A-CÉRCATE Project

A-cércate is a project that includes protest activities, popular cultural events and educational measures aimed at building a society in Peñarroya-Pueblonuevo that values its industrial heritage, that learns to live with them after years of disdain, with special emphasis on our chimneys as the true iconic element of Peñarroya-Pueblonuevo.

• EDUCATION

At the educational level we hold numerous meetings with our public leaders. We also have a blog which we painstakingly feed every week. It is essential that our people are informed and up to date on what is happening in their locality and in their area in relation to Industrial Heritage.

We also carry out specific events such as the planting of trees on abandoned railway lines as a way of drawing attention to them or the Cerco Day, consisting of the symbolic lighting of the chimneys of the Peñarroya Industrial Hedge with coloured smoke, an event that is now in its seventh edition, which attracts more and more visitors and which, although it was created by our collective with the clear objective of offering a positive image of our Industrial Heritage and claiming the right of these landscapes to exist, has recently been emptied of its content, although it was created by our collective with a clear objective to offer a positive image of our Industrial Heritage and to vindicate the right of these landscapes to exist, I must also say that lately it has been emptied of content, being converted by our Town Hall into a festive event rather than an act of reflection on what has been done in this area. The most important part of what we do in this section, in our opinion, is the time we dedicate to workshops with local children and young people. We have organised many, but we would like to highlight above all the Peñarroya Industrial Encirclement cut-out competition in which 500 local children took part.

In the greenways section, here are some photos of the different workshops we have carried out: NEST BOXES, TOURIST PANELS, CONSTRUCTION OF PAPERBOXES WITH RECYCLED MATERIAL, PROTECTORS FOR GREENWAY TREES, ETC.

We have also devoted part of our time to organising talks, conferences and round tables of a short informative nature, more than anything else so as not to tire, and we have invested money in the publication of books related to the history of our railways and our factories. There, in our area, we have to say with sadness that there is a brutal deficit of bibliography compared to other mining and industrial regions in Europe. All this affects the way people perceive their identity. What is little known is little respected. For this reason we have published a book on the history of La Maquinilla, translated into Spanish the book of the fiftieth anniversary of the SMMP, published a review of the last 150 years of the arrival of the railway to Belmez, a field notebook on the Industrial Fences of Peñarroya-Pueblonuevo and the corresponding didactic guide. Also adapting to the new times brought about by the technological revolution, and given that the Cercos are visited by a greater number of people and the Town Council does not have enough guides to meet the demand, we have created an APP that allows self-guided visits to all the buildings or groups of buildings in this complex by means of the railway lines inside the complex, which have been fitted out as a greenway. In total, there are more than 3 hours of recordings in Spanish, French and English that allow you to enjoy this space with the help of a mobile phone. We have also tried to involve ordinary people in learning about their industrial roots with the development of a trivia game about industry, mines and railways in Guadiato. Two years ago, in collaboration with Radio Peñaroya, we organised a competition for this game, which was won by the old French school in Peñarroya-Pueblonuevo, where the sons and daughters of engineers used to go.

We have also developed two chimney selfie competitions, one public and one in schools, with relative success, with the aim of making the chimney the iconic element.

Finally, we have made a tourist map of the Vía Verde de La Maquinilla, in a curious way, with the children of the Belmez secondary school and in collaboration with the town councils of Belmez and Peñarroya-Pueblonuevo. Here are some copies in case you ever want to visit it.

• CLAIM

The advocacy aspect is inherent in all the activities we do. We have been celebrating the National Greenways Day every year since our foundation.

• REHABILITATION

Although in recent years public money has started to arrive for the improvement of the recovered sections of the greenway, which is allowing work to progress, throughout the year we seek resources from friends, town councils, educational institutions and companies so that our industrial heritage can move forward.

The result of all this community and cooperative work is the transformation of abandoned and polluted areas into meeting points for the citizens, into centres of social and touristic dynamisation of our municipalities and, most importantly, which has brought the Industrial Heritage closer to the people than any other infrastructure and in a safe and cheap way.

No obstante, todos los proyectos rehabilitadores que hemos llevado a cabo el más complejo y aquel del que nos sentimos más orgullosos es el de la rehabilitación de la chimenea de la fábrica de papel.

After the success of the Day of the Fence and the chimneys did not translate into the application of real solutions to the heritage problem by our institutions, we began to look for a way to change things with a very risky initiative that at the time was categorised as nonsense by some citizens but which finally seems to have worked. This consisted of the development of a public fundraising campaign whose funds have been invested in the rehabilitation and lighting of the chimney of the Peñarroya-Pueblonuevo paper factory, the second highest in our particular skyline, at 47 metres. On the internet we launched a micro-patronage campaign in favour of our monument in which we obtained 5,000 Euros. In total more than 500 citizens have donated money, 120 companies in the region have contributed their grain of sand and 30 groups related to sport and culture in Peñarroya-Pueblonuevo have participated. European industrial heritage groups have also joined this festival.

On the downside of the whole project, it is appropriate to recognise that none of the Andalusian industrial heritage collectives we asked for help participated, something that should make us reflect on the pretended unity of our associations in this area.

• INTERNATIONALISATION

The last of the pillars on which we have based our work has been the visibility of our Industrial Heritage and the search for international support. Since 2013 we have travelled to France and Belgium to raise awareness of our legacy and, logically, to find partners with whom to organise activities between countries.

We cannot forget that the SMMP, although it was born as a local company, in 20 years it became a multinational with Fences all over the world. In some cities, such as ours, its former workers have formalised collectives that defend their labour interests and fight for the preservation of this common legacy.

We regularly participate in the annual European Chimney Congress organised by Roubaix and are twinned with the French association ACED Metallia, which is made up of SMMP metalworkers.