After the recent sentence that indicates that the owner is not known, the Central and Northern District Boards also encourage the declaration of BIC for their protection.
The time has come for the Murcia City Council to register the central hermitage of Salitre, also known as Los Diegos, in its name in the Property Registry. This was claimed this Monday by the presidents of the Center-West and North District Boards and a group of experts in art and history of the municipality, after knowing the ruling of the TSJ of Murcia that, in its recent sentence, exempts the owner of the land , Tomás Olivo, of its conservation and declares that “it has not been possible to elucidate who is the owner of the hermitage after many years have elapsed and various actions have been carried out”, as published by LA VERDAD.
This property, which has seen better days and has been neglected and unprotected for years, must also be declared a Site of Cultural Interest (BIC) by the Autonomous Community for its protection, the presidents of both districts, Diego Avilés, also defended , and Lola Martínez Riquelme, from the PP, in her appearance before the media to explain other initiatives that had been launched to achieve its restoration. It so happens that both districts share, due to the place where it is built, this property located on Acisclo Díaz and Pasos de Santiago streets.
The court ruling ended “decades” of battle in the courts to elucidate their property, recalled the president of the Central-West Board, who added that “this fact leaves the public institutions free to exercise cultural and heritage responsibility and work so hard in the acquisition of this asset as well as in its recovery and enhancement; and give it back the essence that it should never have lost.
This is the only hermitage that is still standing of the 28 that were part of the two ways of the cross that ran through the city of Murcia, that of the Diegos and that of the Franciscans. Built at the end of the 16th century, in the Baroque era it was restored and redecorated, as shown by some of the exterior elements, in the rococo style. The last thing on record that has been done on it are the frescoes and murals painted by Muñoz Barberán in the 1940s.
The two presidents of the boards indicated that their intention was to “take the initiative” for the recovery of the hermitage, “an insistent demand and for many years” of the residents of the area, stressed Lola Martínez, president of the Northern District. “Neighbors and Murcians do not understand how nothing is done to recover it.” For this reason, they first requested that the City Council “urgently” register the hermitage in their name; initiate the appropriate administrative procedures for this asset to be declared BIC, “and achieve a broader degree of protection”; and, finally, to set up a work team”, which includes experts from the world of art history and heritage recovery.
Urbanism has commissioned a study to see how the local administration can intervene in its recovery
Its mission is to “define the uses that should be given to the property” after its rehabilitation. They are part of the committee of experts, in addition to the two presidents of the District Boards, Cristina Gutiérrez-Cortines, professor of Art History; Álvaro Hernández, doctor in Art History and expert in movable heritage; Tomás García, a graduate in Library Science and Documentation and an expert in Murcian popular culture; Antonio Botías, Official Chronicler of Murcia; José Alberto Fernández, doctor in Art History; José Cuesta, art historian and former director of several museums in Murcia; Manuel Madrigal, historian and official guide of the Region of Murcia; and Lorenzo Tomás, architect, as well as president of the Central-East District Board.
The members of the commission
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Cristina Gutierrez-Cortines
Professor of Art History -
Alvaro Hernandez
Doctor in Art History and expert in furniture heritage -
Thomas Garcia
Bachelor of Library Science and Documentation and expert in Murcian popular culture -
Antonio Botias
Official Chronicler of Murcia -
Joseph Albert Fernandez
Doctor of Art History -
Jose Cuesta
Art historian and former director of several museums in Murcia -
Manuel Madrigal
Historian and official guide of the Region of Murcia -
Lawrence Thomas
Architect -
Diego Aviles
Chairman of the West Central District Board -
Lola Maria Martinez
President of the Northern District Board
Subsidiary execution
The Murcia City Council, for its part, gave “an express order” to the corresponding Service to study the possibilities of intervention by the Consistory in the recovery of the hermitage, “because there is no protocol that we can use,” said the councilor of Urbanism and Ecological Transition, Andrés Guerrero.
An intervention that would serve, when it is clear how to undertake it, “for this and other properties that have been distributed throughout the municipality in the same situation,” added the mayor.
Guerrero stressed that, in the case of the hermitage, since it is a ‘res nullius’, or without an owner, proceeding with the registration demanded by the presidents of the District boards is not so simple. “It is a complicated step, from the legal point of view, since we have to see how it can be done so that it does not remain as an attribution without criteria or legal force,” he commented.
Huermur urges the central government to claim the property, and if it does not want it, to “cede it to the Murcia Consistory”
The first group to react, after hearing the ruling of the Administrative Litigation Chamber of the TSJ of Murcia, was the Association for the Conservation of the Garden and Heritage of Murcia (Huermur), which also requested the immediate intervention of the City Council so that The property will not deteriorate further.
At his request, in May of last year, the property became part of the national Red List of heritage managed by the Hispania Nostra association. “Neither the City Council nor the Autonomous Community have done anything to meet our requirements,” they insisted from Huermur.
On this occasion, the association has sent a letter to the central government, including the pronouncement of the TSJ, and asked the State Heritage “to claim ownership of the chapel, to open an investigation applying the Public Administration Heritage Law; and that the situation be clarified”, indicated its president, Jesús Pacheco. “If they don’t want it, they can give it to the Murcia City Council,” he concluded.
No decision on the fate of the farm, thirty years later
Three decades have passed, 31 years to be precise, since the Cartagena businessman Tomás Olivo acquired the first of the land that forms part of the former Murcia Saltpeter Factory. On that first occasion, he bought 8,000 m2, located on the corner where the hermitage is located, and which he registered in 1991. Almost ten years later, he bought the remaining 5,000 m2, including the factory building. In total he invested just over 1,700 million of the old pesetas. To this day, the businessman is still not clear about what he is going to do with this property or the destination that he can give it, as reported to LA TRUTH, the representative of the Olivo companies in the Region of Murcia, Belén Lescure. At the beginning of 2000 he had considered the idea of building up to three 20-storey towers, a shopping center and a hotel. In an interview granted to this newspaper, in 2019, she stated that he was going to build two housing towers and a hotel, and that he was negotiating with the Consistory and the Community.
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