Puesta en valor del patrimonio minero en contextos turísticos (dos casos del sudeste español)

Abstract

Portmán and Las Minas (Carmona Zubiri, 2007) are two former mining exploitations in the south-east ofSpain. Both are small districts in the municipalities of La Unión (Murcia) and Hellín (Castilla-LaMancha). Although historically they belonged to the same cultural area conformed as an ancient andunique administrative region (Murcia), nowadays they are located in different Autonomous Regions. Asmany others cases of former mining exploitations, both share an enormous carbon footprint and a hugesocial and demographic impact.In this paper we are going to compare some of the social processes involved in how the idea of CulturalHeritage, and the practices around it, are participating in the configuration of different discourses aboutdevelopment and social identity as a part of the socio-cultural construction process of hegemony(Gramsci, 1975). Our initial hypothesis is that this construction is a dialogical process where every one ofthe social agents performs a significant role. We have studied how hegemonic discourses are constructedin a dialogical process where social agents are involved and their possibilities of influence are relatedwithin his social capital.Methodologically, we have considered Portmán and Las Minas as social-spaces (Bourdieu), that is to say,spaces where some social agents struggle for different kinds of social capital. These social agents,whoever they are (institutional, resident and private agents) have their own particular interests. Our vanalysis is focused on the way the agents and their interest are marking the articulation of discourseswhere social identity, development and the mining Cultural Heritage are related to each other.We have also aimed to study in deep into the relationship of these discourses around the mining Heritagewith the tourist context and its urban consequences. Therefore, we have linked the discourses with itspossibilities of economic (and social) development, which have merged into the consensus that thespeculative urban growth was the base for attracting tourism, so the base for development.