Aragon sets a seven-month deadline for receiving the paintings from Sijena

BarcelonaThe government of Aragon has presented this Friday in the civil court of first instance and instruction number 2 of Huesca the request for forced execution of the sentence that orders the delivery of the mural paintings of the monastery of Vilanova de Sijena that exists in the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC). As reported by ACN, the voluntary surrender period ended on Thursday, and the Aragonese government has drawn up an estimated schedule of the work the MNAC must carry out to comply with the ruling, which stipulates an approximate seven-month deadline for receiving the paintings.

They have also submitted a report to the court on the suitability of the monastery's structural and environmental conditions and are asking the MNAC to "immediately" allow Aragonese technicians access to the rooms where the paintings are located, for "as long as they require and with all the auxiliary means they determine."

The Supreme Court's ruling of May 27 upholds the ruling issued by the Provincial Court of Huesca, which, in turn, confirmed the ruling of the Court of First Instance and Investigation No. 2 of Huesca. In all three cases, the MNAC was required to hand over the mural paintings. There are 35 fragments from the chapter house and eight fragments from secular paintings. In total, the MNAC exhibits 43 fragments in rooms 16 and 17 of the museum.

The estimated schedule of tasks that the MNAC must perform to comply with the ruling that Aragón has submitted to the court includes several phases of prior documentation and procedural testing. It also includes the drafting of disassembly, packaging, and relocation projects; the bidding for services; and the execution of disassembly, packaging, and relocation projects. Therefore, a period of approximately seven months is set. In this regard, the MNAC is requested to impose fines of €5,000 per day if the weekly milestones established in the schedule attached to the court are not met. It also warns of committing a crime of disobedience to the director of the MNAC and the president of the facility's board of trustees if they fail to comply.

Aragón also considers access to the paintings and the current exhibition installation system, as well as all related documentation kept in the MNAC archives, to be "absolutely essential" in order to plan the delivery of the works with "guarantees of conservation and security." They also consider access to data on the environmental conditions, temperature, and relative humidity, of these rooms and of the rooms where the fragments were displayed before they entered the MNAC to be essential.

Finally, Aragón requests that, in the documentation and data collection work that its technicians must carry out in the closed rooms of the MNAC, a photographic survey of the two rooms with all their displayed fragments be allowed as the first "unavoidable" action.

Azcón: "Sánchez and Isla's priority is not to anger the Catalan separatists"

The President of Aragon, Jorge Azcón (PP), insisted this Friday in a speech before the Aragonese Parliament that the return of the works in the MNAC must be done guaranteeing "the maximum security of the paintings, because the first people we want to see are "the people of Aragon." In his address to the Aragonese Parliament, President of Aragon-Teruel Existe, Azcón said that they will fight for "justice and for the plundering of Aragonese property to return to the autonomous community so that the people of Aragon and all citizens of the world can enjoy it." Azcón also lamented that his government "has tried to collaborate loyally with the Catalan institutions," but that the working group to address the transfer of the murals and the subsequent report sent to the court, which pointed out the impossibility of enforcing the sentence, were in place.

According to the president of Aragon, the Catalan government and its partners "want to turn a legal issue into a political issue," and he criticized the Socialists for not defending compliance with the ruling in Parliament. "For Sánchez, the ministry, Isla, and Barcelona City Council, the priority is not to anger the Catalan independence movement," said Azcón.

They promote a concentration at the MNAC

For his part, the spokesperson for the Aragón-Teruel Existe party, Tomás Guitarte, called on Aragonese civil society and political parties to demand "the return of the paintings before the MNAC, not as an element of confrontation, but rather as a means of taking the word of the Aragonese people to where their "duck" is. Guitarte wants Azcón to remain firm in dialogue without "falling into the strategy of confrontation" that, in his opinion, the pro-independence parties are pursuing. He asserted that the issue is not "about anti-Catalanism," but about "a breach of the rule of law." According to this party, "it is very important for Aragon to win the narrative in front of Spanish society."