Jaume Sabater buys the historic Sala Parés

BarcelonaGenerational handover at Sala Parés. Jaume Sabater Martos, co-founder and CEO of Stoneweg, the driving force behind the Carmen Thyssen Museum in Barcelona, has acquired a majority stake in the gallery and joins as a strategic partner alongside the two branches of the Maragall family involved in the space. According to the statement released by the gallery, the agreement will allow Sala Parés, the oldest operating art gallery in Europe, to reach 2027 strengthened, the year in which it will celebrate its 150th anniversary.

The gallery director will continue to be Joan Anton Maragall Garriga. “We have found the natural fit we were looking for,” states Joan Anton Maragall in the statement released by the gallery. “I am very satisfied to have found a travel companion like Jaume. We have been looking for a few years for a partner with whom we felt a natural and comfortable fit. With this alliance, we maintain the essence and the way of doing things that have characterized us and made us strong for almost 150 years. We feel well accompanied at a key moment for the gallery, and at the same time, we will be able to benefit from a fresh and global perspective,” says Maragall.

“We want to guarantee 150 more years of Sala Parés in Barcelona,” says Jaume Sabaté. “It was an honor to receive the proposal from Joan Anton Maragall himself – he adds–. Not many presentations or analyses were needed, because the work of Sala Parés is known and recognized by the entire cultural ecosystem of Barcelona. I immediately saw that it was a solid business, but with a generational handover challenge in the medium term, and I did not hesitate for a moment”.

A future "beyond the family"

In recent years, the management and ownership of the gallery had considered how to project its future "beyond the family," as there was no internal succession for its current director. "The challenges of the current art market required that Sala Parés, with its history and its activity in both contemporary art and 19th and 20th-century painting, face the future with a long-term project and strategy," the statement says.

In this context, "the objective was to find a travel companion with sufficient foresight, sensitivity, and respect for a long career, and with a genuine interest in art and in the role that organizations like Sala Parés play in Barcelona's cultural ecosystem."

It is planned that Jaume Sabater will maintain the gallery's current lines of work and its commitments to the team, artists, sector, and public with "an ambitious exhibition program," and also with activities such as conferences, presentations, and concerts.