a reflection on the identity and fragility of these anonymous places, on the need to maintain alive their memory and their Cultural Heritage: natural and built. We try to contribute, from the perspective of the architecture, to the debate on the current conflicts between rural landscapes and renewable energies. Our project proposes to analyze, register, catalogue, redraw, etc. the architectonic elements in the affected landscape (approx. 800 Ha), highlighting the historical value of the place through historic archival work and the recording of the tradition and daily life of local people.