The three lives of Altamira and the future: becoming a place again version 1.5.0, revision 7 17th October 2017 ∙ 09:30

David Barreiro, Felipe Criado‐Boado, Virtudes Téllez, Cristina Sánchez‐Carretero and Eva Parga‐Dans

Introduction In this paper we aim to propose certain ideas for an alternative management regime for a heritage site at risk: the cave of Altamira. The cave, located in the north of the Iberian Peninsula, hosts a valuable collection of rock art: “Bison, horses, deer, hands and mysterious symbols were painted or engraved during the millennia when the cave of Altamira was inhabited, between 36,000 and 13,000 years ago. These representations are spread throughout the cave, [but] are concentrated in the Polychrome Room.” The foundations of our arguments are the results of the Project on the Social Value of Altamira, led by the Incipit‐CSIC, within the framework of the Research Programme for the Preventive Conservation and Access Regime for the Cave of Altamira, which was carried out between 2012 and 2014, with the support of the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, with Gaël de Guichen (ICCROM) as the scientific director.

Starting Point: Altamira in crisis In the 1970s colonies of bacteria endangering the conservation of the cave paintings were detected. Taking the case of Lascaux (closed in 1963) as a precedent, the provisional closure of the cave was decreed in 1977 while scientific studies were carried out in order to determine its state of conservation. In 1982 the cave was reopened but the number of visitors was reduced from more than 150,000 people per year to 11,320. In 1991, José Antonio Lasheras, who sadly passed away in a road accident two years ago, became the director of Altamira. José Antonio was fundamental in the adoption of a new strategy, for which he worked from the moment he occupied his position, including the construction of a totally new museum and a replica conceived as a exhibition structure to provide educational information on the cave. Therefore, the decision was taken to build a replica which recreated the original conditions and artificially lowered the floor of the cave so that visitors could move around freely and contemplate the paintings. What very few people know is that the replica was conceived to work in parallel with the original cave. The idea was to provide all the practical information about the cave in the replica in order to shorten the visit to the original cave, which the visitors would subsequently see in order to have the sensory and emotional experience of the original. The new museum opened in 2001. However, in 2002, faced with the appearance of new signs of contamination, the 1

foundation responsible for the cave (the Altamira Cave Trust) took the decision to provisionally close the cave. The subsequent studies and the complications of the possible solutions prolonged this closure. Over time, pressure grew, particularly on the part of the regional government of Cantabria, supported by the interests of the tourist industry and the demands of the community, for the cave to be reopened. This pressure became especially intense between 2010 and 2012. However, the majority of specialists and the nationwide media were against the idea. In 2012, in an attempt to break the deadlock, the above‐mentioned Research Programme for the Preventive Conservation and Access Regime for the Cave of Altamira (hereafter, the Programme) was launched. This programme had the aim of generating data which would allow those responsible for the site (declared as a World Heritage Site in 1984, which was broadened in 2008 to include 17 other caves along the Cantabrian Coast) to take an informed decision regarding public access to the site: “it was a question of evaluating the incidence of the current natural dynamics of the cave, the impact of human presence on the conservation of the cave and its paintings, defining the access protocols for researchers and occasional visitors and designing the steps to be taken for preventive conservation” (Guichen 2014a: 9). As part of this programme, the Incipit carried out a study on the Social Value of Altamira, with the aim of characterising Altamira as a social phenomenon in different dimensions and on different levels, in order to better assess the transcendence and relevance of the decisions which would have to be taken. The results of this research are what feed the ideas in this paper and can be consulted in detail in the 'Colección Proyecto Valor Social de Altamira', in the open‐access institutional repository Digital.CSIC (https://digital.csic.es/handle/10261/112860).

The Three Lives of Altamira: Heritagization across the 20th Century What is now known as the Cave of Altamira was, during the Upper Paleolithic, part of a living space. The cave probably had the role of an aggregation site, with a high degree of symbolic significance and a peculiar topography which, paradoxically, leads it to be “close to the sky”. Even in the prehistoric age, it surely had its own identity, thus we can interpret it as a place (an encounter between multiple spatial scales and temporal trajectories, in the sense described by Doreen Massey). This prehistoric life is what we understand as its first life. 13,000 years ago, the wide entrance to the cave, which was open, collapsed, plunging the cave into a long state of lethargy, distancing it from the succession of diverse cultural horizons, for which it did not exist. Thus, it stopped possessing an identity and stopped being a “place”. We call this long period of “social non‐existence” the second life of Altamira. The third life of Altamira is its contemporary existence. This began when the cave was discovered and reintroduced into the human‐social world. This life has passed through two distinct stages (life 3.1 and life 3.2). Our research on these lives has enabled us to identify the problems posed by each one and the conflicts with the identity of the site which have arisen. Upon this basis, we propose that Altamira needs to experience a new life, a future life which is different to all the others, as we believe should also occur with many other WH sites and, indeed, with any archaeological site which undergoes an enhancement process. 2

Altamira´s Life 3.1: Monument At the end of the 19th century, the discovery of the cave (in 1868) and of the paintings (in 1879) constituted the return to social life of what came to be known as the Cave of Altamira. The subordinate condition of Spain with regard to the more powerful countries of the north of Europe (in this case, France) led to the authenticity of the cave not being certified until 1902, when Émile Cartailhac published his article entitled La grotte d’Altamira, Espagne. "Mea culpa" d’un sceptique. From the very moment of its discovery, Altamira was affected by the political and economic vicissitudes of the State responsible for it (Spain), whilst at the same time becoming a relevant entity on local, regional, national and international levels. The history of the management and adaptation of the cave for visitors is an intricate and controversial tale. During the initial stage (up to the 1920s), the cave was managed by the local council of Santillana del Mar but the problems caused by the cave's deterioration demanded rehabilitation work which proved too costly for the council. Thus, the management (though not the ownership) passed to the hands of the State, personified in the Duke of Alba, who was the president of the Consejo Superior de Excavaciones y Antigüedades (the High Council for Excavations and Antiquities) and a friend of King Alfonso XIII (1902‐1931). It was he who presided the Management Board (to which the local authorities also belonged). In 1925, an access road was already in existence, the museum was already open (including the hut for the warden of the cave) and an initial project for adapting the cave for visitors was put into action. Altamira was also declared a national monument. In this way, the cave became a national symbol, just like other archaeological elements (such as Numancia), which supposedly harked back to a glorious national past. This process was reinforced by the prominence of Alfonso XIII who, during the 1920s, usually spent the summer in Santander and visited the cave every year. Following the republican interval (1931‐1939), during which all national monuments came to be known as historical‐artistic monuments (a title maintained until 1985), the cave was almost destroyed by the Condor Legion (which bombarded first Santander and then Guernica, among other places) during the Civil War but was saved via the mediation of a Francoist commander. Altamira's status as a symbol was reinforced after the war, with the creation of the Board of Trustees of the Cave of Altamira in 1940, which depended on Madrid. After 1944, the local authorities were no longer represented on the Board of Trustees. The Franco regime attributed a great deal of importance to this heritage site and the nationalist ideology supported itself on its symbolic dimension, whilst reinforcing it and assuming complete control of its management. As Spain emerged from the postwar depression and the years of development began, thanks to its dissemination in the media, to the generalisation of means of transport and to the growing mobility of the emerging middle class as far as tourism was concerned, the number of visitors grew each year. Between 1955 and 1973, the number of annual visits increased from 55,000 to 173,000 as large and small works were carried out in order to make the site more appropriate for visitors and to attempt to slow down the symptoms of deterioration which were beginning to be detected.

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At the beginning of the 1960s, the first replicas were made: two photogrammetric reproductions of the Polychrome Ceiling under the responsibility of German researchers (one was installed in Munich and the other in Madrid). All of this was undertaken without losing sight of the emblematic national character of the cave, combined with a management system based on client relations which was sustained by the access regime and guided visits, as well as the working of the museum. At the same time, the local council of Santillana del Mar continued to push for direct control over the management of the cave.

Altamira´s Life 3.2: Heritage In 1977, the management of the cave was taken over by the Ministry of Culture and its ownership was definitively handed over to the State, with the agreement of the local council (which renounced its rights in the courts in exchange for economic compensation). In 1979, the Altamira National Museum and Research Centre (“a scientific and administrative tool to ensure better management and conservation of the Cave of Altamira”) was set up, which assumed control of the management of the cave and occupied the pre‐existing facilities, which had recently been extended with the construction of three buildings to receive visitors and a café. Shortly after, in 1985, the new Spanish Historical Heritage Law was passed, which had the aim of implementing modern methods of management, protection and conservation of heritage, changing, among other aspects, protection statuses. In this way Altamira “lost” its status as a “monument” and became a bien de interés cultural (a heritage site of cultural interest). Thus, it became associated to the idea of a site, an ensemble of elements integrated in a protected environment, rather than being considered as an isolated entity. In the same year, an agreement was signed by different public bodies (including the regional government) in which the make‐up of the Board of Trustees was modified (making the president of the Autonomous Community of Cantabria the president of the Board). At the same time, Altamira was declared a World Heritage site. For all of these reasons, 1985 could have marked the beginning of an exemplary modernisation in the management of the site but two great problems arose, the same ones which arose in the modernisation associated with the political transition in Spain: 1) its foundations were laid on pre‐existing economic, political and social structures (in Altamira the management practices of the cave dating back to before the decisions of the period 1977‐1985 continued in force) and the old local and national oligarchies remained almost intact, many of them born thanks to the seizure of family assets made possible by the Franco regime; and 2) the problem of the territorial model was not resolved, which, in Cantabria, is manifest in a fierce dichotomy of identity between Spanish and regional nationalism, a problem which is transferred to conflicts regarding the tutelage and management of Altamira. The current home of the museum (a new building, fully integrated in the environment, the access to which was modified in order to distance the entrance from that of the cave) was inaugurated in 2001. It includes a high quality replica of the Great Hall of Polychromes, painted by hand, combined with different museographic elements which enlighten visitors on the context of life of Paleolithic societies and on the archaeological work carried out. The excellent programme of the museum was conceived as an illustration of prehistoric means of life, rather than telling the story of the third life of Altamira, the story of its contemporary existence and 4

its current vicissitudes (with the exception of a small room dedicated to the discovery of the cave). Meanwhile, centralised control was maintained, thereby straining relationships between the staff directly responsible for the museum (who depended on Madrid) and the local and regional authorities. At the same time, an existential distancing took place on the part of the local population regarding the site, along with a perception of marginalisation as far as the model of management of the site was concerned. The closure of the cave in 2002 heightened this tension. This tension was used by the regional government of Cantabria, within the context of a process of construction of a regional identity which had hardly existed before 1978, to call for the reopening of the cave to the public as the way to save the situation.

The future: becoming a place again? In a recent publication, Gustaffson and Karlsson (2014) analysed the management regimes of eight heritage sites containing rock art, Altamira among them (ob. cit.: 165‐175). They did so basing themselves on the concept of “authenticity”, as is described in the Nara Document and in the Carta de Ename. This concept constitutes a severe challenge when it comes to managing heritage as it implies fostering its social use in combination with the necessities of protection and preservation of the physical medium and its context. In cases such as Altamira, this represents a clear dilemma: either it is used or it is protected. It must be pointed out that for many experts, of course, this does not represent a problem at all; the conservation of the site takes preference over its use. Unless we search for other forms of use. Gustaffson and Karlsson are quite critical of the way in which Altamira is managed. They refer, for instance, to the fact that scientific discourse is transmitted to the public “with self‐ confidence and in a clear, loud, scientific and dominant voice” (ob. cit.: 174). Close to the original cave, visitors are not invited to draw near to the entrance (there is a marked route which keeps a clear distance), which supposedly contradicts the principles of authenticity. In the opinion of these authors, the extreme fragility of the original paintings could justify the fact that entry to the cave is denied but not the way in which the visitor is kept away from the main reason for their visit, nor the absence in the discourse of different opinions to those of the experts. Independently of the question of the physical preservation of the cave and of the correct decision in this regard, we have to accept the idea that Altamira (as our studies have shown) is a phenomenon in which all the social agents have roles to play and, therefore, all of us are bringing something (no matter how big or small) into play. As a consequence, all the social agents, experts or not, should have a voice in the debate regarding the future of the cave. This does not equate to minimising the role of the experts but contextualises their contributions in a much broader political debate. The controversy regarding the reopening of the cave arose as a result of the publication of the results of the Programme, which allowed for an experimental visiting regime giving access to the cave to five people per week, with the aim of evaluating the effects on the environment of the cave (Incipit 2015). This restricted opening continued following the end of the Programme which justified it, at the decision of the Board of Trustees. This decision was harshly criticised 5

by some specialists, whose opinions were published in different digital media. From our point of view, the main problem is that there is no optimal solution (much less a universally applicable one). What is necessary is to create a favourable atmosphere for broader discussion and action, which is not monopolised exclusively by expert opinion, an atmosphere in which the identity of Altamira as a social phenomenon based around a specific site acquires relevance. For us, this is materialised in the idea that we must understand Altamira as a living entity aspiring to a new life; that it should be a different place to what it is now; a place more than a monument, more than a site in its conventional sense, in which society is produced around different existential dimensions which arise in Altamira; aesthetic, ethical, cognitive, educational, etc. The management of heritage must reach beyond mere management and enhancement. It must aspire to convert sites and spaces into new places for socialisation and must lead to a reflexive foresight regarding the consequences that our actions will cause in the future. Places are created and recreated by our actions. Declaring somewhere as a World Heritage site will end up transforming it into something different to what it was before. Therefore, our action must be reflexive and attempt to set the tone for its future evolution, to foresee the new means of existence for these heritage sites. In order to achieve this, we must be a step ahead of events, as far as is possible, via a critical, rather than merely technocratic, assessment of risks. This cannot be achieved without the cooperation of the social agents concerned. The Altamira Programme reached its end in August 2014 with the definition of a Plan for Preventive Conservation, which is what is being followed to a greater or lesser degree to the present day. This plan includes a risk assessment organised into individualised records (one for each risk). Our research also enabled us to carry out an assessment of a series of risks from this socialising perspective, which were analysed using the same technical and instrumental language as the rest of the collaborators in the Programme. We identified four main risks: 1. The devaluation of Altamira as a factor for attraction to heritage. 2. The devaluation and commercialisation of the image of Altamira. 3. The generation and/or aggravation of conflicts of identity. 4. The fracture between Altamira and its social environment (which in turn constitutes several different risks).  A fracture between the site and the administration upon which it depends.  A fracture between the site and the local authorities.  A fracture between the site and its immediate social environment (community).  A fracture between the site and its more distant (regional) social environment. As can be seen in the literature, in both direct and indirect experiences in other sites, and in this same discussion, these risks have appeared, sooner or later, in any other WH site. Indeed, they are so frequent and recurrent that they should begin to be considered as general evils which should be prepared for a priori in order to focus on them and correct them. Their

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study and definition reach far beyond a normal risk assessment. In reality, it would be necessary to incorporate working techniques developed within the field of futurology (see the Prospecta congresses, https://prospecta.unad.edu.co/), in order to analyse the evolution of the life and the probable conditions of existence, of archaeological sites once they have been declared as World Heritage sites. In the case of Altamira, for obvious reasons, overcrowding was, but no longer is, the great problem (of course, we are referring to the social effects of overcrowding, not to the environmental ones). However, and in spite of our efforts to adapt, our proposal was reduced to a single document: “The fracture between Altamira and its social environment”, with our warnings based on analysis and data being ignored. However, other risks associated to the interaction between Altamira and society were included (such as “cultural visit”, “entrance for researchers” and “anti‐social acts”). This shows the persistence of the essentialist or instrumental paradigm, which builds the object in such a way as to make it its only matter of interest. What may happen with the uses of heritage, how it is handled, the incidence which it has in the social body (in other words, its social life, the way in which it is socially built) is not considered to be of concern. Those taking these essentialist postures should take note of what is happening in different parts of the world (for example in Palmyra) in order to understand that the social risks connected with how meaning is attributed to heritage, how it is appropriated or denied by different social agents may suppose, at a given moment, a risk to what so concerns them; the physical conservation of the heritage object, without mentioning the human lives which are also put at risk. Cataloguing “anti‐social acts” as risks (and not the political and economic dynamics which generate them) is to ignore the true problem. Our research enabled us to propose a series of measures aimed at creating a favourable atmosphere for a broader and deeper socialisation of Altamira. Although they were not adopted by the Plan for the Preventive Conservation of Altamira, they are certainly valid in many other contexts. These proposals were aimed at providing Altamira with a new, more active, social life, by way of variables which could be followed via different actions. In addition to some more conventional measures (based on surveys and questionnaires), our proposal included some alternative strategies: 1. A strategy to recuperate connections, the integration of identities and the fostering of participation: by way of discussion groups and/or workshops with local and regional agents, designing a collaborative agenda, creating a space in the museum to foster the participation of the local population in the expositional discourse by means of oral memory and the history of the site, encouraging the participation of teaching staff in the educational activities, among other proposals. 2. A strategy of communication for the re‐evaluation of Altamira and the fostering of preventive conservation and transparency: understanding that it is not only a question of raising awareness and informing of the need to protect heritage but of incorporating the fragility of Altamira as part of the museographic discourse, assuming its specificity, making the technical management of the cave transparent and transforming the social agents into active agents for conservation or, to paraphrase the language of safety, into preventive resources.

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3. A strategy to draw culture and art professionals back to Altamira: creating an environment favourable to an increase in the links between Altamira and those professionals who feed, in one way or another, on the aesthetic, evocative and semantic power of the site, as well as its value as a means of transmitting knowledge, values and attitudes.

These proposals would allow for actions to be undertaken to recuperate connections and social communication revolving around the identity of Altamira as a place, as an event of constant encounter between histories of life, social processes and identities associated with the existence of this space in the contemporary age, without damaging its condition as a work of prehistoric art and archaeological site. The key to this way of orienting the future of WH sites, be it the case of Altamira or elsewhere, is the need to design new methods of heritagization which reach beyond the dilemma between conservation and use in order to favour a social commitment. This would transform the dilemma of physical access to heritage sites into a circumstantial question or, at least, into a matter of socially shared responsibility. This would situate us in the fourth life of Altamira, which would be richer and more complex than its present life. Let us finish with a practical and methodologically specific proposal. We must stop thinking that a site declared as a WHS continues to be the same before and after the declaration, with just a change in the signs and the car park. We must start thinking that it will come to be as different as what we see now is different to what it was in the past. Then, we can begin to carry out truly forward‐looking studies which will enable us to model scenarios for the evolution of the life of the site in order to see how we can resolve the problems and, no doubt the conflicts which will arise. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

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