Aragon sets October 19 start date for transfer of eight Sixena paintings from Barcelona museum

The government of Aragon has authorized the transfer of eight secular paintings from the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) to the Sixena Monastery to begin on October 19, although the Barcelona museum says the timetable remains provisional.

The Provincial Cultural Heritage Commission of Huesca approved the move Friday. 

The step is part of a long-running dispute over the transfer of artworks from Catalonia to  the Sixena Monastery, in the Aragonese village of Villanueva de Sijena, near the Catalan border.

The paintings in this move are a set of eight secular panels that hang in Room 17 of the MNAC. They are separate from the monastery's chapter house murals, which are at the center of the legal fight.

In July, the museum halted the removal of the paintings because it did not yet have the commission's approval. Pedro Olloqui, Aragon's director general of heritage, said the transfer will begin October 19 and last four weeks, ending November 5. 

MNAC sources described the schedule as "tentative," saying they had not received official confirmation. They acknowledged, however, that the paintings must be in Sixena before the end of November, when the contract with SIT, the company handling the move, expires.

The Provincial Cultural Heritage Commission of Huesca and the Aragonese government 's General Directorate of Culture and Heritage approved the technical documentation the MNAC submitted for moving the secular paintings. 

Mar Vaquero, Aragon's vice president and culture minister, called the step a milestone of "high symbolic value" in complying with firm court rulings.

Vaquero said the move shows the "full technical feasibility of also returning the mural paintings of the chapter house."  

According to Vaquero and Olloqui, studies coordinated by restorer Natalia Martínez de Pisón found that both sets are in "equivalent physical and chemical conditions," even though the murals were damaged when the monastery burned in 1936, during the Spanish Civil War.

Vaquero insisted Aragon will not accept any "fragmentation" of Sixena's heritage. She warned that if the MNAC misses the court deadlines for returning the chapter house murals, the Aragonese government is prepared to ask the court to enforce the ruling directly. 

She also recalled the reprimand Aragon's parliament approved against Spain's culture minister, Ernest Urtasun, after he criticized the ruling that ordered the paintings' return.