Wednesday, May 24, 2023, 7:27 p.m.
The report of the technicians from the Ministry of Culture questioning the “historical dimension” of the paving of the Plaza de Camachos in Murcia, which the works of the mobility plan have brought to light, does not convince other experts. As this newspaper published, the regional Historical Heritage service dates this cobblestone, in one of the most unique environments of the Carmen neighborhood, between the 60s and 70s of the 20th century, so it “does not have much relevance.” Thus, he rejects its conservation and maintains that this type of paving based on basalt stone is “common throughout the city”. However, architects and restorers have expressed their doubts about that dating. They maintain, after consulting the newspaper library and old images, that the paving would be from the 30s, or even earlier. They cite, for example, an agreement of the Consistory of 1884 to contract the paving works of Camachos, and another newspaper article about the paving of this urban space in 1957. «If the square was paved that year, it is strange that shortly after we proceeded to paving”, warns a technical specialist in architecture of the Modern Movement.
Photographs from the 1940s would confirm this thesis by showing what appears to be a cobblestone-based pavement in this place. And another report that appeared in ‘Línea’ in 1965 highlights the survival in the Camachos square of a “medieval cobblestone”. To questions from LA VERDAD, the Ministry insists on the same information collected by the technicians of the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage as a result of an inspection carried out in the area, last Friday, after a complaint by the Huermur conservationist group. «The basalt paving stones that appear in the works are very recent; They date back to the 1960s and 1970s, and are common throughout the city,” said a spokeswoman for the department. Despite the fact that the cobblestone “does not have much relevance from the patrimonial point of view”, the same report points out that “it could be considered maintaining a section as a witness to the pavement that was laid in its day”. With this assessment, the Murcia City Council has already communicated that it will preserve part of the paving in “a strip of sidewalk” of the same square as a memory of this past. At the moment, work continues to extract the stones, which will be deposited in a municipal warehouse until their subsequent reuse.
Huermur believes that the Consistory’s plans, after the Culture report, “come to give us reason in the value and meaning of the good.” The association sees “lack of foresight and zero transparency” by the Consistory. And he regrets that “we have not been able to access the technical reports and inspection records.” The president of said group, Sergio Pacheco, believes that “beyond the specific period of these pieces, the paving of the Plaza de Camachos is the physical witness of the configuration of a unique urban space that is protected, the result of the expansion and modernization of the city. He insists on his request that the work planned on the Old Bridge, Canalejas street and the surroundings of the Floridablanca garden advance “with special care” due to the possible presence of the original paving. He also claims that asphalts and pavements of strident colors should not be used in “this area, which is so delicate from the point of view of cultural heritage.”
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