The Court of the Lions and the sign-posting in the Alhambra win awards at the Europa Nostra and Hispania Nostra Prizes.

The Alhambra will be one of the stars at the prize-giving ceremony for the European Union Award for Cultural Heritage/ Europa Nostra Prizes and the Hispania Nostra Prizes to be held next Friday 17th April at the National Archaeology Museum in Madrid. Queen Sofía, Honorary President of Hispania Nostra, will be giving out the diplomas accrediting this award to each of the winners, chosen for their “good practice in the conservation of our Cultural and Natural Heritage in the 2013 and 2014 editions”.
The European Union Award for Cultural Heritage/ Europa Nostra Prize is the most highly-regarded award in the Heritage field. It is held every year to reward and encourage the best practices in relation to cultural heritage across Europe, extend knowledge and appreciation of European cultural her-itage and promote similar initiatives via the “Power of the example”. This is why the Jury decided to award a prize to the project for the restoration of the Court of the Lions in the Alhambra: sculptures, water system and paving.
Other prize-winners included the Roman Amphitheatre in Medellín (Ba-dajoz), the Plan Románico Norte in Castilla y León, the Hotel Abadía Retuerta Le Domaine in Sardón de Duero (Valladolid), the Canbanyal Living Archive and the Study of Spain’s traditional elevated grain-stores (hórreos, cabazos etc) by Javier Fernández-Catuxo.
For their part, the Hispania Nostra prizes awarded each year by the His-pania Nostra Association and the Banco Santander Foundation encourage the dissemination of good practices in the field of cultural and natural heritage in Spain. To this end, the jury for the 2014 edition decided to award a prize to the project for the signposting of the Alhambra group of monuments because it “achieves the necessary balance between the maintenance and conservation of this important piece of heritage, by perfectly integrating the signposting into the landscape, thereby minimizing its impact”. 
 The signposting project is part of a much larger initiative set out in the Master Plan for the Alhambra and Generalife. Its aim is to provide the monu-ment with new signposts that would direct and orient tourists as required, so channelling the flow of users towards cultural and tourism areas of general interest.
Together with the signposting project for the Alhambra, the Hispania Nostra prize 2013 was also awarded to the Pamplona River Park, the Universi-ty of Alcalá de Henares for its “permanent commitment to the recovery of cul-tural heritage”, and the integrated project for the conservation and promotion of the ancient olive trees in the Sénia area (Castellón, Tarragona and Teruel). 
The Hispania Nostra Association was set up in 1976 to coincide with the holding of “European Architectural Heritage Year” on similar lines to the Europa Nostra organization.
Hispania Nostra, whose honorary president is Her Majesty Queen Sofia, is a non-profit-making institution declared to be of public use. Its mission is to defend, safeguard and promote Spanish cultural monuments and sites and their surroundings. It is the only association in Spain that de-fends cultural heritage in all its broad conceptual sense and throughout the country. 
For more information please visit www.hispanianostra.org  www.hispanianostra.org