Unloved Heritage

Spain is a country rich in cultural heritage. You can find a piece of the past down almost every byway and road you take. From the internationally famous and well-preserved relics, such as the walls of Ávila, the aqueduct of Segovia, and the Roman walls of Lugo to crumbling and ignored ruins, such as the Torre de Sandiás in Ourense, or the hundreds of disappearing, abandoned monasteries and fortresses, such as the one atop the hill at Mota del Marqués in Castilla-Leon, next to the modern A-6 speeding from A Coruña to Madrid.

One would think that with all the rich history behind us, as a nation we would want to preserve the vestiges that remain. Well, the law says we must; our individualism says, "what's in it for me?" If it turns out that the recognition and preservation of a piece of history will make it more difficult for the neighbors to go about their daily lives, some are not above destroying or hiding a ruin. Near here a dolmen has been "discovered" recently. The truth is, the locals already knew of its existence. People my age played in it as children. Some of its stones have probably gone to helping construct one of the local houses. Its existence was kept quiet so that new zoning laws wouldn't be applied. The neighbors feared that official knowledge of it would mean they couldn't choose to do what they wished with the fields and woods around it. Apparently, some neighbors in a village in the province of Toledo thought the same thing. Only what they wanted to hide had already been catalogued and examined, but the local government had simply abandoned it.

In the tiny village of Las Vegas de San Antonio lie the remains of a Roman mausoleum half buried. What remains is the foundation and part of the crypt. It forms an octagon, rare in the Roman Empire and unique in Hispania. It was first discovered in 1871 when a sarcophagus was dug up which is now in the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid. After that the area was left alone until the 1960's when the area was revisited and studied. At that time two other Roman settlements were found nearby. Since 1966, however, the site has been abandoned, used as a trash dump by local people.

Before

Another site with a slightly different fate is in Villamartín, Cádiz. There are the remains of a castle there, the Castillo de Matrera, which had a crumbling tower (Torre de Pajarete) until it finally finished crumbling in 2013. This castle and tower have a history that stretches all the way back to the ninth century and a Spanish-Moorish version of Robin Hood. Omar ben Hafsun built the castle during his fight against the established kingdom of the Omeyyas in Córdoba. He even converted to Christianity toward the end of his life, taking on the name of Samuel and constructing a church at his stronghold in Bobastro, Málaga. With that he attempted to win the support of the Christian king of Asturias, Alfonso III. However, the Christians never fully trusted him, and he lost the trust of some of the Moors who had sided with him but had remained Moslem. In the end, he lost most of his conquests, and died at his fortress of Bobastro, which his son defended for about ten more years, until the final defeat and flight of Omar's son. 

The castle at Villamartín remained, and was fought over by Christians and Moors alike. It was a stronghold until after the final conquest of Granada by the Catholic Monarchs, over six hundred years. The tower remained standing for another six hundred years until 2013. The town had been petitioning the regional government since the 1990's for action to be taken to preserve it, but they never got an answer. In 2015, with everything on the

After.

ground, the government decided to restore it. Their way, spending millions of euros on a monstrosity when a few hundred thousand would have saved the original. They put up fabricated cement blocks like the kind used for building bridges and public buildings. Then they took a few of the bricks from the tower and stuck them to the blocks in places. It looks like something a brain-dead arquitect with no respect for history would design. Unfortunately, there are too many of those.