The 40 years commemoration of Unesco's Convention Concerning the Protection of the World's Cultural and Natural Heritage takes place during 2012, and forces those involved into making necessary reflections on the validity and legitimacy of that extraordinary universal values promoting instrument which in the next years will rapidly reach the symbolic number of 1000 items in the World Heritage List. In this context, and from our participation in the contemporary international debate about the Icomos installed heritage, we put forward our thoughts on the critical aspects that this precise global moment reveals over our local reality, trying to answer such basic and elusive questions as what is the place of heritage? And which are the limits of heritage?