Award Ceremony Hispania Nostra Prize 2016 for Madrid Rio

The Hispania Nostra Prize is jointly organized by the Hispania Nostra Association and the Banco Santander Foundation with the intention of contributing to the dissemination of good practices in the field of Cultural Heritage of Spain. In 2016 Madrid Rio was awarded this prestigious prize in the category: Prize for Heritage Conservation as a factor of economic and social development.

On 25 Jan 2018, the award ceremony will take place in the Monastery of San Juan in Burgos, to present the awards collectively to all the winners of the Hispania Nostra Prize of 2015, 2016 and 2017. Her Majesty Queen Sofia will preside over this award ceremony, which is granted to recognise and promote best practices related to cultural and natural heritage.

The Hispania Nostra Prize was created in 2012 with the purpose of supporting, promoting and highlighting those interventions that may constitute an exemplary reference for the future and contribute to the recognition of Heritage as an inseparable part of the quality of civic life. Good practices correspond to carefully documented initiatives, projects or programs that provide practical examples, propose creative and sustainable solutions, generate ideas or provide guidelines that contribute to the adoption of policy measures and the development of new projects.

The jury comments: “The Madrid Río project is one of the most ambitious and controversial projects undertaken to recover public space. Finally, it has had a great positive social impact for the citizens; it has become a space of enjoyment for the citizen, facilitating its access with new connection bridges, recovering the river and the forgotten Heritage that was in its margins. The recovery of the old slaughterhouse of the city, at the disposal of the initiative of the citizens and the neighborhood associations; the recovery of the River’s Hydraulic Heritage; and the recovery of Historical Heritage, rehabilitating architectural elements such as the Puente de Segovia, Toledo or the surroundings of the Chapel of the Virgen del Puerto.“

Click here for more information about the 3 awarded projects of the Hispania Nostra Prize 2016. The complete list of award winning projects of all years can be found here.