The Spanish government closes the door to the temporary transfer of Guernica to the Basque Country

Madrid / BarcelonaIt is not applicable. This is the official response that this Tuesday the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, gave to the PNB regarding the temporary transfer of the Guernica to the Basque Country, which the Vitoria government has formally requested on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the first Basque executive and the bombing of Gernika. "My duty as minister is to guarantee access to culture, but at the same time to preserve heritage," Urtasun replied to a question from PNB senator Igotz López, closing the door to transporting the painting to the Guggenheim in Bilbao because technicians from the Reina Sofía museum advise against it. A transfer that in any case would only be for half a year: the executive's request is to have it from October 1, 2026, to June 30, 2027.

that the Vitoria government has formally requested The explanations have not convinced the PNB, which only asks that the Reina Sofía's expert committee be open to studying the possible transfer with those from the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and other international technicians. In fact, the Basque nationalists see a hidden agenda behind it: "The Reina Sofía technicians' report says that Guernica is a key piece of the museum without which the institution would lose its purpose. Perhaps here lies the reason for the technical immobility," denounced Senator López, who considers it a matter of political will. "Its presence in the Basque Country would be an act of reparation; not trying to do so would be unforgivable," he concluded.

The possible transfer has been straining relations between the lehendakari, Imanol Pradales, and the Sánchez government for weeks. Pradales has asked for "political courage" from the Spanish government: "Did they take Franco out of his tomb in the Valley of the Fallen and they are not capable of taking a painting from Madrid to the Basque Country?" "The ball is in their court, let them respond," he said at the Aberri Eguna celebration last weekend after formally sending a letter to the State executive. For the PNV, it is a "reparation to the Basque people, to democratic memory." "It is incomprehensible that they tell us no because of the conditions in which the painting is," he affirmed, and that the argument that "without Guernica there is no museum" says "very little about the Reina Sofía collection."

The Government of the Generalitat has indeed spoken out in favor of the transfer. "The temporary transfer of Guernica not only makes all cultural sense, but it is a democratic duty," defended the spokesperson for the Catalan executive and Minister of Territory, Sílvia Paneque, at a press conference. In the case of the transfer of the works from Sijena, Paneque recalled that the technical reports recommend not doing so.

The clash with Ayuso

Despite the Spanish government's "no" to the transfer, Urtasun has wanted to distance himself from the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and the PP's criticism.

Ayuso says that Basques can go to Madrid to see the Guernica, in the Reina Sofía Museum, where it is available to all citizens because "it is the heritage of all Spaniards."

This Monday, the PP leadership wanted to avoid the case, but the deputy secretary of finance of the popular party, Juan Bravo, has assured that if the technicians say no, politicians "have little more to say." The spokesperson for the PP in the Basque Parliament, Laura Garrido, has asked the PNB to "stop playing the victim" and not confuse desires with reality. She compares the Guernica with the David or the Mona Lisa.

Paradoxically, PP leaders do not mention the Sijena case, for which a judge has decreed that 12th-century paintings must be removed from a national museum to be transferred to an isolated monastery in Aragon, against all technical reports.