Art, Politics, Religion.
What a potent mixture those three words in the title conjure up!
Imagine, if you will, a group of nuns in Aragón living in a ruinous
Convent in the 1980s. They decide to
move to another Convent in Catalonia and they further decide to sell various
religious artworks that they owned to the Generalitat of Catalonia. Contacts are signed, the move is made and the
religious art works find their way to a museum in Lleida. All is well.
The nuns are settled in their new home and the museum has gained a
substantial number of interesting artworks to put on display.
But no! All is not well. Aragón has decided that the nuns wrongly sold
off part of their regional artistic heritage and they demand the return of the
works.
What country, you may well ask yourself, does not have one case (or
in the British Museum’s case thousands) of someone somewhere asking for the
return of something cultural that was bought/sold in what approximated for good faith
when the transaction was done? The most glaring example in the BMs case is probably that of The Elgin Marbles.
In recent decades Greece has become increasingly strident in its
demand that the Marbles be returned. Not
to the monument itself, where if the marbles had been left in place they would
be today, shapeless pieces of marble destroyed by the acidic smog and rain from
the pollution of the city, but rather be placed in another museum at the foot
of the Acropolis. This museum has already
been built and awaits the return of the lost treasures.
And all I have to say is that Greece will get those Marbles over my
dead body!
That almost happened (my death I mean) when, as a backpacking Greek
island-hopper back in the day, in a roughish bar in an insalubrious part of
Athens I maintained (drunkenly, loudly, but articulately) that the Elgin
Marbles were works that I had grown
up with, they were part of my
heritage and I valued them as an essential part of what it meant to be British and that we would never, ever let them go! As one Greek later confided to me in the bar,
“The only reason we didn’t kill you was because you were obviously so
passionate about them!”
In the same way, the Assyrian bas-reliefs of The Lion Hunt, and
especially the poignant depiction of a dying lioness.
These are objects that I always visit first when I go to the BM.
Another part of MY history and MY culture, no matter where the
artwork was originally made. I would be
very loath to give those back - even if it might be difficult to work out
exactly who to give them back to, history being what it is and places and
people changing so much over time!
But the ‘decent’ person inside the voracious art-lover persona knows
exactly what the issues are and, while questions of ownership are difficult
they are not impossible and the ‘right thing to do’ trumps smaller questions.
That being said, I still wouldn’t give them back!
So, what I am saying is that I do understand the passions that can
be aroused by ownership and siting of works of art. Which brings us back to what, this morning,
was packed into a van in Catalonia and taken, through a police cordon and angry
crowds, to Aragon.
There has been an acrimonious court case about the ‘ownership’ of
these religious works of art and the latest twist was a judge saying that they
should be ‘returned’ to Aragon. In
normal times, that judgement would be the prelude to further rounds of legal
argument and a procession through various courts until, possibly it found its
way to the highest court in Spain.
But that didn’t happen.
Given the present situation in Catalonia, things are a little different.
After the threat of the
Catalan government’s proclamation of independence, the minority right-wing
Conservative (PP) national government in Spain declared article 155 of the
Constitution and took away the elected government from Catalonia imposing their
own rule from Madrid, arrested members of the government and issued an
international arrest warrant for the President who is now in exile in Belgium.
PP managed to gain 9% of the popular vote in Catalonia in the last
elections. 9%! And now that party runs the country! And they are showing exactly what their
‘running’ of the country means.
Iñigo Méndez de Vigo is the minority, right-wing, Conservative
national Spanish government’s Minister of Culture and he has now intervened in
the dispute. As an Article 155 Minister
imposed on a country that did not vote for him, he has ordered the treasures to
be returned from Lleida to Aragón. But
not just to Aragón, but to the small town of Villanneva de Sigena - population
512. From the museum in Lleida -
population 140,000. It just so happens
that the party of government of the small town is PAR, a party closely
associated with PP! Well, there’s a
surprise! Funny how things work out when
you are looking for a spiteful opportunity to denude Catalonia of its art!
Iñigo Méndez de Vigo has used the imposition of Article 155 to short
circuit the legal procedures and give himself the power to take autocratic
decisions against Catalonia.
Many people will not care much about old religious art, but the
crowds of protesters outside the museum in Lleida did, just at the staff of the
museum did when they came out of the building
en mass and applauded the support of the protesters. This is not the end of the protest, even
though the van carrying the disputed treasures has left for Aragón, and it
should be a wake up call to those who think that they can trust any of the
so-called ‘Constitutional’ parties in the forthcoming election to behave with
anything approaching understanding following the events of the past months.
The taking of these art works is a clear indication of how the
minority right-wing Conservative (PP) government is going to work. It will use the power of Article 155 to
manipulate and damage Catalonia in a way that it would never have been able to
do if its measly 9% popular support was its mandate.
If it is prepared to do this with artworks, then imagine what is it
likely to do with the actual structure of government and the finance of
institutions in Catalonia! PP is not to
be trusted. It is clearly the most
corrupt party in Western Europe, with hundreds of its members in courts accused
of or condemned for criminal activity.
And these are the people ‘governing’ Catalonia; preparing for the
election on the 21st and, most disturbingly, counting the votes.
Now, more than ever, Catalonia needs the eyes of the world, and
especially those of the EU, to scrutinize the arrangements for, the supervision
of, and the results from the local election in Catalonia on the 21st
of December.
All the Catalans ask for is fairness and honesty. A big ‘ask’ from PP.
Watch what happens in Catalonia.
Ask questions. Demand
answers. Support Democracy and Liberty!
