Our main researcher, Pilar Panero, participates in one of the summer courses of the University of Almeria with two conferences on masquerades
The course ‘Heritage as a vector of change (III): from festivals and food. Fun and health’ was held in the Almeria town of Vélez Rubio from 17 to 19 July under the premise that cultural heritage is a social construction, an invention.
However, like any invention, in order to take root and perpetuate itself, it needs to become a social construction, to reach a minimum of consensus, hence its symbolic nature, its capacity to symbolically represent an identity. And where does symbolic effectiveness find its greatest collective reference? In the heritage common to the whole community: its festivals and rituals, folklore, popular architecture, history, language and food.
On the other hand, the preservation of traditions has increasingly been integrated into the tourist discourse, so that certain villages have become centres of pilgrimage on the occasion of festivals or in search of gastronomic tourism. And thanks to tourism, many villages and entire areas have been able both to maintain their traditions and to progress socially and economically. As a result, new heritage activities are no longer motivated by identity, but by tourism and the image given of the area.
Pilar Panero gave a monographic conference on masks entitled “The traditional carnival and masks in the northwest of the peninsula”, and another entitled “Eating in festive rituals. Tradition and modernity” on ritual meals, some associated with masquerades.
