Institutional gestation, planning and world patrimony. The San Cristobal de la Laguna’s special protection plan and the destruction of a human inheritance city

Abstract

Special protective planning accompanies the process of bestowing the declaration of world heritage on a site, historical centre or city. This is a recent development and stretches the notion of “good government” to its limits, especially where the responsible and reliable programming of the assets managed by institutions both on an international scale and in Spain, in particular, is concerned. This is a peculiar case if we consider that it is one of the few occasions where the assets being managed correspond to intergenerational concepts, whose significance is both tangible and intangible, and jointly and severally related. Likewise, planning objectives are limited to a predetermined direction through international agreements and regulations which are binding. State participation in these activities is recent and has coincided with the progressive transformation of institutional conduct that increasingly resembles the objectives and procedures of commercial corporations. This phenomenon has recently been associated with the distinguishing features that psychiatry has identified as the definition of a psychopath. In Spain, the most important urban ensembles in urban history are registered as cultural assets of world heritage, but their political administrators commission so-called protection plans whose main mission is to reconsider local patrimonial property proposed in the respective declarations, and reinterpret the design method through planning. Consequently, the very declaration of heritage may become a risk factor for these assets, which are immediately re-inspected for adaptation to tourism development plans put forward as an economic base. This economic strategy, contrary to the objective of sustainability approved by UNESCO, is currently the main factor of destruction of the assets included in the World Heritage List. A recent highly topical case is the city of San Cristóbal de La Laguna (Tenerife, Canary Islands), a Spanish cultural site registered in 1999 whose Special Protection Plan, approved in 2005, ostensibly incurs in the conduct described above.