Beyond Restoration: from sheer preservation to recycling of the Spanish historical heritage. A critical
reflection on the architectural historical restoration in Spain now
In 1985, seven years after the approval of the new constitution that supposed the return to Democracy
in Spain after four long decades of dictatorship, the Law for the Spanish Historical Heritage was passed.
This law reached a milestone in the management of the cultural heritage in our country, and brought
about the modernization of the criteria for the intervention in the Spanish historical architecture.
From then on, a lot of monuments have been restored under a great variety of criteria, from minimal
intervention (Madrid Slaughterhouse) to monumental recycling (Can Framis, Barcelona), including
more sensitive restorations (Torre Bofilla, Valencia) and other purely mimetic interventions (Casa
Amatller inside, Barcelona), which lay bare that the preservation of the Spanish monumental heritage
is far from being homogeneous. In fact, the transfer of the responsibility for the management of the
heritage from the state to the autonomous governments (a specifically Spanish peculiarity that does not
occur in other European countries), entails the lack of coordination and the eclecticism that, on the
other hand, seems to be a sign of the times.
