The Civil Guard’s Nature Protection Service (Seprona) has investigated a resident of Los Villares (Jaén) for a crime against historical heritage after having poured water on a cave painting to have better photographs to upload to social networks. The agents began the investigation last May, when they noticed the publication of photographs of wet cave paintings, explaining their location, on a public profile on the social network Facebook. In the photographs it can be seen that water has been poured on the paintings with the intention of obtaining a clearer image, according to the Civil Guard. Three years ago some hikers alerted of the damages in another site in the Despeñaperros natural park, which had been painted with spray paint.
The alleged perpetrator of the damage, a 39-year-old man, has been investigated for a crime against historical heritage, acting recklessly on repeated occasions, causing damage to several paintings located in various sites in the Sierra Sur of Jaén. In 1998, UNESCO declared a total of 69 sites of prehistoric rock art in the Levantine and schematic styles in the mountains of Jaén, Granada and Almería as World Heritage Sites. These are paintings in shallow shelters and on vertical walls that are more than 6,000 years old and are considered the first artistic expressions of man.
The province of Jaén is one of the territories that is suffering the most from acts of vandalism and the plundering of this heritage. The area surrounding the Despeñaperros Natural Park is, without a doubt, the place where the actions of vandals cause the most damage to the rock art complexes.
This is the case of the Vacas del Retamoso paintings in Santa Elena (Jaén), which were seriously damaged by spray three years ago. “They damaged the most emblematic cave painting and the main symbol of identity of our natural park, a painting with thousands of years of history,” lamented the mayor of Santa Elena, Ramón Coloma.
Specifically, the spray or graffiti was discovered on the painting that bears the name The priestesses o The shamans, depicting two human figures with a mask practicing a supposed funerary ritual. Experts believe that this is one of the most important groups of all schematic art. Among the rituals that appear in these paintings, those related to branch-shaped motifs stand out, frequently accompanied by deer, respectively representative of the plant and animal world and of a nature that renews itself cyclically, according to a study by the Institute of Giennenses Studies (IEG) of the Provincial Council of Jaén.
Threat to heritage
Vandalism has become the main threat to this heritage. The difficult accessibility of these cavities, in scattered places and rocky areas, is the main breeding ground for vandalism. The mayors demand protection measures for these complexes that are declared as Assets of Cultural Interest by Law 18/85 of Spanish Historical Heritage.
The cave paintings located in the shelters of the Upper Guadalquivir, of which the affected sites in the Sierra Sur of Jaén are part, are presented largely on Limestone rock containing water-soluble salts. When water is applied to the paints, the salts dissolve and when the water evaporates, the salts precipitate on the surface, covering the paints with a whitish crust, hiding them or destroying them when the dissolution also affects the pigment that is already one with the rock, causing irreparable damage.
Many of the cave paintings are concentrated in the vicinity of Los Órganos, one of the most notable places in the Despeñaperros gorge, where a group of enormous rock columns rise up that resemble the pipes of a cathedral organ. The chromatic contrast of the grey of the rocks with the intense yellow and orange of the different species of lichens increases the beauty of this place.
Although the Junta de Andalucía (which is responsible for preserving these sites within the natural parks) announced aid to try to recover these paintings, the truth is that the town councils have been complaining about the lack of a comprehensive protection and conservation plan that would put an end to the continuous acts of vandalism. The mayor of Aldeaquemada, Manuel Fernández, has been calling for institutional help for the preservation of these paintings while admitting the lack of municipal resources to preserve a legacy of this dimension. “We do not have the means to place a guard at each site,” he says.