Analysis for the Heritage Consideration of Historic Spanish Railway Stations (1848–1929)

Aurora Martínez-Corral,María Carmen Carnero,Carolina Aparicio-Fernández,Javier Cárcel-Carrasco

doi:10.3390/buildings12020206

Aurora Martínez-Corral, María Carmen Carnero + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings12020206

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Abstract

This article presents the study carried out on the main Spanish historic railway stations to obtain a joint and comparative view of the current state of its heritage conservation. The temporal scope is limited to the construction period of the Spanish historic stations. A motivated selection of a series of extrinsic and intrinsic variables is proposed, checking heritage variables to evaluate the degree of adequate heritage protection. The conclusions of the study show the antithesis between what is to be protected (the railway station) and what is really saved (the passenger building), making it necessary to change the legal protection status from monuments to landscapes. Thus, various interventions can be observed on the disaffected land with no heritage connection. The material and technological valorisation of unique components such as the large platform and track roofs is ignored. It is also observed that the maintenance of railway use is essential and that global interventions lead to a more significant loss of significance than those carried out for maintenance purposes. This leads to the conclusion that preventive conservation is more effective in protecting this heritage than global interventions.

Highlights

Regarding the concept of heritage, the turning point established by the Hague Charter (1954) (by introducing the concept of cultural asset instead of the historical-artistic monument established by the Athens Charter (1931)) is essential
The concept of heritage has only been expanded in successive international documents and, in the case of industrial heritage, the definition included in the Nizhny Tagil Charter (2003) [1] based on the TICCIH definition, as those remains of industrial culture, that is, with historical, technological, functional, or social values, without eliminating the architectural ones, and where railway stations are explicitly included, is considered appropriate as well as the principles included in the Dublin Charter (2011) [2], the concretisation in its study and actions established by the Seville Charter of Industrial Heritage (2018) [3]
As can be seen in the interventions carried out at Valencia station, small changes are introduced in the materiality, which are not in keeping with the original materiality and which subtly lead to the loss of heritage conservation

Summary

Introduction

Regarding the concept of heritage, the turning point established by the Hague Charter (1954) (by introducing the concept of cultural asset instead of the historical-artistic monument established by the Athens Charter (1931)) is essential. The concept of heritage has only been expanded in successive international documents and, in the case of industrial heritage, the definition included in the Nizhny Tagil Charter (2003) [1] based on the TICCIH definition, as those remains of industrial culture, that is, with historical, technological, functional, or social values, without eliminating the architectural ones, and where railway stations are explicitly included, is considered appropriate as well as the principles included in the Dublin Charter (2011) [2], the concretisation in its study and actions established by the Seville Charter of Industrial Heritage (2018) [3]. The European Landscape Convention formulated in Florence in 2000 [5] by the Council of Europe already establishes a basic action protocol for its treatment

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