The Castellón Territorial Planning Commission has definitively approved the Cultural Section of the Catalogue of Protections of Cortes de Arenoso, a small town of just over three hundred inhabitants, nestled in the mountainous region of Alto Mijares. The isolated position of the municipality, the difficulties of communication and the changes in the way of life, with the abandonment of the countryside and the tasks inherent to it, determined the population exodus and led to the deterioration of many of the buildings of historical origin and great patrimonial value, distributed throughout the municipal area. The footprint of man in this territory dates back to the Neolithic and Eneolithic times and since then, until a few decades ago, the struggle of the inhabitants of these lands to dominate a nature that offered very difficult living conditions, was constant.
The limitations derived from its sparse population and limited resources did not prevent the Cortes de Arenoso City Council from betting on preserving its cultural heritage, spread throughout the territory in the form of farmhouses, fountains, ponds and dams, boundary crossings and land modeled with stone terraces, in an exercise of beautiful adaptation to the environment. Thus, with the financial help of the Ministry of Education, Research, Culture and Sport and the collaboration of the Archeology Service of the Castellón Provincial Council, he decided to entrust AUG-ARQUITECTOS, SLP with the revision of the Cultural Section of the Catalogue of Protections of Cortes de Arenoso that this same team had drawn up at the end of the 20th century. If a few decades ago, the catalogue in force until the approval of the new instrument, barely protected a dozen elements in a specific way, the new catalogue protects 335 paleontological, archaeological, ethnological and architectural assets, of which 5 are considered Assets of Cultural Interest, 66 are Assets of Local Relevance and the rest are listed assets.
The New Cultural Section of the Catalogue of Protections of Cortes de Arenoso has been drafted by a multidisciplinary team led by the urban architect Víctor García Gil and has been conceived as a tool at the service of the identification, guardianship and protection of heritage, so that this survive together with its inhabitants, making the objectives of patrimonial preservation compatible with the use and enjoyment of protected assets.