The youth of Santillana del Mar who flip 18 will be capable to entry the unique Cave of Altamira | Culture | EUROtoday

A particular, surprising and unique reward. The youth of Santillana del Mar who flip 18 will obtain, along with the bulk, a privilege desired by many: they are going to be capable to entry the unique Cave of Altamira. This has been authorised right this moment by the Board of Trustees of the National Museum and Research Center of Altamira, unanimously, at a gathering held in the identical city, which the well-known Cueva counts. “In this way, of the 250 visits that are allowed every year for preventive conservation reasons, 20 will be reserved for the youth registered in Santillana del Mar. The measure seeks to favor the feeling of belonging to the Altamira cave and strengthen the heritage identity of the young people of the municipality,” says the assertion of the Ministry of Culture, whose accountable, Ernest Urtasun, presides over the board. The measure will start to be defined this yr: whoever turns 18 all through 2025 will be capable to see in 2026 intently the legendary bison painted on the rocky partitions.

“The selection system will be determined by the City Council of Santillana del Mar, always under the criteria of transparency in the selection,” provides the doc. At the identical time, the assembly has established to keep up the present regime of visits, which quotes in chronological order the requests that accumulate in an energetic ready listing till June 2002, when the cave was closed to the general public go to for conservation points. Access was licensed once more in 2014, however with one other format: a public raffle of 5 folks every week. After the pandemic, it was determined to get better the ready listing, from which 720 purposes have been managed in the intervening time. Always, sure, with a restrict of 250 annual visits.

Access to the cave has generated debates and controversy during the last years, amongst consultants who help to authorize the entry of the general public, though in a managed and quotas means, and who think about that the perfect conservation would require closing it to the citizenship and authorizing solely the important earnings, corresponding to these of the students. At the identical time, Santillana del Mar hosts a copy of the cave, in order that the overwhelming majority of the general public can get an thought of ​​cave work with out affecting the conservation of area.

The Board of Trustees additionally addressed different points. After investing about two million euros in 2024 within the Museum, Culture plans a disbursement round 1.1 million this yr, to “improve access to the museum, renew the lighting of the Neocueva, to the BIM digital modeling system of the cave and the purchase of a land to reinforce conservation,” in keeping with the assertion.

“The Institute of Cultural Heritage of Spain has presented in the Board of Trustees a new management tool, a pioneer in the application of BIM technology to the cultural heritage, which will allow generating a digital twin of the cave. With this system all the agents involved in the conservation of Altamira, so many the technicians of the museum as researchers of the University of Cantabria and other institutions, which must also work respecting the access protocols, they can have all the data A more agile and immediate form, ”provides the doc.