Aragonese authorities ask for 24-hour surveillance on Sixena mural paintings

The lawyer of the Vilanova de Sixena city council has requested that the Catalan National Art Museum implement 24-hour surveillance of the Sixena mural paintings and close the site to visitors.

Lawyer Jorge Español has also requested a temporary embargo of €150 million while the paintings are not transferred to the Vilanova de Sixena monastery, and they quote the paintings at €1 billion.

Español believes that Monday's board meeting decision is a "clear defiance" of Spain's Supreme Court ruling that forces the MNAC to return the Sixena paintings to their original site in the region of Aragon.

The MNAC has until June 25 to voluntarily return the paintings; however, the city council in Aragon had already suggested that it would request that the force bring them if necessary.

While the Catalan government is asking for nine months for the transfer, based on several media reports, Aragonese authorities are not in favor.

"The schedule can be shorter; what they are doing is trying to extend the time to obey the ruling, and we do not agree with the expert's comments on some of the risks that these paintings can suffer," Aragonese vice president Mar Vaquero said in a statement.

The court decision

The lawsuit was originally filed by the government of Aragon on behalf of the religious community of the Sixena monastery.

The initial court agreed with the claim and ordered the paintings to be returned to the monastery. The Catalan government and MNAC appealed the decision, which was rejected before the Catalan institutions brought the case before the Supreme Court.

Now, the High Court has determined that Aragon has the right to reclaim the frescos, on behalf of the religious community in Sixena.

The court also ruled that MNAC was never the rightful owner of the frescos, as no contract of ownership exists. The person who supposedly signed such an agreement didn’t have the authority to do so.

Additionally, it was ruled that the paintings were at the museum under a “deposit” arrangement after being removed from the monastery. 

The ruling does not clarify how the frescos must be returned.

MNAC frescos

The mural paintings in question are from the Chapter House of Sixena and date back to the year 1200.

They are a “unique, most important example of medieval Hispanic art,” according to the MNAC, and depict scenes from the Old and the New Testament, including scenes of God showing Paradise to Adam and Eve, and the Resurrection of Christ.

Origin of the conflict

The dispute over the frescos stems from a 1995 decision by the Vatican to transfer 111 parishes, one of which was the one in Sixena, to the Diocese of Barbastro-Monzón in Aragon that until then had been part of the diocese of Lleida in Western Catalonia.  Later in the 90s, the artworks were purchased by the Catalan government.

But the Vatican’s decision triggered legal disputes over the works of art, and this prompted the government in Aragon to bring the matter before the court in 2014.

44 pieces of art had originally been at the Museum of Lleida, but were removed by force by Spanish military police in 2017, after Catalonia had refused to give them up despite a court order.

At the time, Mireia Boya from the Catalan far-left party CUP called the removal an attempt “to humiliate Catalonia.”

Civil War

All the Sixena artworks were part of a larger collection of more than a thousand items removed from the monastery during the Spanish Civil War and taken to Catalonia.

In 1936, the Sixena convent was set on fire, along with all the precious artifacts inside.

That very same year as the blaze, specialists took the art to Barcelona to safeguard and restore it. Some of the items were taken to the Lleida Museum, and others made it into the MNAC in 1940.