The Local Action Plan proposed by the Diputacion de Badajoz, Spain has been approved by the Joint Secretariat. This plan proposes four actions and a pilot aimed at improving the ERDF Operational Program (2014-2020 and 2021-2027) in the region of Extremadura. 

The four proposed actions are: 

1. Creation of a Technical Coordination Committee for Regional Heritage management and promotion including regional, provincial and municipal representatives to ensure continuous technical support and coordination with regard to programs or actions related to heritage management and promotion. This action aims to address the lack of efficient communication structures within the regional and provincial administrations. It was inspired by good practices such as the Open Space Platform in Flanders.

2. Elaboration of a comprehensive Regional Heritage Inventory including private HCMEs. This is based on the identified issue that many privately owned estates have not been recorded in official inventories. The objective is to create favourable conditions to elaborate a complete Regional Inventory. This complete inventory will serve as a tool for further conservation and promotional activities. The inventory will be used in the decision-making process by the Regional and Provincial Government about funding or priorities in the region.

3. Design and promotion of a Harmonized Framework for Heritage Tax incentives. The objective of this action is to initiate a tax harmonization process at regional and local level in order to agree on a tax framework able to clarify the actual lack of alignment on heritage assets definition and categorization, detected with national, regional and municipal legislations.

4. Use of new technologies for the creation of digital resources and for the touristic promotion of heritage through open participation. The objective of this action is to make available to the public ICT tools that facilitate the digitization of heritage, so that digital content is created by citizens and collected in an e-platform for the touristic promotion of the cultural heritage.


A pilot action has also been approved by the Interreg Europe Joint Secretariat for the region of Badajoz. The pilot action proposed by Diputacion de Badajoz is dedicated to designing and testing a new protocol for the implementation of socioeconomic cost-benefit analysis for important investments in heritage promotion, restoration or exploitation when using ERDF funds in Extremadura.

Read the full Local Action Plan for Badajoz, Spain here.

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Innocastle is a two phase project. In the first phase of the project (June 2018 - November 2020), the project partners exchanged experiences through study visits, research and activated local stakeholders in each region to better understand the needs and challenges. The knowledge collected has been compiled into a final publication, the Baseline Survey, which can be read here.

Now that Innocastle has entered phase 2, each regional partners prepared a Local Action Plan for their region, in which they propose policy changes based on the experience thus far. Until November 2022, each partner will monitor the implementation of these proposed actions.