21st and 22nd of November - Acácio Barreiros Auditorium, Centro Cultural Olga Cadaval
Celebrations of the 25th Anniversary of Sintra - UNESCO World Heritage Site
Heritage and Society. Principles, thinking and action
On December 6th, 1995, the cultural landscape of Sintra was classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. An important step towards the recognition of humanity's collective interests, the classification allowed for a renewed concern for the conservation of the cultural and natural elements of Sintra's landscape. This statute becomes particularly relevant at a time when human action is increasingly disastrous towards our past, present and future.
But how can we think about heritage sites today, when their aesthetic component and touristic purpose tends to superimpose over their historical and material experience? How can we think of this in a moment of crisis in which city centers are revealed in their fundamental absence of life? What does this unprecedented period we are enduring tell us about the (de)valuation of heritage, which is so often left to the contemplation of the – now scarce – masses? Who has inhabited the city over the years? Who inhabits it today?
When taken to its most extreme, the preservation of humanity's cultural heritage runs the risk of merely keeping places and buildings intact that should rather be "lived", thus transforming them into foreign bodies alienated from the full, organic functioning of the city they’re embedded in. A "museum-city" can quickly become a city for tourists, a concept which is antithetical to that of the Latin civitas, since it will inevitably relegate its citizens to a secondary condition and a peripheral position. Protecting the right to public space is, thus, a desideratum to the promotion of a critical civil society that is committed to the common good. It is therefore essential to revisit heritage sites as places that have been transformed by those who have been there, and that are still in transformation.
In various parts of the world, the appreciation of heritage sites has often resulted in the marginalization of local communities. The massification of tourism in places classified as UNESCO World Heritage Sites has led to a growing concern regarding the management of visitors and the exploration of the territory in these contexts. We are increasingly aware that mass tourism has become a problem for historic cities, as it destroys their cultural identity and creates renewed difficulties and economic pressures for the local population, altering their experience of the city. The observed relationship between the listing of a place as world heritage and the growth of tourism is, therefore, an elementary contradiction. We find ourselves in a situation where the desire to preserve and protect a culture can, paradoxically, contribute to its drainage. How do we overcome this contradiction? This is not a challenge that can be ignored as part of a laissez-faire attitude of negligence. Considering it is a consequence of a global system whose priorities are too often intolerable, it is necessary to discuss it and face it.
The pandemic caused by the outbreak of the new coronavirus and the way it has spread is intimately related to 21st-century globalized life, an interrelation that should bring along new reflections. Let us recall, for instance, the photographs of places classified as world heritage that went viral online, showing empty locations where there previously were large crowds. Are we prepared to think about this health crisis in light of the broader complexity of city life? Having revealed the contours of the vast network that connects us, the impact of the crisis in the four corners of the world was the ultimate proof that human action cannot continue to be looked at individually when its consequences eminently entail collective problems. Moreover, as communities and families are directly and immediately affected by the impact of the pandemic on tourism and their local businesses, it is time to reflect on the system of dependence created by the global tourism industry and the risk that the international quality of contemporary crises places on the most vulnerable. It is urgent, therefore, to think about these global challenges together and carry the lessons obtained through this new crisis into times of greater "normality".
How to reclaim the city as a space created and used by those who inhabit it, while preserving the history and culture of that same place? How may we defend public space from commercialization and simultaneously promote cultural heritage? And how can we reconcile a critical gaze with the protection of the rights of those who visit us, in order to avoid xenophobic behaviors that are also emerging in some of the cities that are victims of mass tourism?
On the 25th Anniversary of the ennoblement of Sintra to UNESCO World Heritage, LEFFEST aims to promote a reflection on the issues raised above through the organizing of a debate involving urban planners, historians, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists and other specialists on the subject.
Symposium Alignment
November 21
10h00 Opening Ceremony: Dr. João Lacerda Tavares, Coordinator of the World Heritage of Sintra Cabinet, and Paulo Branco, Director of LEFFEST
Debate “On the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown – Heritage Polemics”
With
Álvaro Domingues, Geographer, University Professor and Researcher
Aurora Carapinha, Landscape Architect and University Professor
Gonçalo Byrne, Architect
November 22
10h00 Debate “Sintra, Humanity’s Cultural Heritage – Historical Center, Landscapes, Gardens, Education, Management, Challenges”
With
Ana Paula Amendoeira, Regional Head of Culture of Alentejo
Ana Luengo, Landscape Architect and University Professor
Sofia Cruz, President of Parques de Sintra-Monte da Lua, S.A.
11h00 Debate “What Future(s) for Heritage?”
With
António Guerreiro, Journalist and Essayist
José Bragança de Miranda, Philosopher and University Professor
Víctor Fernández Salinas, Geographer and University Professor