Huesca Judge Rocío Pilar Vargas who instructs the case on the return of the Romaic murals of Sijena has a different proposal on the table to try to solve the technical dilemma on whether the vestiges of that jewel of the twelfth century can endure a move from Barcelona to Los Monegros. A technical report co -founded by the Generalitat and the City Council of Barcelona, incorporated into the reports presented by it, recommends to celebrate “an international symposium open to the specialists” that seeks consensus and is based on scientific foundations. The proposal is inspired by the conclave held in January 1998 when it was also in doubt if Guernica could move to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
From that meeting of notables on the subject a publication and a majority conclusion came out: that it should not move. One of the attendees, Enrich Gantzert Castrillo, then a member of the Modern Museum of Frankfurt, left two epitaphs in those two days :. The work of Pablo Picasso is still presented today at the Reina Sofía Center in Madrid and, according to Mireia Mestre (director of the Catalonia Movable Restoration Center, of the Generalitat) and Lídia Font (head of the Conservation Area of the Museum of History of Barcelona), the celebration of Congress “would be more than justified if we take into account the greatest fragility of the sijena paintings in comparison with the Guernica universal ”. The two techniques sign the work to which the country has had access as members of the group of experts created in June, in which there were initially emissaries of the Aragonese government who ended up abandoning it when the MNAC reiterated its decision to try to stop the exit of the murals.
Of course, the authors, who also ask for a risk report before undertaking any new adventure, say that this work “demands necessary times, of which it is not currently available,” given the pressure of the sentence. The Aragonese government wants the return to be carried out in seven months and the MNAC, in its counterproposal delivered to the judge, does not see an option to do anything in less than a year and a half, although that schedule is a second option. In his opinion, any return will mean damage to the work of 800 years.
That is also taken into account by Mestre and Font. The document opens the door for the murals not to be transferred in the event that there may be risks and damages that “the administrations were not willing to assume.” In that case, the brief indicates with the Mortete de la Generalitat and the City Council, “we should contemplate alternative solutions to the transfer to put the integrity of the cultural asset to other legitimate reasons and rights.”
“Disassembly, packaging, transfer, discharge, unrest, new location, installation and maintenance in a new geographical, environmental and management environment must be evaluated, in the same way that they must be evaluated, and the risks inherent in the conservation of the paintings in their current location in the MNAC are evaluated.” This quoted report makes it clear that there is no possible transfer plan without knowing the conditions of the place where the paintings, the chapter room of the Sijena monastery must be restored. In short, he calls to analyze “the immediate consequences, in the middle and long term.”
The MNAC delivered last week that, predictably, it will be the last documentation package to try to retain in its facilities the Romanesque murals of Sijena under the argument that their transfer will put them in danger. . They are two of the administrations that appear in the Board of Trustees of the Museum. The third, the Ministry of Culture, has opted for not providing any document for the defense of its arguments.
From the beginning, and like the rest of administrations, culture has defended that the sentence should be complied with. When the Technical Group was created in the Museum, which at first and for a brief period had members designated by the Aragon Government, appointed a specialist to participate in the works, although that analysis has barely progressed and its issuer participated in the works through videoconferencing. The absence of the Ministry is, however, relevant: the work of Sijena that is in the treasury is protected by the maximum degree of protection by being considered a good of cultural interest (BIC), which leaves them under the protection of the State for more than Catalonia has its own competences in artistic preservation.
r. And there have been voices from Catalonia who have done the same, considering that culture could mobilize the Institute of Cultural Heritage (IPCE) to prepare a report on the State and the risks of moving the paintings. , in which his transfer was advised by the risk he supposed. Today that BIC continues in Madrid. A spokeswoman for culture consulted by this newspaper ensures that culture is expressed through the MNAC Board of Trustees and that assumes the conclusions of the Generalitat and the City Council. And, on the request of an IPCE expert opinion on the fragility of Romanesque murals, he argues that no one from the museum has requested it.
The director of the MNAC, Pepe Serra, when asked about the involvement of the IPCE in the Sikena case, replied :. The Secretary of State for Culture, Jordi Martí, is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Museum.
