The tour was accompanied by the president of the Diputación de Salamanca, Javier Iglesias and the mayor of Yecla de Yeltes, Ignacio Abarca. The church of La Virgen del Castillo was intervened within the scope of the Atlantic Romanesque Plan.
Today the counselor for culture announced a new intervention in the hermitage through a direct action of the regional administration that will begin with the drafting of the project for the integral restoration of the building’s roof, with the substitution of the entire material currently in the roof.
The goal of the intervention backed up by an investment of around 140.000 euros is to give continuity to the previously performed conservation interventions while guaranteeing a safe usage of the building. These interventions show the link of the heritage with the society, given they both constitute a driver for the development of the territories.
Atlantic Romanesque project’s interventions
This is how a continuity will be given to the intervention performed during the first stage of the Atlantic Romanesque Plan, both in the hermitage of La Virgen del Castillo and in the fortification, from which resulted the drawing of a new lighting adequate to the hermitage’s characteristics in order to facilitate the development of the cult and highlight some artistic and architectonic elements, in the renovation of the carpentry to guarantee the hygrothermal conditions of the building and facilitate its ventilation, as well as in the renovation of the electric system through the placement of solar panels that assure the building’s energetic efficiency.
The intervention was completed with the drafting of a structure on the exterior of the church to improve the celebration conditions of the traditional pilgrimage of La Virgen del Castillo.
Furthermore, the church has been included in the Heritage Monitoring System, MHS, developed by the Fundación Santa María la Real del Patrimonio Histórico, that allows for the controlling of certain environmental parameters, with the goal of guaranteeing the preventive conservation of the building and its movable property.
This has truly been an integral intervention, by including the improvement of the surroundings, the movable property and the devotional objects, involving the local communities in its maintenance, its cultural usage and in the search for new sources of wealth and employment based in its diffusion, from an R&D strategy applied to cultural heritage.
Atlantic Romanesque Project
This public-private institutional collaboration project on churches with a medieval origin near the Portuguese border has performed, to the moment, 30 interventions in a total of 11 cities of Salamanca and Zamora and has implied an investment of 2.25 million euros, from which the Fundación Iberdrola has assured 750.000 euros. This romanesque initiative involves the continuation of a close collaboration with Portugal in projects that bet on the trans-border development based in the culture and heritage.
