The President of the Autonomous City Welcomes

The President of the Trust Welcome

 

 

 

This web page is born with the intention of becoming a new means of communication for all those, whether from Melilla or not, who wish to visit and know one of the most complete and best preserved historic sites along the Mediterranean sea.

Not only is its function to be a new means of communication but also to serve as a window to a wish longed by all the citizens of Melilla: that their city becomes a World Heritage city. It possess many conditions: its wonderful walled precinct, its splendorous Art Nouveau legacy, together with its intangible but valuable interculturality, shaped in stone during the centuries and daily sculpted in the coexistence of its different cultures.

It is the cultural and social charm that awaits you on this web site, where you will discover a Spanish city in Africa that wants to be loved because it was first known.

 

Juan José Imbroda Ortiz

President of the Autonomous City of Melilla

 

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Dear friends,

The spreading of our heritage, not only at the local but also at the national and international level, is the priority purpose of the Melilla Ciudad Monumental Trust, and in this way, it is established in its articles of association. New Information Technologies offer a wide range of opportunities in this sense, that is why it was thought to provide our trust with a web page to serve as one of the most suitable tools to attain this objective.

The web page we introduce here will make it easier the study of our heritage values throughout the net. We also want to announced and launch the candidacy of Melilla as a World Heritage City. Here you can look up the different categories of immaterial and material assets and values that are proposed to the Spanish Ministry of Culture as well as to the UNESCO: the wide and well preserved renaissance walls, the varied Art Nouveau architecture combined in rational town plans, the chain of 19 century external forts, and the multiculatural coexistence as a centenarian reality.

We can’t forget other assets, such as the natural ones, which could be added to the previous categories. We refer to the Chafarinas Isles, so closely related to us in social and economic terms for a long time. A place that is still preserved as it was known by Mediterranean civilizations.

That collection of assets and the historic, economic and sociologic process that originated today’s Melilla is the heritage inherited from our ancestors and that has been transmitted until now giving us a unique exotic identity.

This graphic document has been entirely elaborated in our city by a group of young professionals involved in our project, what is also a reason for satisfaction. We have tried that, together with the scientific rigor essential in every document and that one day will be part of the world heritage file, it was artistically beautiful, dynamic, entertaining and it fulfilled at the same time an informative and educative purpose.

It is our ambition that this web site produced by the Trust will be an instrument for the spreading of our history and cultural and natural heritage and that we will reach all people from all over the world through the internet and our wishes will be known. We work in this way to attain our objective: that Melilla’s candidacy arrives at a good end.

From this Mediterranean corner I wish to greet all those who visit us here and encourage them to come and enjoy our city.

 

José Vallés

President of the Melilla Ciudad Monumental Trust