The APPI – Portuguese Association for Industrial Heritage, Portuguese Representative of TICCIH – The International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage, in joint coordination of its President José M. Lopes Cordeiro and Architect Rui Carvalho and in partnership with the City Council of Mértola, the Serrão Martins Foundation and the Parish Councils of Corte do Pinto and Santana de Cambas, organize the 1st International Conference “Heritage and Mining Cultural Landscape”, at Mina de São Domingos on October 7th, 2023.

It is our objective to encourage the opportunity to share knowledge and contributions and to debate ideas around the multidisciplinary theme of the Mining Cultural Landscape, which underlies the territory and historical heritage of the ancient mines of the Iberian Pyrite Belt and of the border space where the Guadiana River was the main route for ore flow.

It is also intended to internationalize the exchange between actors and territories with a similar historical legacy of mining and expand the experience and sources of inspiration and motivation, to better celebrate the specificity and uniqueness of each place and its heritage.

On the other hand, we witness structural obsolescence and insufficient action in terms of study and management for the conservation and valorization of this mining industrial heritage which, although partially classified, is at risk and in an accelerated process of degradation.

It is urgent to call for efforts to build a multidisciplinary collaborative network and to sign a declaration of commitment, to identify and qualify this historical legacy that we designate here as Heritage and Mining Cultural Landscape and which is na important resource for the regeneration of these depressed territories.

At this Conference, we will seek to sow seeds in this direction and collaborate with our Andalusian neighbors, of Andévalo and Cuenca Minera, for continuity work and for the joint realization of the II Conference, next year.

The initiative is cumulatively part of the Research Project under the responsibility of Architect Rui Carvalho, called “The Mining Cultural Landscape in the Chanza-Guadiana Border Territory”, within the scope of the Doctoral Program in Architecture, Heritage and Rehabilitation, of the University of Seville and which develops precisely in this cross-border region of Alentejo and Andalusia, at the confluence of the Chanza and Guadiana rivers, where the abandoned mines of São Domingos and Las Herrerías (19th-20th century) are located.