In 1988 he visited the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome as a Resident in order to gain a better understanding of the Italian management model for the guardianship of cultural and environmental assets.
[2][3] The first regional Governing Council, formed in July 1982, began to negotiate the transfer of functions and services for cultural matters in order to enable the powers conferred by the Spanish Constitution and the Statute of Autonomy of Andalusia, while at the same time preparing a legislative package on heritage institutions with the collaboration of professional Archivists, Librarians and Museum Curators.
In June 1983, with the Alhambra and the Generalife on the negotiating table, Bartolomé Ruiz was put in charge of the General Direction of Cultural Heritage following the resignation of the director up until that point, Juan Antonio Lacomba Avellán.
Among the responsibilities transferred, special attention must be paid to the functions and services that the Government of Spain had been exercising with regard to the Monumental Ensemble of the Alhambra and Generalife in Granada, either directly or via the regional body that was established for this purpose under the Decree of March 9, 1940.
This regional body of the Administration, called the Council of the Alhambra and Generalife, continued to exercise its duties until Royal Decree 565/1985 of April 24 [12] expressly prohibited this in its first additional provision.
But this process was slow, thus making it necessary to temporarily establish, while the aforementioned Bill was being drafted, an agile and functional administrative body without legal status that could effectively address all of the services corresponding to the Monumental Ensemble of the Alhambra and Generalife in Granada.
This complied with the legislation that stated that “in a democratic Country these properties must be appropriately made available to the community, with the firm conviction that their enjoyment is culturally enriching and that this is, in short, the sure way towards achieving the freedom of peoples.” (Preamble of Law 16/1985 of June 25 on Spanish Historical Heritage).
The Plan included four fields (Ethnology, Archaeology, Movable Property and Real Estate) for each of which five important lines of action needed to be carried out (Research, Restoration, Preservation, Protection and Dissemination).
Approved unanimously by all parliamentary groups, it was the first document of these characteristics in Spain [23] Its development involved: the publication of Law 1/1991 on Historical Heritage of Andalusia,[24] the promotion of strategic planning on guardianship, the creation of institutions (such as the General Archive of Andalusia [25] in 1987, the Andalusian Institute of Historical Heritage,[26] the Monumental Ensembles of Santa María de las Cuevas and the Alcazaba of Almería and the Archaeological Sites of Medina Azahara, Italica and Baelo Claudia in 1989 and Carmona in 1992).
Coordination with provincial archaeologists was furthered via a series of regular meetings for exchanging experiences, consolidating criteria for activities and receiving suggestions concerning the management model.
A whole new generation of young university professors, led by Arturo Ruiz Rodríguez, carried out a process of establishing a practice of archaeological management, an example in the Spain of the autonomous regions and a subject of observation and study in other countries.
The model was extremely flexible, but as it developed it exposed the real disconnect between the fields of pure research and management, between the interest in preserving heritage as a property in and of itself and the speculation of urban projects, the difficulty in assigning responsibilities and roles among the different local and regional administrations acting together in practice… The situation which would finally speed up the crisis of the model in October 1987 was the conflict that arose in La Marina Plaza in Málaga, when the city council started to tear down some spectacular walls for the construction of an underground car park.
The General Direction of Cultural Properties paralysed construction work and carried out an extensive archaeological intervention that justified the need to preserve the aforementioned walls.
Having returned to his position as an Archaeologist with the Provincial Government of Málaga, Bartolomé Ruiz visited the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome as a Resident in order to gain a better understanding of the Italian management model for the guardianship of cultural and environmental assets.
[34] Having returned to his position as Director of the Monumental Ensemble of the Monastery of Santa María de Las Cuevas in Seville he was incorporated as General Curator in the autonomous organism, also headquartered here, called the Andalusian Centre for Contemporary Art.
Bartolomé Ruiz oversaw the application process for the ensemble’s entry onto the European Heritage Programme List “The Great Stones of Andalusian Prehistory: the Megalithic Sites and Landscapes of Andalusia”.