What the Supreme Court has decided on the Sijena paintings at the MNAC is irresponsible in regard to heritage. The paintings are like a sick person who is unable to move.
They are Romanesque paintings from between 1196 and 1208, burned 750 years later by members of an anarchist column, and people from the town itself, at the outbreak of the Civil War. When they were taken to Barcelona in 1936, they had been burning for two days. In other words, we're talking about a painting burned on a very fine cotton canvas, bonded with natural pigments, restored by the teams of an expert, Gudiol, but with techniques from almost a century ago, much less sophisticated than those of today. The 1936 fire not only erased their color but also changed the properties of the material.
The MNAC has explained it amply: the risks of moving the paintings outweigh the potential benefits. They were so damaged that Gudiol's team painted over fragments, because from the burned parts it is barely possible to deduce what is depicted.
And if the entire pictorial collection is never redone, the experts would have to return to Barcelona to consult the MNAC archives where they keep the drawings by Domènech i Montaner and his students, who painted color watercolors on a 1918 excursion to Sijena.
Here we have one of the results of the Spanish episcopate's offensive (1995-1998) to put an end to centuries of the bishopric of Lleida in lands under Aragonese civil administration (some of them Catalan-speaking) with the creation of the diocese of Barbastre-Montsó.
