Mojácar Mayor, Francisco García Cerdá, and Beatrice Beckett, President of the Valparaíso Foundation have signed an agreement to transfer the land owned by the foundation located on the site of Mojácar la Vieja. As a result of this agreement the Local Council will be able to carry out all the actions aimed at the consolidation of the site.
The contract signed between the Council and the foundation, lasting 50 years, represents a major advance and a notable boost to the Mojácar la Vieja excavation works. It will allow for the expansion of the collaboration framework with other entities, including state, the possibility of accessing official and private financial assistance, and among other matters, creates the guarantee of solidity and commitment to the continuity of the works that are being carried out at the site.
This important agreement opens up new lines of work for the next excavation works. That corresponding to 2023 will start next month.
Thanks to the transfer of this land, and with the cession of other local minority owners of the Mojácar la Vieja hill, Mojácar Council plans to initiate the request for assistance and collaborations from higher administrations, both at the state and autonomous community level.
Mojácar la Vieja is currently included in the 2022-2025 General Research Project, which allows for having a conservation, maintenance and management plan for the site that gives access to facilitating the highlighting of the importance of the site, increasing its promotion among residents and visitors.
As of today, and within this framework of the 2022-2025 General Research Project, Mojácar la Vieja annually receives an important team of archaeologists, national and international, who continue the investigation work on the site that began five years ago.
In 2018, Mojácar Council started, thanks to the University of Granada and Memolab (Biocultural Archaeology Laboratory), the first exploration, adaptation and research work on the Mojácar la Vieja hill. With these actions and thanks to the exhaustive work carried out by the archaeologists from Granada, the historic and cultural value of the site was uncovered, making important advances in each campaign, both from the point of view of their finds and in its strategic positioning in the field of archaeology and in the study of these first Islamic settlements in eastern Almería.
The Mojácar Mayor thanked Beatrice Beckett and the Valparaíso Foundation for the support received over all these years on the Mojácar la Vieja project, of great relevance for the municipality and for the historic studies of the province, and especially for the confidence received with this important step of the cession of their land located in a part of this archaeological zone.
The Valparaíso Foundation is a cultural foundation of national scope, dedicated to the patronage of activities in all artistic disciplines.
Beatrice Beckett founded, together with her husband Paul Beckett, the Valparaíso Foundation and the Artists Residence after arriving in Mojácar in 1964 and in 1972 acquiring the estate where both projects are located.
Every year in Mojácar Valparaíso hosts artists from different disciplines from all over the world, among them theatre, music, painting, photography, sculpture and literature.
With the aim of promoting culture in Mojácar, which has always been a place of artistic inspiration, the Council has for years been collaborating with this foundation, a collaboration which maintains its continuity over time and under which new actions are not ruled out.
