An hour at the Sijena Monastery

Vilanova de SijenaEight and a half years ago, the then president of Aragon, Javier Lambán, inaugurated the visits to the exhibition of the Sijena monastery with the objects which had been returned by the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) by court order a rainy morning in late January. Last Thursday, June 12th, it was quite hot in the afternoon in Vilanova de Sijena: around 34 degrees. There were only a few days left until the museum's board meeting on Monday, during which Barcelona City Council, the Generalitat (Catalan government), and the Ministry of Culture will discuss how they will comply. the Supreme Court ruling which requires the return to Aragon of the mural paintings in the monastery's chapter house and, at the same time, how will they guarantee their conservation. here?" At the beginning of the tour, the guide tries to get the first shift of visitors, nine people in total, two of them journalists from the ARA, to come out from a patch of shade where they have taken refuge to better appreciate a detail of the building. The visitors are two retired couples from Zaragoza and a group made up of two women and a middle-aged man. They meet one of the workers who opened the door and who looks after the garden in the monastery courtyard. The Zaragozans know him because he was recently interviewed in the local press, and the others give him mementos from a relative. burned during the Civil War. Very soon, the guide also talks about the paintings in the chapter house, which were "stolen and plundered."

The monastery of Sijena was founded at the end of the 12th century by Sansa of Castile, the wife of Alfonso II the Chaste. As can be read on the website, it hosted "queens, princesses, and daughters of noble families" and "served as a repository for part of the royal treasury and became one of the most important archives in the kingdom." In times of prosperity, it must have been a stunning place. In the church's apse, the guide recalls the magnitude of the main altarpiece, one of whose panels is preserved in the monastery itself, while the others are spread across museums in Huesca, Zaragoza, Lérida, Barcelona (MNAC), Madrid (El Prado), and Dallas (Meadows). It also points out that some paintings were found underneath, which were lost and of which only the following remain today. some barely visible remainsIn the attached royal pantheon, the guide explains Sansa's sobriety and points out her tomb, that of her husband, and that of two of the younger princesses.

The last nuns left Sijena in 2019, and since then the monastery has been open intermittently. The Vilanova de Sijena City Council's eagerness to open the space for longer hours made the relationship with the nuns unsustainable. On the edge of the monastery remains the complex of small houses where they lived, "bungalows," as the guide defines them, whose restoration seems to have more potential to attract more visitors for a longer period than the works of art.

Visits resumed at the end of March with the presentation of the remodeled room where the items from the MNAC and the Lleida Museum, the former dormitory now renamed the Museum of Heritage. In May, the Aragonese authorities boasted that more than 2,500 people had visited during the first month. But if the Aragonese government cares so much about its heritage that it has been arguing with Catalonia for decades, why doesn't it dedicate more resources to improving the visit and place more explanatory panels along the route? One of the latest interventions carried out has been the restoration of the Baroque chapel of the Immaculate Conception, which on Thursday also housed the remains of a small bat.

The lost splendor of the chapter house

The chapter house is at the heart of the tour: the group enters through the cloister, where the warmth is once again felt. the splendor of the murals and the missing Mudejar coffered ceiling talking about the documentary The dream of Sigena. Here, the people of Lleida are left standing and cannot be warned that a lot of work needs to be done to bring the murals to that space, to install the paintings, and that it will take about two years of work to fully adapt it.

Pemán y Franco and Sebastián Arquitectos have done a commendable job of giving the nuns' former dormitory, seemingly, museum-quality status. The fateful metal cabinets that could be seen in the January 2017 exhibition have been relegated to a reserved space that can be glimpsed through a wooden door that currently has no lock. The entire layout—the display cases and the ceramic floor—is functional and, at the same time, recalls the building's history with details evocative of jealousy and the lost Mudejar coffered ceilings. But then again, if such coveted works of art and objects are on display here, how could the guide not give a detailed explanation and then move on to find the next group?

The coup de grace comes with a three-minute audiovisual about the vicissitudes of the mural paintings in the chapter house, the script of which is limited to saying this: "The fire that hit the monastery in the summer of 1936, when the roof burst, seriously damaged the roof covering the room and also some of the paintings. Shortly afterwards, the paintings were removed and in 1940 they were taken to the Museu d'Art de Catalunya, now the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, where they are awaiting their return to Sijena." The video includes images of the removals directed by Josep Gudiol, but at no point is there any mention of any rescue operation, nor does Gudiol's name appear, only at the end in the obligatory credits for the images, which come from the Mas Archive. If they could speak, what would the storks that nest in the monastery every year and that fed the lice on Thursday, oblivious to the whole dispute, say about all this?