A multidisciplinary team explores the options of Benidorm to be declared a World Heritage Site

The group is led by the doctor of the UA Armando Ortuño and counts among its ranks with Mario Gaviria, Josep Ivars, Fernando Vera and Jorge Olcina

A multidisciplinary team, made up of experts in different areas and connoisseurs of the Benidorm model, will explore the possibilities of the city to be recognized as a World Heritage Site. This was announced today by the Mayor, Toni Pérez, in a press conference in which he has been accompanied by members of this team, led by Armando Ortuño, PhD in Engineering of Roads, Channels and Ports of the University of Alicante (UA) and economist.

In the multidisciplinary team is the sociologist Mario Gaviria, National Environment Award that in 2015 recovered the idea of ​​nominating Benidorm for World Heritage and "a person who helped to understand the world who Benidorm was." Along with him, several professors of Regional Geographic Analysis of the UA: Fernando Vera, awarded the Prize Tourism Comunidad Valenciana; Josep Ivars, who was in charge of Invattur; Jorge Olcina, director of the Institute of Climatology; And Carlos Baños, an expert in tourism.

In the team are also included the civil engineers Florentino Regalado, Salvador Ivorra - Professor of Structures - and José Ramón Navarro - Professor of Urban Planning; The architects Juan Carlos Oliva and Guillermo Campos, with an important professional history in the city; The sociologist of the UA Antonio Aledo; And the also sociologist and director of the Chair of Tourist Studies Pedro Zaragoza, Tomás Mazón. The team, the director and the secretary of the Institute of Water and Environmental Sciences of the UA, professors Joaquín Melgarejo and Andrés Molina; Journalists José María Perea and Juan Díaz; And the doctor in Law specialist in management of the Patrimony of Humanity María Jesús Poveda.

This team will work in six different blocks: Urban Planning, Tourism, Environmental Management, Buildings and Architecture, Citizen Participation and, finally, Legal. In addition to not excluding new additions, the team will also rely on municipal technicians and seek the maximum involvement of civil society, a key aspect to achieve the support of UNESCO.

The mayor stressed that all members of the team have a "common nexus", being "in love with Benidorm, people who believe in the city, who know it, and who remind us that this city is worth it and that what we have Between hands is a jewel to be cared for ".

Pérez explained that the purpose of this exploratory work, which is to be finished before the end of the year, is "to start strongly that way for Benidorm to be recognized as a World Heritage Site" and to do so with "the utmost prudence, With great firmness, with forcefulness and 'amb trellat'.

Ortuño has detailed that the action should aim to ensure that Benidorm is recognized as a World Heritage of mixed character, as a cultural and natural, something that have only achieved three places in Spain.

The professor has confirmed that the way to try to achieve this recognition will be "long", between four and six years. The teacher has stressed that whatever the outcome of that road, it will not be a wasteland as it will mean "an improvement for the image of Benidorm" to "black on white all the benefits that Benidorm has." Some goodness, he assured, that "they have been said many times, but perhaps not in a way as explicit as it is going to do in this exploratory work".

Regarding the processing, the head of the multidisciplinary team has indicated that the first step is to go to the Ministry of Culture, which is responsible for submitting the application to the Ministry. If this section is exceeded, the Ministry will submit it to UNESCO for its final evaluation.

In this regard, the mayor has advanced that the first step has already been taken and next week the "idea" will be presented to the General Director of Tourism of the Generalitat Valenciana, Raquel Huete, in order to "go hand in hand with Tourism before Conselleria of Culture and to do things very well ".

Starting point and opportunities

The mayor recalled that the first person who joined the concepts Benidorm and World Heritage was the French tourist expert Philippe Duhamel. He did it in 2008, at the XII International Tourism Forum of Benidorm, and circumscribing this statement to the architectural ensemble. Later, in April of 2015 the sociologist Mario Gaviria returned to this idea, but making it extendable to the city in itself to its physical and natural, but also social implications: its climatic and environmental wealth added to being the city that materializes the Welfare State .

Precisely that duplicity is the asset of Benidorm in its race to be declared well mixed World Heritage.