Tangible and Intangible in Conservation. Friends, false friends, or aliens? Some considerations on the Camino de Santiago as cultural heritage

The assertive entrance of the immaterial in Conservation (Convention pour la sauvegarde du patrimoine culturel immatériel, Paris, Unesco, 32e session, 29 septembre – 17 octobre 2003) has produced a wave of initiatives and considerations accompanied by very few in depth analysis. The strong impulse of the Unesco declaration promoted the production of many lists of intangible goods also in the ‘materialistic’ Europe, whose sense of heritage is founded on the material nature of historical architectures, pictures and sculptures. If we pay attention to the phenomenon, we observe that the couple tangible/intangible implicates some precise problems in the definition of ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ we preserve. These matters respectively refer to the hierarchy of the values we consider in our reality, to the impact of the technologies in conservation and to the real sense of our preservation care. Among the cases of intangible Cultural Heritage on the Spanish List, the most part deals with religious or popular celebrations; one of this, in Cordoba, has an evident effect on the physical arrangement of the historical centre of the town, for the presence of several vessels with plants over the walls of the patios. Moreover, there are one chant and one kind of dance, one ‘language’ (by whistle), a special organization of justice (for the use of water in the south of the country) and a peculiar system of lime-making in Morón de la Frontera. In this last case, of course, the relationship with the material effects is more evident, but almost every ‘intangible’ good is connected to tangible events, and not always the conservation of the former is compatible with that of the latter (and vice-versa). In the Italian list, the connection between intangible and tangible heritage is even more evident (see the case of the characteristic cultivation of grapes in Pantelleria or the tradition of Sicilian ‘pupi’). The Camino de Santiago – as, in Italy, the ‘via Francigena’ - is not an intangible heritage in itself but it gathers many different components. Mainly these components are the material objects, which constitute the frame of the historical path (landscape, towns, churches, ancient streets, rural hostels and so on), and the immaterial anthropological and psychological reasons, which move people to go (faith, fashion, tourism and so on) or which give life to the existential experience (the religious ceremonies, the local traditions and so on). The former (pertaining the objects) need to be conserved; the latter (related to the subjects) must be ‘acted’. Of course, both of them are fundamental in the subjective perception of the ‘Camino’, but a clear theoretical distinction between what is permanent, physical and unreproducible and what is transient, individual and reproducible is important. Beyond this first layer of relationship, we have to distinguish the material and the immaterial tools (for preservation and action), which the current improvement of ITC has made more and more importance. Also this latter play a bivalent role that conditions the results of our attitude toward heritage. The analysis of these components and of the mutual relationship among them will help to clarify the intertwine between objective and subjective components in the current care and perception of the cultural heritage.