Trancoso in time: a journey through historical memory

Abstract

Talking about a people is synonymous with rootedness, pride and love for its identity, it means belonging for its artistic and cultural expressions, which reflect the history of a place, in which on repeated occasions only fragments and witnesses remain of what in some time existed. These fragments of history fight to be rescued, they are still standing through their architecture or they show us their mark on their traditions and customs; it is as if they refuse to be forgotten and are there, deteriorated, perhaps even transformed, but still alive, stopping us to remember our past.

          The populations that have formed as part of a settlement where ranches or haciendas originally existed, contain endless historical witnesses who have observed, as travelers in time, the intense transformations that the different historical stages have exerted on those sites. . These transformations speak of the acquired functionality, but also dismissed by various factors that may be social, economic or even demographic and urban; meeting the needs of that town or city at a given historical moment.               Our task as scholars of the past is to seek ways to rescue and disseminate it, in order to create awareness and value in society for its history. Remembering why they are there and what they meant for a population? It is a fundamental task to build the historical memory of any people. Exercise that sadly is necessary to practice with many of our municipalities throughout our country, since the deterioration and destruction of their buildings has not been forgiven by time and the situation worsens if we consider that the current population lacks the historical memory that in other times it was held and encouraged to be preserved, although its value and function were completely ignored.