Torrevieja City Council has requested a grant from the Generalitat (Generalitat) to renovate the Natural History Museum, which is located on Avenida de la Estación in one of the old railway stations, as well as to create an interpretation centre through a museum project that will raise awareness about the environmental value of the natural area and Torrevieja’s fishing culture.
Normally closed
The museum, which opened in 2010, is currently closed to the public, but it does welcome visitors on request at various times of the year, with guided tours geared towards the school population and supported by academic institutions such as Miguel Hernández University and the Ars Creatio Cultural Association.
Prior to the commencement of these one-time visits in 2022, the public space had been closed for ten years in a row, with only two years open.
The sum requested from the Catalan Government’s Ministry of Innovation, Industry, Commerce, and Tourism, which gets money from the European Union, is €160,000, despite the fact that the entire project, scheduled for 2022, costs €263,000 (VAT included). The difference will be made up by municipal budgetary allocations.
According to the documentation prepared by the City Council to obtain the grant, the primary goal of this project is to establish an interpretation centre capable of raising awareness about the environmental value of the natural space associated with Torrevieja’s history and the city’s unique relationship with fishing and the sea. This is accomplished through a discourse based on the collection, which includes fishing tools, models, and, most notably, skeletons of species stranded on the Torrevieja coast.
Collection
The collection contains specimens from mammals, ornithology, herpetology, ichthyology, marine invertebrates, and malacology. Bottlenose and striped dolphin skeletons, fin whales, collections of original nests (abandoned after the breeding period) and replica eggs from 17 species of birds native to the area, loggerhead turtles, and marine invertebrates from the Mediterranean Sea collected over the years off the coast of Torrevieja.
The rehabilitation of Torrevieja’s cultural/tourist attraction point will be located next to the Salinera Interpretation Centre, which will be financed with European funds. This project aims to promote and protect the municipality’s environmental values of salt and fishing, both linked to the sea.
Furthermore, the goal is to increase the building’s worth and promote its cultural and educational uses and content, so promoting the growth of tourism in Torrevieja beyond the seasonality that “comes with a municipality that for many years has based its value exclusively on sun and sand.”
If the grant and project are ultimately approved, the City Council must find a method to staff the centre.
Author: Derek Appleton
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