Visiting the shops where our grandparents used to buy, the bar where they used to meet, looking at their carts, seeing their houses, looking at their magazines, discovering their daily games and work, admiring their clothing … we may find ourselves marveling at how life was like at Camp d’Elx and in the city, not so long ago …

The more than 90,000 objects of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that the School Museum of Pusol keeps, most of which come from donations, lead to a past that, although relatively recent, flees memories at full speed.

 

Recognition of Unesco

This museum and vital project, which shows us in a didactic way who we are and where we come from, deserved very justifiably that in December 2009, the Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Heritage of Unesco included it in the Register of Best Practices.

It all began in 1969, in the rural schools of the Elche rural district of Pusol, as an activity linked to the pedagogical plan “The school and its environment”, whose subject was the study of the trades and traditions of the Camp d’Elx.

 

Collective involvement

The objective was to facilitate knowledge of the rural environment where it was located, as well as the conservation of a culture, both material and immaterial, that was disappearing very quickly by the mechanization of the field and the substitution of trades and traditional crops for other extensive and more productive.

The suitability of the project and the enthusiasm of its promoters led to the involvement not only of the students, who knew their roots, teaching them and preserving them, but also the residents of Pusol and other districts

 

Traditional Culture Center

Over time, the area of influence of the museum was extended to other rural areas and the city of Elche, to concentrate an enormous ethnological legacy of more than 90,000 inventoried items, including agriculture, commerce, industry, folklore, traditions and a long etcetera. This motivated the expansion of its facilities in 1991 and 1998. Transformed into the Traditional Culture Center Pusol School Museum, the new museum complex consists of large exhibition halls, conservation and restoration workshops, multipurpose room, library, archives, computer area, service area and public parking

 

International reference

The visitor who travels through its rooms is transported to past times, through reconstructions of everyday scenes of life in the countryside and through elements in disuse such as carts, cars, threshing machines, clothing and agricultural tools. Numerous objects related to industry, traditional trading, school and leisure are also exhibited, both in rural and urban areas.  The center of traditional culture of Elche continues to develop its pedagogical project, becoming a national and international reference.
The deserved recognition of Unesco is joined, among others, by Hispania Nostra, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and Ibermuseos.