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From La Alcarria to Navarra

Posted on 23/05/2017

Traveling to Pamplona

People from Navarra, the cities of Cuenca, Madrid and Miranda de Ebro had already visited Pastrana. Now it’s time for the “ alcarreños” . Young people from this region have to go to Pamplona. It demands you to be open to new people, new experiences, and a lot of personal will. It is much more than a “like” on Facebook.

What do you know about Pamplona and Navarra? Probably Sanfermines- the universal festival where bulls run on streets- but nothing else

The Paradox of Cliché

In a world linked by internet, social networks, with thousands and thousands of pictures broadcasted at minute, there is still ignorance about your own country. The people from Pastrana have only listened about a festival. International, famous, great, but it takes place just in a week. There are much more things happening in Navarra during the year.

Moreover, the people from Pamplona knew nothing about Pastrana. They didn’t even know about the existence of this place.

It is urgent to become aware of our heritage, culture, geography…

The Choice of an Itinerary

Pastraneros came just for a weekend. So we needed to offer a nice, entertaining, not very long tour, but at least, something that gave them some idea about Navarra. Here’s the choice: The Way of St James (Pamplona is the first Spanish city on the way), old walls, gardens and gastronomy

What a Green Color !

That’s what they said after a first glance of Pamplona. Spring, a great rain the week before they came and the sun, made gardens burst into a great splendor of colors.

We walked through Yamaguchi Park, Vuelta del Castillo, Ciudadela, Old Town (including the “encierro” itinerary), the well-known White Horse, and the famous Café Iruña. A complete walk around the heart of the city

Saturday Morning

Walking again through the city, we visited the Walls Interpretation Center. It’s a great, nice place where everybody can learn about Pamplona’s history and its walls while having a lot of fun with all the videos and interactive games it has. In addition, the great landscape all around made the visit even more interesting and easy going.

Later, we had a visit to one of the most important altarpieces from the Renaissance at Pamplona. The one of the church of San Miguel. It was done for the Cathedral, but long history-short, today it’s in this different place.

“An Essential Spring Event in Navarra “

Known also as “Semana del Pincho” (Tapas week), this event is about gastronomy, especially “tapas” in Pamplona called “Pinchos”

Luckily for the Pastrana team, this ‘Semana del Pincho” was celebrated during the time of their visit. There was no better way to finish our morning cultural visit that in a bar with the “pinchos”. Here you can see Amalia enjoying one of them

The Afternoon at Puente La Reina

Have you ever walked through the way of Saint James? Perhaps you can remember Puente La Reina, 25 kms away from Pamplona. A nice village, not very far from the city that happens to be a very interesting place on” The Camino”. A lovely walk, nice talks, new friends. Now the people from Pastrana know that Navarra is much more than sanfermines. And people from Navarra know Pastrana exits

Last day. A Sunday Morning in Ororbia

This story about keeping in touch with the people of Pastrana, has a lot to do with the event of Patrimonio para Jóvenes in October, “Fashion at the San Julian de Ororbia altarpiece” So it was a great end for the first visit of our new friends, there. In Ororbia.

We visited the alterpiece, had a little talk with Tere and Miguel, elderly people from the village. The encounter between different generations is always enrichening for us.

We also visited an old washing site that was restored six years ago. A cute place that remember old jobs close to the rivers.

There is much more to be done

It was a great experience. An exchange focused on young people and heritage. Patrimonio para Jóvenes is always moving, opening new roads, exploring ideas, talking to people. With the desire of keeping this going, improving, and helping all of the people who read us.

All the best for this week!

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A talk about the walls of Pamplona

Posted on 11/04/2017

On Saturday March 25 we had the pleasure of receiving Esther Elizalde among us. At the informal dinner, she talked about the demolition of the walls of Pamplona. ({Part of the walls. Thank Good we still have some beautiful walls).

Mrs. Elizalde did her doctoral thesis on this subject. Nevertheless, her speech was not a technical one, just for engineers, architects or historians. Her achievement goes way beyond these people: as a high school teacher, she knows how to deal with any kind of public. And indeed, Esther offered a great biographical note from the people living at the beginning of the 20th Century in Pamplona. She perfectly transmitted the fears, hopes, difficulties and anecdotes from the time of our great-grandfathers. So we were listening about the human side of the walls.

” First Ensanche” of Pamplona

For those who at the beginning of January went to the visit to the “First Ensanche” of Pamplona, this talk became more interesting. They had experienced the fist area built with the goal of giving people from Pamplona a little more space, but it was not enough at all. Moreover, it was only for very well off people.

One of the facts that made the dinner so interesting was the amount of pictures brought from the municipal archive of Pamplona that we had the chance to enjoy.

The pity, as always happens with informal dinners and talks; was that there was not way to display a great number of pictures from the activity on the blog .

But, if you are in Pamplona, the visit to the archive is free and worthy, here you have the information about it:

On behalf of the people who joined us that day, I want to thank Esther for coming. She had the kindness of attending us coming to Pamplona from Zaragoza and spending her free time of a Saturday evening with students and young professionals of Patrimonio para Jóvenes.

Before you come to Pamplona, have a look to the web with information about the walls of the city and the great walks you can have all around.

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FASHION ON THE RETROCHOIR

Posted on 04/04/2017

Have you ever been at the Burgos Cathedral? It is a great monument, with an “unmistakable profile” (as it’s said on Wikipedia) that is well worth visiting. It is so big, so majestic, and so outstanding, that you can easily get overwhelmed by so much beauty. In consequence, you can take for granted a lot of important details.

An example of these overseen jewels is the retrochoir, right in front of the wonderful chapel of Condestables. It’s a shame that people don’t spend enough time there to pay attention to this masterpiece of sculpture. If you want more information about the artist and his work go here

Consuelo Sanz de Bremond LLoret, a specialist on antique clothing was the one who proposed talking about fashion on the retrochoir. Specifically, hat fashion. In fact, most of the characters seen here are wearing hats with such charm and delicacy that they can easily inspire fashion nowadays.

This observation let us organize the creativity practice we proposed to the pupils at the Art and Design School in Burgos: To create new models of hats for today based on those we can see at the retrochoir . And we hope they make it!

With this event, we wanted to introduce in an official way Patrimonio para Jóvenes at the city of Burgos. Even if we displayed some activities before, we have never had a formal introduction.

During the days before, and even the very day of this event, it was broadcasted on newspapers, radio and TV. Check out if you want here (go to 17,30 program time)

On behalf of the team of Patrimonio para Jóvenes, I want to thank Consuelo for joining us at Burgos and for her dedication of more than three months to study carefully each model on each head of the characters.

After the talk, everybody has learnt how to look at a retrochoir with a new point of view. First the superb scene of the life of Christ : The road to the Calvary, and more scenes from the passion. And more important, we discovered how carefully Felipe Vigarny described each person at the story by drawing amazing faces, amazing clothes and charming and sometimes exotic hats.

Welcome to the Cathedral of Burgos and get ready to take off your hat!

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Walk through Pamplona

Posted on 31/01/2017

Some years ago, the Chicago Tribune published an article about the city of Pamplona. The article went beyond the traditional topic of Sanfermines and talked about another interesting places around the city. If you want to read the complete article, please click here

Having this article on mind, I am writing about the last morning we went for a walk around Pamplona. We may have not seen all the city since it took us just one hour, and we visited just some streets, but it was totally worth it, so follow us and take a look of what we saw.

We visited some buildings of an area of Pamplona called I Ensanche. The word Ensanche could be more or less translated to “expansion”, therefore, it was the first expansion of the city. Now you may ask yourself why are we talking about “expansion”? Well, because of the walls surrounding the city. Until the last century, Pamplona was a city completely surrounded by a stone fortress. Nowadays despite it still has some remaining walls, the city has grown out of those edges. So, back then, the city was completely different from what we can appreciate today.

The first expansion was the first area where wealthy people could build elegant houses made by the most important architects of the end of XIXth Century and beginnings of the XXth Century. A public building, the palace of justice, was built at the same time as well.

Regrettably, some of those houses were demolished and today we can´t enjoy watching all of them. However, around this area there are still some amazing examples of the detail-oriented and versatile styles that define the architecture of that time. For example, it’s impossible to avoid looking at the beautiful buildings by Manuel Martinez Urbago in Modernist style. The team was astonished by the beauty of the gantries and overwhelmed by the delicacy of every little piece that decorated the room. The details and harmony in those spaces suddenly let us delightfully experience an atmosphere from other times.

We also enjoyed watching at the only house of Pamplona that is built in neo-mudéjar style. In the case of this particular building, materials are essential, since bricks are not only for used construction, but also for the decoration of its facade. With contrasting colors, geometric shapes and a harmonic combination of the bricks with the rest of materials, this is a beautiful creation that effortlessly stands out from the surrounding houses.

In the end, we spent such a nice morning contemplating all the ornamental details, admiring the sinuous beauty of each façade, balcony or hall, reconstructing the ancient majesty of those houses in our minds, and chatting about the historicist and eclectic style in Spain, that the time passed so fast we didn´t notice.

Each of us also learnt a little more about the city of Pamplona. We realized that knowing well a city is not as easy as it sounds. It does not matter if it is a small city or even if we have been living there for several years, there are always secret spots or hidden treasures that need just a little of attention to be discovered and admired.

This morning walk was totally worth it. It was a morning for learning to look at the beauty of a city. Cities do not need to be enormous nor monumental to please our sight with lovely spaces. Each of them has a past that defines it, a need for beauty that decorates it and a will to become a nice place to live in that shapes it. With this walk along the secret beauties of Pamplona, we learned that each city possesses a charm, a history and a heritage that must be enjoyed, preserved and given to the next generations for their own delight.

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European Heritage Days in Genevilla, Navarra

Posted on 11/10/2016

At the end of May, when we visited Genevilla, I knew we had to come back. Its heritage, landscape and friendly people are well worth visiting again.

But I never imagined that the visit would come so soon.

A newspaper advertisement

I was reading a local newspaper when I came across news from the government of Navarra. They invited the city halls of the different villages of the region to participate at The European Heritage Days. One of the conditions was to present the program with a cultural association.

Patrimonio para jovenes had kept in touch with the people of Genevilla and offered our proposal: A workshop about the altarpiece of the parish. An awesome, stunning piece of art from Renaissance.

And the day arrives!

And the 1st of October, there we were. And we couldn’t believe how many people came. It was a joy. But we were certainly dealing with a challenge: to talk to such a big group with a range of age we are not used to.

Everybody was very interested and some of them looked carefully with bicoulars. So they appreciated the details from sculptures and how they were carved and polychromed.

The children

For children we prepared some big papers with the designs from the friezes of the altarpiece. Kids were looking at the altarpiece first and then they colored in the way they preferred. They had fun. By the way, thank you to the team that came as volunteers to take care of them.

And the party

After visiting the altarpiece, we had appetizers courtesy of the village council. It was a great time to talk, find old friends and make new ones.

Here is a picture with some of us. It was such a cute, nice, friendly morning at Genevilla.

And here you have the links to some websites that can be helpful if you want to visit this area :

http://www.turismo.navarra.es/eng/home/

http://www.turismotierraestella.com/

http://www.turismo.navarra.es/esp/organice-viaje/recurso/Localidad/2670/Viana.htm

http://www.alavaturismo.eus/index.php/es/

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Arellano a charming village at Navarra

Posted on 06/09/2016

Here we are again! The academic year 2016/17 begins and the blog continues with this entry about our visit to Arellano, which is just a few kms. away from our last visit in Dicastillo.

Some years ago, we visited the Roman villa at Arellano, an archeological site located close to the village. And whatsmore…I remember getting into a small car accident right on the square of the village. Thank God, it was nothing very serious.

Almost by chance

It was during our visit to Dicastillo that we decided to continue to Arellano. There, we got to go into the medieval tower and enjoy the beautiful views of the landscape and the church of Arellano. The nice temperature and sun made everything easy.

If you go to Arellano, don’t forget visit this tower. It has free entrance and it was restored some years ago, so it is not dangerous to climb up to the top.

The Church of Saint Roman. What a colors!

Around the church there is a small, cute garden carefully watered with some nice grass and plants. It is nice to be there, just having a friendly chat on a summer evening. But even with this atmosphere, it is not possible to imagine the beauty that the interior of the church holds.

Alvaro de Goñi, a boy from the village opened the church for us and explained the stunning mural paintings.

On the presbytery, there are remains of medieval paintings from the 14th century.

All around the church we saw decorative paintings from the 16th century. There is also a frieze with the Magnificat prayer written and some decoration which you can also find at the Cathedral of Sigüenza, close to Madrid but far away from Navarra.

The painting altarpiece of Saint Cristobal

The amazing painting of Saint Cristobal really attracted attention because of its size and colors. It has the curiosity of some original iconographical additions ( found only in Arellano?) . For exemple the travellers, the eagles -two of them alighted one flying) the Virgin Mary and the two caravels on the top. Check out the painting and look for this details if yo visit the church.

The old organ is out of order nowadays but is a goosd instrument and it is just waiting for money to be restored

But another story was coming across!

At the end of teh visit, we were climbing again, this time up the bell tower of the church, again enjoying the views , and were able to see the tower from where we were peeping out a half an hour beforehand.

But, when looking at the bells, we discovered a lady’s name written on the yoke of a small bell. “In memory of Victoriana Arizaleta ” . So, who was Victoriana?

After some research by Marta Castaño and Alvaro de Goñi we will know and I will report it on a new post.

See you!

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Dicastillo

Posted on 21/06/2016

Dicastillo is a village located at the region of Navarra, not very well known but is well worth visiting. When arriving you can discover a stunning palace from the last years of the 19th century an the begining of the 20th. Its history and that of its owner the “condesa de la Vega del Pozo” has been studied by Blanca Sagasti. Her research is now in an interesting book : “ De la Casa familiar de los López de Dicastillo al Palacio de la Condesa de la Vega del Pozo “

As a result of reading this book I kept in touch with Blanca . Then we visited the palace, today empty ( or almost) waiting for a new use. Nothing better tha reading the report by Reagan Hahn :

I knew we would experience something incredible from the minute the man pulled out a key to unlock the heavy gates. As they opened with a creak, the palacio stood before us in all of its architectural splendor. Beyond the building, tiny roses formed a blanket over the garden pagoda.

Before the excursion…

I had no idea that a palace was a building exclusively for leisure and that, “castle,” is a term reserved for residences designed for battle. Before the excursion I couldn’t have told you what it feels like to look out the window of a tower and see the mountains and fields of Navarra fill the horizon. Before I couldn’t, now I can. From the great, wide staircases, to the ornate fireplaces, every inch of the palacio drew you in.

Beautiful in a tragic way !

Yet, to me, all the grandeur was beautiful in a tragic way. While the rooms were full of things, they lacked people. Only we, the privileged few, got to explore this grand home while the rest of the world lay ignorant to the treasures inside. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing this fantastic edifice, and I count myself blessed to have been given the opportunity to explore a piece of history. I only hope that others will come to appreciate the palacio so that once again its rooms will be filled with life.

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Communication with and from Museums

Posted on 22/02/2016

It was close Christmastime when I received an e -mail from The museum of Navarra, the one I’ve put here at the beginning of the post offering us the opportunity to visit The Annunciation to the Shepherds a Gothic painting transported from a Church in Olite, a village close to Pamplona, Navarra.

The proposal was interesting but in my opinion the mail itself was boring, without giving any hope of young people having fun. So I took account of the mail itself during our visit. Before talking about Gothic art we had a chat about communication with Museums.

Do you have any idea about this kind of information, these e-mails from the Museum of Navarra? Nobody knows….

How would you like the museum to keep in touch with you?

No idea… They would love some attention, but they don’t know how to go about getting it….

Have any of you visited any museums’ websites within the last month?

Probably not very likely.

Have you seen, for example the new website of the Prado Museum?

I doubt it.

Do any of you have an idea about any museum in the social networks? One girl might know a little something of the Jaca Museum perhaps… she won a prize some years ago and can remember something….

So, everybody has the feeling of lack of communication with museums and their collections, but no one can think about a proposal to the institutions… Take notice….

After this little chat, we talked about the medieval mural paintings, the way in which they are brought from their original homes to museums… so at this point, we remembered our visit to Jaca and the Romanesque paintings of Bagues, to see the video, click here.

Compare, remember, explore, associate content and paintings, make a connection with the tour we did in past years…

Then we talked about the painting we went to the museum to visit. Theme, technique, colors, drawings, characters, conservation and so on. Our group was very surprised thinking about how churches looked centuries ago with all these colours and paintings on their walls.

The whole team had the delightful experience of enjoying a museum without speeding through it, without visiting everything or almost, resulting in hating art and body aches.

It is urgent that we find a way to engage the youth when talking about museums. This is especially important here in Spain, where the whole country is an example of history and art. I’ve written about it here more than once, check it the website Spain is culture

Perhaps in not very big museums and not big cities such as Madrid or Barcelona, we need some kind of fresh air, changes in the way we talk about the exhibitions and collections at the museums.

What about some idea from projects such as Museum Hack ? It is much more than a matter of money for exploring new ways; In my opinion, it has to do with attitude, imagination, and the concern and will to reach new audiences.

So we had a great day, discovering Gothic mural painting and chatting about communication with and from Museums.

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A photo workshop at Pamplona Cathedral

Posted on 03/02/2016

“Stone, Wood and Precious Metal “ was the title of this workshop, focused on Gothic Art in the Cathedral. Some weeks ago, the Culture department of the Government of Navarra published a research monograph about the Gothic in this region. So here is our tribute and appreciation.

For the session I‘ve chosen some masterpieces with two criteria: one being the importance of the masterpiece itself and the other the grade of difficulty in taking the picture. (I had to keep in mind that none of the young people on the team had much photography experience).First we visited the tomb of Carlos III the Noble King and his wife, Leonor; the faces, the vestments, ornaments and the special tearful entourage on the bottom of the tomb. The session was conducted by Professor Juan Cañada, who explained the lighting of this place and how to deal with lights, shadows and colours.

After trying with that, we went to the altarpiece of St. Thomas, made of wood and with poly-chrome painting. Full frame, detail, and difficulties with perspective and brightness were some points explained here.

We also shot small details and it was enchanting when each one of us discovered the elegance and preciosity of each character on the altarpiece. Individual faces, clothing, landscape and colours were discovered again for each camera with the unique point of view of each person. Here you have some of mine.

Speaking of the cloister, I must say that the cloister of Pamplona’s Cathedral needs a post just for itself. Its importance in the History of Gothic of Art has not been taken for granted and can not be visited in a rush.
So we took pictures only in some parts. As a “Puerta del Amparo” a representation of the death of the Virgin Mary with apostles, angels… a tympanum full of colour and people was in some ways easy to be shot.

In some ways… but not in my experience, I took a very bad one, so here you have a picture of this tympanum from Panoramio

The next point was the Barbazana Chapel where one of the most interesting things is its vault . Here the problem had nothing to do with light but with distance . We also put attention on the corbels .

To finish this session we went into the Exhibition “Occidens” only to visit a small piece but great in terms of beauty: the stunning silversmith reliquary of Saint Sepulcher. A piece we suggested that the museum direction move from its place of exhibition. It deserved to be better seen by the visitors. Another place with different light would be much appreciated. Here you have the picture we took and a picture from a picture where you can appreciate the filigree on the hair of the angel.

If you come to the Cathedral of Pamplona walk, take your time and enjoy! We are waiting for you!

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A novel, a castle, a great conference dinner

Posted on 27/01/2016

A cold winter Saturday evening, a charming bookshop, a historical novel and its writer in our informal conference dinner, could you imagine anything better?

Luis Zueco is the author of historical novels and the person in charge of the Castle of Grisel, a lovely hotel, (previously a castle) in the region of Aragon, right in an area full of heritage and well worth visiting.

He came to join us for a talk about his last novel “El Castillo” (The Castle), the story of the construction of the Castle of Loarre, one of the most beautiful castles you can visit in Spain

It is amazing, superb, incredible to find something like this built almost one thousand years ago. The novel bring us the opportunity to think and reflect about the people who lived the adventure of the construction, the dangers, hopes, difficulties, fears and so on. We listened to Luis Zueco talk about castles in Spain, the castle in the novel and the challenge of finding the characters; especially because it is necessary consider that they have to think and behave as people one thousand years ago. Quite a complicated task!

Anyway, we were enchanted with the tale as well as with the castle.

We came to the Castle of Loarre with some of the Patrimonio Para Jovenes team some time ago, but we are going to come back again when good weather and longer days arrive.

The conference dinner was also an opportunity for networking. There were architects specialized in heritage rehabilitation, writers, historians and artists… a wonderful meeting.

Thanks a lot to Luis Zueco who wanted to come to Pamplona when I asked him about it, and thanks to Dani Rosino, the owner of the Bookshop “Walden” a place built with the concept of beauty, simplicity; deep, and peaceful as a forest. Check out its web and visit the shop if you are coming to Pamplona. It is located in the city center, not far away from the famous “Plaza de Toros”.

And… by the way, El Castillo is not translated to English but in any case if you come to Spain, don’t forget to visit the Castle of Loarre, a Castle in Aragon, but with a history bound to Navarra.

See you!

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