La Protección Jurídica de los Bienes Culturales en el Derecho Español

Abstract

The article examines the status of objects which embody elements or values of the Spanish culture. First, the legal notion of cultural objects is defined, considering national and supranational law. We then review the historical background of the protection of cultural objects in Spanish law, turning next to the current legal framework for the protection of the historical patrimony, both from a supranational normative perspective (UNESCO, the Council of Europe, The European Union, and the UNIDROIT agreement), and the Spanish national law found in the Constitution, the national law, and the law of the autonomous regions. Throughout the article the notion is stressed that the complexity we find in the protection of cultural objects derives in part from the uneasy relationship between jurisprudence and the concept of culture, and secondly, from the political and jurisdictional division enacted by the Spanish Constitution of 1978, which has brought about, as in other countries following a federal model of distribution of powers, massive amounts of legislation which makes it difficult for the legal operators to find the applicable law for a given case.