Sijena case: waiting for the MNAC to make its position public

BarcelonaThree weeks after that The Supreme Court will ratify the ruling that forces the National Museum of Art of Catalonia (MNAC) to return to Aragon the mural paintings of the Chapter House of the Sijena monasteryThis Monday, the museum's board of trustees, made up of Barcelona City Council, the Generalitat (Catalan government), and the Ministry of Culture, will meet to express their position on the ruling. Previously, President Salvador Illa, the Minister of Culture, Sonia Hernández Almodóvar, and the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, have stated that they support complying with the ruling, but the paintings are in an extremely fragile state and could be damaged during transport, and the Sijena Monastery is not eligible to receive them.

On the technical front, the head of Restoration and Preventive Conservation, Carme Ramells, warned that the transfer would be "a ticking time bomb" that would put the paintings in danger, and the Conservadores-Restauradores Associats de Catalunya (CRAC) association warned in a statement that they should be alerted to the alteration of the pigments and support materials, as confirmed by several recent scientific studies. Therefore, the CRAC expressed its "concern" about the "risks" of the transfer. Regarding the Aragonese side, on Wednesday, the Minister of Education, Culture and Sports of the Government of Aragon, Tomasa Hernández, asked the president of the MNAC board of trustees, Joan Oliveras Bagués, in a letter to allow her technicians to enter the museum to examine the murals in the chapter house of the Sijena Monastery. And in another letter, Tomasa Hernández asked Urtasun to facilitate the return of the paintings. Likewise, the Minister He warned that a photogrammetric survey of the room where they are located is necessary and that, if it doesn't exist, it will have to be 3D scanned.

In these circumstances, the MNAC's board of trustees could decide to file an execution incident so that a judge can define how the transfer should be carried out and assume responsibility. Junts will request this same measure in one of the two motions it will debate in Parliament. In the other, it will demand that the Government "exhaust its legal term." Meanwhile, ERC (Republic of Catalonia) will demand "that all necessary measures be taken to continue defending the legality of the acquisitions of the works of art from Sijena made by the Generalitat at the MNAC," which could mean continuing the judicial process of the case in the Constitutional Court. According to the statement, Lawyer Xavier Muñoz in an article published in ARA on June 2"The courts that have tried this dispute over the paintings have violated Article 24 of the Constitution because they have placed the Generalitat in a clearly defenseless situation."