No one dared to say a word these days. In the City of Santiago, after knowing each other – on June 19 – the one that recognized the municipal ownership of the two statues of the Portico de la Gloria in the hands of the Franco for 65 years, his breath was contained. It was not to be that a false step gaps again, the expressive sculptures from the Nartex that during the dictatorship the Consistory delivered to the leader to satisfy a whim. Until the sentence was firm, that is, until Francisco Franco’s heirs did not reveal if they would continue the battle in European instances, the compostela mayor, Goretti Sanmartín (BNG), would not pick up the phone to summon the wise. This morning, however, with a letter dated day 7 and a bureaux that had just reached their hands, began to do so.
The document, received by the, as Eldiario.es advanced on Wednesday, was the definitive resignation of Franco’s grandchildren to the figures of the teacher Mateo’s workshop. The local government of Santiago opens the consultations to study the transfer from the Pazo de Meirás and discuss what the most suitable future location will be within the capital of Galicia.
According to the letter, sent by Juan José Aizcorbe, deputy by Vox and lawyer who has represented the family in this concrete case (after the claim filed by the City Council when it was), the Franco have assumed the conviction imposed by the Supreme and show their “express will” and “total” of restoring the statues that were part of the set of. The sculptures are now available to the City Council, which must go to pick them up to the Pazo de Meirás chapel.
The sculptures of Ezekiel and Jeremiah, also identified previously as representations of Abraham and Isaac, remain in the property that now depends on the State in the Coruña municipality of Sada. BIC (good of cultural interest) were declared by the Xunta and this condition already forced the heirs of the Generalissimo to exhibit them for free to the public at least four days a month. When he, devised by Emilia Pardo Bazán and then delivered to Franco, passed to the State, the prophets were there waiting for the last judicial turn of his future.
After receiving the letter that confirms the final victory of the City Council, the mayor has celebrated Wednesday as “a big day”: the Franco “Claudican in her battle to remain the owners of the statues, which obviously do not belong to them” and “We begin the countdown to materialize the return,” Sanmartín announced to the congregated media.
The City Council will collect the sculptures that were part of the Nartex of the old Romanesque facade, disassembled and replaced by the Baroque wrapping, and will deposit them in a provisional place until a permanent space is found so that they are exposed. Asked the Santiago Cathedral Foundation about whether it will present a proposal to host the sculptures that completed the set and iconographic message of the Gloria porch in the twelfth century, the entity is cautious. But various voices sound, both within the basilica and in the academic field, which suggest that the ideal place to be exposed would be the Mateo Mestre space in the Pazo de Xelmírez (northern side of the cathedral), included in the itinerary of the Cathedral Museum.
Sanmartín has thank this noon to the groups for the historical memory involved in the procedure, and groups such as the Cultural Association or Sorriso de Daniel, which began the battle for recovery from civil society. This group sent a letter in 2012, asking for restitution, to the Francisco Franco Foundation. The mayor has also wanted to remember “all people” who have contributed, including the councilor who “initiated this fight” by judicial, Martiño Noriega (from her old formation, Compostela Aberta), and also the former mayor Xosé Sánchez Bugallo, who “continued with her.”
The Burofax of the Franco’s lawyer, shared by Noriega in the social network X, urges to coordinate “as soon as possible” the collection of the figures. It also requests that the corresponding proposal for the appraisal of coasts or, where appropriate, communicate the amount appropriate according to legal scales. The Supreme Judgment imposes payment to the dictator’s family.
The mayor has assured that her will is for the move to be “as before.” “When we have a little defined what the way to do it can be, we will choose the fastest, but also the one who has all the guarantees,” he stressed, while announced that a space will be sought with the “best technical conditions for conservation” of the prophets and so that “the public is permanently exposed.” The Consistory also plans to accompany the figures of an explanation so that the “coming generations” know the avatars of their history and the “long process of struggle to achieve this return.”
In court since 2017
The Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court condemned the dictator’s family in June to restore the City Council of Santiago Las Sculptures. The lawsuit filed in 2017 put the focus on which they were acquired by the City Council to the count of Ximonde el. One of the conditions for this sale was that sculptures never left the city. Otherwise, the City Council should compensate the seller with 400,000 pesetas. But one day, before 1960, the Franco marriage visited the town hall, the Pazo de Raxoi, and encaled with the two figures that wore there. In the judicial process, the heirs argued that, by oral tradition of their family, they knew that Franco had bought the pieces from an individual. In 1961, the figures are part of an exhibition and are already presented as owned by “their excellence the Head of State.”
After the demand for the times in which the city ruled at the sea Compostelana (Compostela Aberta), the Court of First Instance number 41 of Madrid gave the reason to the heirs of the dictator. He also did, years later, the audience of Madrid with the argument that it was not clear that the claimed sculptures were the same registered in the name of the Franco. But the Santiago City Council, with the socialist Xosé Sánchez Bugallo as a councilor and backed by the BNG, resorted again, and this time the Supreme Court proved him right. The maximum instance affected the previous court that had judged the case that had made “a patent error in the assessment of the evidence”, since the identification of the works of art claimed was “clear.”
