The expansion of the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) at the Palau Victoria Eugenia has been given the green light. This Monday, the president, Salvador Illa; the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun; and the mayor of Barcelona, ​​Jaume Collboni, officially presented the architectural project by the studios Harquitectes and Christ & Gantenbein, which unanimously won the competition a year ago with a proposal entitled Museum passageThe architectural plans for the expansion were unveiled at the Palau Victoria Eugenia itself as soon as several appeals filed by one of the unsuccessful competition teams were resolved. "Getting to this point is a collective success," said the museum's director, Pepe Serra, who described the expansion as "legitimate and necessary." Similarly, for the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, the expansion is a national project, "of the same importance as the Sagrada Familia, Catalunya Média City, the Archaeological Museum of Tarraco, the transformation of Fira de Barcelona, ​​Barcelona Airport, or the Sagrera train station." Meanwhile, the museum's president, Jaume Oliveras, said he sees it as "the fruit of the poetics of perseverance." The most important goal of the expansion is that it will allow the museum to display its collections up to the present day. "We are resolving a unique cultural anomaly in Europe," said Serra. "The museum should be the artists' home," he added. One of the cornerstones of the Harquitectes and Christ & Gantenbein project is opening up the Victoria Eugenia Palace, which measures almost 15,000 square meters, to the city. That's why they've placed the entrance on the façade facing Plaça Carles Buïgas, which it shares with the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion. "It will be the grand lobby of the museum complex," said Josep Ricart, one of the founders of the Harquitectes studio. It won't be a showy intervention; the cut in Puig i Cadafalch's work, specifically in the base, will be strictly necessary. The existing ramp will also be removed. "The only place in the catalog entry that says we can intervene is the base," Ricart said. "We want to extend the public space within the MNAC," he emphasized. The presentation was also attended by the Secretary of State for Culture, Jordi Martí; The Minister of Culture, Sònia Hernández Almodóvar, and many of the directors of the facilities belonging to the Network of Art Museums of Catalonia. With the expansion, the museum will have almost double the exhibition space, increasing from 10,941 to 19,425 square meters. The total usable area of ​​the museum, including both public and internal spaces, will increase from 38,390 to 55,288 square meters. The constructed area will increase from 49,000 to 71,417 square meters.