The "Castielfabib Cultural Association" has worked during the last 10 years as a promoter of the ancien Conevtn of San Guillermo recovery , as well as the volunteer days (present in the EHD), taking responsibility for everything related to the Convent of San Guillermo.

The project is still open and in a continuous process of recovery of the building from its current state of ruin, to consolidate, preserve, excavate and study the remains, as well as musealize the complex.

A cataloge create by the same heritage community composed of the entire population of Castielfabib and the region of Rincón linked to it. A cataloguing of at least 30 examples that make up the rich cultural and natural heritage around the ancien convent.

The project "The Beauty of Ruin. Castielfabib, from Ruskin to Piranesi" will create a succession of support resources to generate cultural and tourist activities, in such a way as to ensure  dynamic activities around the old convent in ruin and that allows its economic, cultural and social sustainability.

The town of Castielfabib (310 inhabitants) is a municipality located in the enclave of Rincón de Ademuz, in the interior of the province of Valencia. Despite its size, it houses a large number of cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible due to its historical importance. The Convent of San Guillermo de Castielfabib dates from the sixteenth century. It is a monastery founded by the Augustinian order, and later inhabited by the Franciscan’s one. The Convent of San Guillermo is abandoned during  the Ecclesiastical Confiscations of the nineteenth century, but it is not until 1912, when the electricity company "Teledinámica Turolense" plans to build a hydroelectric plant in the town, acquiring the lands of the monastery of the convent, and dismantling most of the convent complex to reuse its masonry as feedstock material in the infrastructures of the new electrical installations.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century to this day, with the ruinous remains of the church as the main witness, the space has suffered a lot of degradation due to inclement weather. its remains have reached our days in an advanced state of deterioration and posing a danger to its stability and conservation.

The "Castielfabib Cultural Association" has worked all these years as a promoter of the recovery phases, as well as the volunteer days (present in the EHD) with the advice and technical help of ARAE Patrimonio and the support of the CityHall of Casteilfabib, taking responsibility for everything related to the Convent of San Guillermo. The project is still open and in a continuous process of recovery of the building from its current state of ruin, to consolidate, preserve, excavate and study the remains, as well as musealize the complex. In this last year, in addition, the University of Valencia has joined the Project. The Chair of Citizen Participation and Valencian Landscapes (belonging to the university) collaborate with the project of "Custody of the Territory, Landscape of the Convent" that look for generate a space for dissemination, promotion and enhancement of the territory and landscape that make up the around the old Convent of San Guillermo.

The beauty of ruin:

The ancien convent of St. Guillermo, as in so many other ruined buildings in Europe (and beyond), boast the aesthetic value that ruin provides. The beauty of ruin is a revalued concept that has accompanied us since the  Piranesi’s prints (Veneto, 1720 – Rome, 1778), visionary of the imagery of Romanticism. That romantic movement had, and still has, a lot of influence when it came to intervening in the heritage and was the basis of one of the restoration movements that still takes place today. One of its pioners was John Ruskin (London, 1819-Brantwood, 1900).

Ruskin thus recognized the antiquity value of the monument by proposing conservationism. More recently, Cesare Brandi (Siena, 1906- Vignano, 1988), in his “Theory of restoration” (1963), observed that ruin, from the historical point of view, is "the vestige of a historical or artistic monument that can only be maintained as what it is, and where restoration, therefore, can only consist of its conservation".

A recurrent situation about interventions in the ruins is about stany into the conservation of the ruins as such and the creation of new structures or architectural resources (or not adding new elements), which make it possible to visit it, recognize it and order its routes and help its protection.

This is the idea of "The Beauty of Ruin. Castielfabib, from Ruskin to Piranesi" where after these annual campaigns of consolidation of the ruin, this year it is intended to create a succession of support resources to generate cultural and tourist activities, in such a way as to ensure  dynamic activities around the old convent in ruin and that allows its economic, cultural and social sustainability.

It project that here we present is the creation of routes that through a simple signage of QRs, through mobiles, allows access to a web platform developed by the neighbors members of the association and others. In this application, locutions will be available, created by the youngest and the oldest of the population, who will tell us the stories, anecdotes, characteristics and / or descriptions of those heritage elements (architectural, natural, landscape, cultural) previously cataloged by that same heritage community composed of the entire population of Castielfabib and the region of Rincón linked to it. A cataloguing of at least 30 examples that make up the rich cultural and natural heritage around the old convent of San Guillermo of this small town that contribute to the knowledge of the geology, flora and fauna of the local. In addition, in the same hymn with universal accessibility (central theme of EHD 2021), these locutions will be recorded in several languages (by the young people from Castielfabib) and will be supported by a 3D model developed for visitors with reduced visibility that allows to know how it was and how the building is currently.

A work that has the support of ARAE Patrimonio as heritage managers and the University of Valencia.

A project that aligns with the SDGs keeping the ruin as responsible for production (SDG 12) and SDG 11 "Strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world's cultural and natural heritage". Also we work into SDG5 about quality cultural education.

Enjoying from the historicist European movements of the conservation of the ruin, we work on an value of the space, not only architectural but landscape and natural. A tour, ensuring universal accessibility with especific tools designed and developed by the entire heritage community that arises from the intergenerational population of Castielfabib, and with the help of a team of technicians specialized in the enhancement of heritage (local skateholders).

#HeritageAllInclusive will be present throughout the project, at the same time as the theme of 2022 #SustainableHeritage, since the protagonists of the entire project will be the youngest, betting on the regeneration of the rural population with cultural heritage as a dynamizer of repopulation in rural spaces.