Landscape as a strategic driver for an integrated heritage management. An observation from the Spanish framework

Nowadays, the landscape represents the greatest effort regarding cultural heritage contextualization and integration in territory-related policies. Unprecedented possibilities have been opened to new integrated management, planning and coordinating practices, which are capable of providing relevant procedures and tools on the path towards an effective heritage-development relation committed with territorial sustainability. This paper explores the potential relation between landscape and heritage by an analysis of the statutory recognition of the landscape in the spanish context, especially regarding the case of Andalucia. It mainly addresses the extent to which the landscape has been involved in the development of a territorial project able to promote its integral enhancement. Fundamental fields for this topic will be reviewed, which are territorial planning and heritage-related regulations. Lessons learned point out that landscape as an operative driver, basis of a heritage protection system supported by an integral management, is the key condition from which to set the criteria for its inclusion in heritage regulations.