The historian and museologist Antoni Nicolau is the drafter of the Management Plan for the Assets of Talayotic Menorca, which establishes the mechanisms to guarantee the conservation of its exceptional universal value. He has an extensive career in cultural management: for fourteen years he was director of the Museum of the History of the City of Barcelona; he was also project director of the Spain-USA Foundation and is the driving force behind the company Kultura. He has also been in charge of Spanish cultural and scientific cooperation policy and of programmes to promote Spanish culture abroad as Director of Cultural and Scientific Relations at the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation.
On some occasions you have commented that cultural heritage does not exist, that it is a social category, and that we are the ones who decide what is heritage. Now that Talayotic Menorca is a World Heritage Site, what does this recognition mean for Menorca?
Indeed, heritage status is granted by each society to those assets that represent something important for the majority of its members. Buildings, objects from the past, traditions... were never made or designed to be heritage, but rather to have a specific social function in each historical society. But today's societies consider many of these assets as essential elements of our identity as a people and we call this heritage, which has come down to us from previous generations and which we have a moral duty to pass on to next generations. For this to become a reality, we need to regulate it, create instruments for its protection, conservation, research and dissemination, and Menorcan society has been doing all this for many years.
Now UNESCO recognises it as an essential site to protect and conserve in order to safeguard the values of world heritage. This is a great recognition and at the same time a great responsibility, but I believe that Menorcan society is prepared to tackle it.
What are the most important challenges that Talayotic Menorca must face from now on?
I think the most important challenge is knowing how to balance the island's economic and social growth while preserving the values and assets that make up our collective heritage. Now there will be more eyes watching to ensure that we fulfil this duty and, at the same time, more people will get to know this heritage and enjoy it. It is essential that we are very careful in the sustainable management of our heritage and, in general, of Menorca's territory so that we do not exceed the island's sustainability threshold and, as they say, die of success.
We have instruments to do so, such as the declaration itself, the Management Plan, the cultural heritage laws, the declaration of the Biosphere Reserve and the legal instruments that regulate it, the Island Territorial Plan (ITP)... All of this is important, but it will be of no use if the whole of Menorcan society is not the first guarantor of the protection of our environment.
One of the important tools for managing this world heritage site is the Talayotic Menorca Management Plan, for which you are one of the main people responsible. What are the main mechanisms and objectives established by this plan?
The Management Plan, like the candidacy as a whole, was a collective work in which many professionals and citizens contributed their own knowledge. Some of us had to coordinate parts of it, but in all honesty it is a collaborative effort.
The Management Plan articulates a system that provides instruments to organise the work to be carried out in the coming years to achieve the objectives of protection, conservation, research and dissemination of all the declared sites. In fact, it is a sort of road map that foresees a series of projects organised into 22 action plans that are deployed along the different lines described above. In addition, the Management Plan creates the instruments to do so: the Talayotic Menorca Agency as the management body responsible for developing the programmes, the contracts for the custody and enhancement of the heritage, the Forum of Owners and Managers, as a participatory body for the owners, the master plans for the sites, and a financing system.
What was the process of elaborating the Management Plan and what aspects were taken into account the most?
As mentioned above, the Management Plan was drafted by an interdisciplinary team that worked intensively for more than a year. The work coincided with the Covid pandemic, which made the drafting of the various documents even more difficult.
An analysis of the situation of the nominated sites and the associated landscape was carried out in order to formulate the appropriate organisational and programmatic proposals. Throughout the process, consultations were held with professionals from different disciplines and with interested citizens, and coordination meetings were held with the Consell Insular.
Should be highlighted the work carried out by Teresa Marot in the section on dissemination and enhancement, Dr. Rafael Mata in the aspects related to the landscape and the relationship between the Management Plan and the ITP, and Lídia Font in everything related to preventive conservation and restoration.
There is a part of the Plan focused on strengthening the relationship between the assets of Talayotic Menorca and the local community. What shortcomings did you detect and what are the lines of work to be followed to improve this identification with the heritage?
In the diagnosis carried out, it was found that the Menorcan population is very involved with the cultural heritage in general and more specifically with that of the Talayotic period. However, during the long road of the candidacy there has been an increase in the Menorcans' knowledge of their own heritage, but as I have already said, we are convinced that for the protection and enhancement of heritage to work well it is necessary for the local population to be actively involved. That is why the Management Plan includes initiatives to maintain and increase public involvement.
The Forum of Owners and Managers regulates the participation of all owners in the management of cultural heritage, but this is not all; the Management Plan provides for the Talayotic Menorca Agency to be equipped with a Social Council, participation mechanisms are proposed through social networks and dissemination programmes that involve the active participation of associations, a volunteer training programme and a series of programmes with schools to increase the number of young people committed to the conservation and dissemination of heritage.
The relationship with tourism is also one of the key points in the preservation of Talayotic Menorca. How can we achieve a balance between tourism and heritage?
This is one of Menorca's major challenges with regard to the UNESCO declaration. Menorca today lives mainly from tourism and this will continue to be the case, but it is essential that we are all capable of maintaining a diversity in the island's economic activity if we want to continue to maintain our landscape and our way of being. In this sense, it is necessary to continue working for a Menorcan countryside in which agricultural and livestock activity goes hand in hand with technological development that helps the profitability of the production units.
This is essential to maintain a balance between tourism, heritage and landscape. Menorca's cultural heritage is an important attraction if we want to contribute to the deseasonalisation of tourist visits, but we must be careful not to exceed the limits of what the heritage, the landscape and the citizens can bear. One of the ways proposed in the Management Plan is a certain reconversion of the type of tourism from sun and beach holidays, which are concentrated at the peak of the summer, to cultural and nature tourism spread throughout the year.