A farmer destroys the ruins of a protected 12th-century castle in Salamanca: “The administrations are to blame” | Spain

A farmer has destroyed the remains of a protected 12th-century castle in Salamanca. The memory of the heritage of those centuries of struggles between kingdoms and invaders has disappeared despite it being an Asset of Cultural Interest (BIC) since 1949. The interested party claims to have purchased the land and that from the documents it does not appear that there was any ancient building there, even if it is evident and the silhouette of the Torre Mocha castle adorns the flag of Pelabravo, municipality of that small neighborhood, Naharros del Río, very close to the Tormes. This is why he pulled out the mechanisms and destroyed this legacy, to the scandal of the heritage associations, to the displeasure of the municipality and the neighbors and with the fact that the Junta de Castilla y León will take everything to the Public Prosecutor’s Office. The Council did not even register it in its BIC list. The president of the Association of Citizens for the Defense of the Heritage of Salamanca, Isabel Muñoz, resigns herself to the existence of similar cases, regrets the institutional inaction and denounces the model of heritage protection: “Heritage cannot be left in the hands of citizens when it comes to respecting the law”.

The facts were confirmed on October 16, Efe reports, when the Municipality of Pelabravo reported to the Territorial Culture and Heritage Service the destruction of those remains, completely eliminated despite being around a thousand years old. Mayor Mayte García (PP) assured that as soon as they learned of the farmer’s plans they tried to prevent it, but it was too late and the disaster had occurred.

The Junta de Castilla y León (PP) has announced that it will soon bring the destruction of the ruins to the Public Prosecutor’s Office as it tries to clarify what happened. At the moment it is known that the owner recently purchased the agricultural land, and although it was evident that the skeleton of an ancient fortification was located there, he claimed that the documents did not provide for such construction, with special protection, and proceeded to eliminate it. Now nothing remains but smooth ground and layers of dust.

The president of the Association of Citizens for the Defense of the Heritage of Salamanca reacts with indignation to the question on the subject. “It’s another thing, Castilla y León unfortunately it’s always the same thing. There’s guilt in looking of public administrations, when we say that a property is BIC it means that it has the highest rating of a property, castles have been BIC since 1949 and were ratified in 1985″, says the expert, accusing both the Municipality of inertia and the Council for not having checked the correct maintenance of the properties or valuable elements. And also the State, because ultimately it is he who declares those values.

“The communities must be vigilant but they are unconsolidated ruins of a castle, otherwise they would not have been destroyed over the years, now a man goes and crushes them”, criticizes Muñoz, criticizing that the Council usually lacks an “inspection work” so that the multiple BICs or notable elements of the territory receive the desirable attention and, as required by law, are open to the public at least once a week. “The Heritage Law is not respected, especially in rural areas, first they throw away and then they ask, now it is in ruins”, she specifies, shocked because now the Council is talking about “opening a file and imposing sanctions” but, according to her, in many cases there are not even officials to process these sanctions. More important than sanctions, he says, would be maintaining an adequate control system for these BICs: the Council had not registered this property on its provincial lists.

“We regret another loss, the administrations transfer their responsibility to the citizens. If something remains or some inventoried property or BIC is not loved enough by the neighbors, or they do not crowdfunding (popular campaigns to raise funds for the restoration), leave it abandoned to its fate”, criticizes the activist for the protection of the heritage in the face of the many episodes “of someone who arrives on private property and out of ignorance or bad faith puts it in the shovel and the property is finished”. “It is one more case to add, unfortunately the future does not bode well for the heritage, we depend on the good will of the citizens. “They want to involve the neighbors to get rid of the dead person, since we have a lot and it costs a lot, they don’t ask or control anything,” Salamanca says about the Torre Mocha incident in Naharros del Río, Pelabravo, and similar cases that usually occur in Castilla y León, where precious but abandoned heritage abounds in towns with few neighbors or no ability to maintain it.

Castilla y León is the community with the greatest heritage at risk collected by Hispania Nostra, a platform that collects properties or historic spaces that are neglected or in danger of damage. The community has 450 items on the red list, that is, threatened by neglect, and another five that have been deleted from the count “having disappeared or having irreversibly altered their essential values”.