The Freemasonic Garden in Spain, eighteenth – twentieth Centuries: Problems of History and Preservations

Abstract

This essay, from a holistic perspective, highlights the complexity of approaching the historical landscape and gardening when referring to hermetic aesthetics such as the Freemasonic aesthetics, where the symbolic value of any compositional and its botanical element may not be arbitrary. Since the eighteenth century, the Masonic gardens have been one of the most unique artistic and aesthetic expressions in Europe which contain hermeticism. However, due to the recent history after the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy that Francoism theorized during the Dictatorship, and even after democracy, Spain has systematically suffered from the historiographical ignorance of the Masonic value associated with gardens, so restorations and interventions are usually unfortunate. Throughout the length and breadth of the country, from Galicia, Andalusia or the Canary Islands, there are multiple examples that argue this systematic lack of protection and that generate problems not only when it comes to history and revaluation, but also to preserve species and decorative elements eliminated forever from the collective imagination and the metalanguage implicit in their origin.