Spain's Culture Ministry urges MNAC to convene Board of Trustees to agree on next steps for Sixena murals

Spain's Ministry of Culture has replied to a letter sent by the president of Catalonia's National Art Museum (MNAC) requesting that the Institute of Cultural Heritage of Spain (IPCE) intervene in the conflict over the Sixena mural paintings.

The paintings are currently located in the museum but courts have ordered them to be transferred back to Aragonese authorities, as they were originally recovered from rural Aragon amid civil war chaos. 

Adding to the difficulty is the fact that the murals are built into the walls of the museum, and some technicians view a transfer "technically impossible."  

The ministry urges the museum to convene the Board of Trustees to jointly decide on the steps to follow. The letter calls for continuous dialogue and "maximum institutional collaboration."

The culture department say they have already made their technical teams available to the MNAC to specify the procedure proposed by the report.

Jordi Martí, Spain's culture secretary, considers it "fundamental" that the Board of Trustees can agree on the "schedules, methodologies, and resources necessary to carry out the planned work."

"They have the full support of the Ministry to move forward in this direction, and I reiterate our willingness to collaborate actively within the framework of the Board of Trustees to jointly define the next steps," he concludes.

MNAC letter

In the MNAC's letter calling for intervention from the Institute of Cultural Heritage of Spain, the museum demanded that the Spanish body prepare an expert report on the way in which the "complex and diverse technical operations" should be developed to carry out the transfer of the paintings.

The museum - which recalls the "divergences" of criteria between the two parties - says that the objective is for the body to specify a conservation project on the change of location to ensure their preservation.

In July, a judge gave a seven-month deadline for the works to be transferred back to Aragon. 

Why the Sixena murals are important to Catalonia

The religious murals were originally part of a convent in the Aragonese village of Villanueva de Sigena, close to the border with Catalonia, but have been on display in Catalonia’s National Art Museum (MNAC) since the 1960s. 

They were first brought to Catalonia some three decades prior, after art historian Josep Gudiol found their remains after the monastery was burned down by anti-clerics during the Spanish Civil War. 

Aragon have been fighting to have them returned to their original site for years, while many in Catalonia argue that the appropriate conditions offered by the MNAC museum is the best place for the paintings.

But why are the 12th and 13th century Romanesque frescoes so important to Catalonia?

Albert Velasco, an art historian at the University of Lleida, explains to the Catalan News Agency that the monastery where the artworks come from is an important one in the historical context of the old Crown of Aragon. 

“Medieval art was a very important part of political and cultural discourse in Catalonia because the origins of the nation were in the medieval period,” Velasco points out.

In the early 20th century, Catalonia began collecting examples of medieval art, including paintings, sculptures, and pieces of gold, and much of this was put on display in the MNAC when it opened in the 1930s. 

“The monastery was the place where the kings were buried and where they had their archives,” Velasco outlines. The monastery is “a very important example of the Catalan links with Aragon and with the rest of the territories that were part of the Crown of Aragon.”

“For these reasons, the museum became a very important point of explaining the origins of the nation,” according to the art historian.