Madrid and Santiago de Compostela host the 11th World Heritage Youth Forum


Since 2009, the Ministry of Culture and Sports has promoted this pioneering initiative in heritage education, recognized by the United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO).

Up to May 31, 32 young people between 13 and 15 years old and ten teachers from eleven countries on four continents (Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Colombia, Spain, Equatorial Guinea, Morocco, Paraguay, United Kingdom, Tunisia, Uzbekistan) , will share in Madrid and Santiago de Compostela five days dedicated to education on cultural heritage, with visits, meetings, round tables and workshops.

Fernández-Baca welcomed the participants and highlighted in the inaugural session the importance of cultural heritage as an "essential resource for the future, for its unquestionable educational and social value, its considerable economic potential, as well as its important dimension in International cooperation".

Under the slogan "Heritage is the way", this edition stresses the need to integrate training in conservation and knowledge of heritage in the education of citizens, not only in the school period, but also throughout their life trajectory and in any professional field

The motto is also associated with the Forum headquarters, Santiago de Compostela, the goal of the Compostela pilgrimage, one of the cultural routes that have vertebrated Europe and which was included in the World Heritage List in 1993. Young people will take advantage of their stay in Galicia to On Wednesday, the 29th, we will travel an eight kilometer stretch of the Camino between Playa de Langosteira and Cabo Finisterre.

Activities, visits and workshops in Galicia

The 11th World Heritage Youth Forum has started with a visit to the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid. This afternoon, the young people will move to Santiago de Compostela, where tomorrow they will be received at the Museum of Pilgrimages and Santiago by the sub-delegation of the Government in Galicia, Pilar López-Rioboo; the Minister of Culture and Tourism of the Xunta de Galicia, Román Rodríguez González; the general director of the Cultural Heritage of the Xunta, María del Carmen Martínez Insua; and the deputy general director of Protection of Historical Heritage, Elisa de Cabo. Later, they will visit the city, paying special attention to the Portico de la Gloria, restored in 2018, to the Cathedral and the Palacio de Xelmírez.

On Thursday 30, the group will travel to the Construction Labor Foundation, in Santiago de Compostela, where they will participate in a dry stone workshop. This construction technique, based on the superposition of some stones over others without any other material of union, is included in the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of UNESCO since 2018. The program of activities will be completed with workshops dedicated to preventive conservation, underwater archeology and heritage communication.

Ten years of education in heritage

The Youth Forum was born in June 2009 coinciding with the celebration of the World Heritage Committee in Seville. The Ministry of Culture organized the First Ibero-American World Heritage Forum as an activity parallel to the main session of this Committee and the success of the initiative encouraged to continue with the project in the following years, opening to countries around the world as of 2012 .

From 2009 to this edition, 400 young people from 51 different countries from the five continents have participated in these meetings, which promote through knowledge of heritage, respect, tolerance and solidarity between cultures.



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