The General Directorate of Cultural Assets recommends the City of Totana to work on the creation of a museum for the deposit of archaeological interventions carried out in this municipality, as is the case of the La Bastida site;
a suggestion that is made in response to the municipal request to collect in Totana the pieces stolen a few months ago in the framework of a police operation.
This was announced by the first deputy mayor and councilor of Archaeological Site, Juan José Cánovas, after receiving a technical report from the department in charge of the management of these matters in the Autonomous Community, which has the competencies in this regard.
The Plenary approved a motion, at the request of this Council, last May requesting the Ministry of Tourism and Culture, that the pieces stolen in the archaeological site of La Bastida, in the framework of the operation "Idolillo", returned to Totana for its exhibition in the future museum of the city.
The "Idolillo" operation carried out by the Civil Guard of the Region of Murcia at the beginning of the mentioned month culminated with the recovery of about ten thousand pieces of great paleontological and archaeological value, which has culminated with the recovery of this important collection that was in private hands, some of them from the archaeological site of La Bastida.
Following this municipal request, the first deputy mayor reported that the competent Ministry suggests, in the report signed by the general director Juan Antonio Lorca himself, that "it would be convenient, in order to be able to choose in the future to that temporary loan of archaeological pieces of the Archaeological Museum of Murcia, that the museum in question was officially created ".
According to Juan José Cánovas, the Autonomous Community comes to endorse the approach of its department to create the future museum of the city, in this case proposed at the headquarters of the former Technological Center of Crafts (CTA), and incorporate it into the Regional Network of Museums, recognized in the Law 5/1996 of Museums of the Region of Murcia.
This, as suggested by the General Directorate of Cultural Assets itself, would be provided with the human material and technical means for its permanent opening to the public and proper functioning, and thus could, legally receive the deposit of material goods of the archaeological interventions carried out in this municipal term, as is the case of La Bastida.
Initiative within the Integral Tourism Plan
This initiative, recalls the first deputy mayor, would be framed within an Integral Tourism Plan that aims to involve the economic agents of the municipality, in this case, hoteliers, craftsmen and merchants;
and with which the local tourist activity would be diversified and reach a figure of more than 7,000 people to Totana a year with the added monographic foundation of the La Bastida site.
The pieces found in the site would move, as Juan José Cánovas reiterates, to what was once the CTA, a few minutes from the urban center of the city;
where they would expose forming a museographic collection of the culture of the argar in Totana and of the local crafts, since "it is the appropriate space for such aim, as they recognize the heads of services of the competent general directorates of the regional Administration".
This infrastructure would allow that, in the superior plant, a space dedicated to a sample of traditional totanera pottery was created, as well as traveling exhibitions that help to expand the local cultural offer;
and the rest to the deposit of the assets of the deposits of La Bastida and Las Cabezuelas, among other parks.
The one that was CTA has a Moorish kiln restored some years ago by the General Directorate of Cultural Assets with more than three hundred years of history, in the area of ​​Las Ollerías where the potters traditionally settled, forming the door to the Huertos de Totana y Sierra Espuña
