Aragon and Catalonia battle over the 'Sistine Chapel of Romanesque art'
Letter from Madrid
After 11 years of complaints, appeals and back-and-forth between various courts, on May 28, Spain's Supreme Court finally ruled in the case of the mural paintings from the Romanesque Monastery of Santa María de Sijena. The dispute has pitted the regions of Aragon and Catalonia against each other since 2015. Unsurprisingly, but not without controversy, the court upheld, as a final ruling, the sentence imposed on the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC) in Barcelona: It must return the monastery's frescoes, located in the town of Villanueva de Sijena in the province of Huesca, within 20 days. Dating from 1196 to 1208, the works were removed in 1936 to protect them from the Spanish Civil War, before being purchased by the MNAC from nuns who were not the rightful owners.
For the Catalan museum officials who have displayed the works since 1961, and who in recent years have called on numerous experts to bolster their case against the transfer, the decision puts extremely fragile works at risk. For the Aragonese government, which invested nearly €1.2 million in restoration work at the monastery, including the installation of a sophisticated climate control system to accommodate the paintings, it is time for the "Sistine Chapel of Romanesque art" to return to its original home. "The monastery is now able to store these works in perfect safety and, very soon, to exhibit them," said Jorge Azcon, president of the government of Aragon and of the right-wing People's Party of Aragon.
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