More stones. Another sinking. Another collapse. Another attack on heritage. Another failure. Another shame. A week ago it was Mantible, today Inestrillas. What will be next? It looks like they’re bombing us. But it is we ourselves who fire the cannon. Monuments in danger do not fall alone; we throw them out by inaction. Our neglect is devastating. Our stupidity, clamorous.
The Inestrillas Palace was not Notre Dame de Paris, but it was a singular page in the history of La Rioja and an emblem of the historical artistic heritage in danger of disappearing. Today is the confirmation, yet another, of a pathological insensitivity and chronic uprooting. A land that cuts off the anchor of its cultural roots is a ship adrift.
In Inestrillas you feel the strange sensation of returning to a stony past when you see a good part of its buildings literally attached to a cut of the hill that overlooks the Alhama. The remains of cave and semi-cave dwellings in the rocky wall of the oldest part, of great scenic beauty and historical significance, speak of men and women of the High Middle Ages who sought refuge in the humblest holes that the environment offered them.
Due to its size and more complex structure, the so-called Palace stood out, a unique building built later, in the 18th century, with its facade facing south, practically attached to the cliff and today on the ground. For decades its state was one of abandonment, ruin and threat of fall. A part of its walls had been detached, on which there were several rows of columbariums. And in recent years the partial collapses, which heralded the total and irreversible collapse, have not stopped. Hispania Nostra, which included this decayed ‘palace’ on its red heritage list in 2007, warned for years of the obvious danger of total collapse. No one seems to have listened.
Perhaps today, between concrete and brick, we are more troglodytes than those inhabitants of those caves dug in the rocks. Also those primitive houses suffer in our time the eviction in payment to the mortgage of the time, the abandonment and the ruin.
To say, after Mantible fell, that there were no more assets at risk is to ignore the problem or, even worse, not want to see it. But let no one run to throw the political stone on someone else’s roof: it is no more the fault of this government than the previous one. It is not even more the responsibility of politicians than of society as a whole. Let no one regret if it is not to change things. In Leza they recovered their hermitage of San Martín, now on the ‘green list’ of Hispania Nostra, because the people wanted to do it and looked for funds for it. It is simply that: will and money. We decide: either we preserve our cultural heritage or we abandon it and demolish it with cannon shots of oblivion. There is still a long list of ships within range.
Thus, sinking after sinking, we will end up as castaways who forgot where they came from. Travelers who don’t know where they are going. Fallen stones. A town in ruins.
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