From 'Gernika' to Moctezuma's headdress, museums call for protection of works

Cultural heritage has become a fertile political battleground in recent decades, those of the culture wars. In addition to the greater appreciation of the symbolic value of works of art, there has been a growing expectation of another of their values: tourism. And all this in a context where ideological winds, such as those of the decolonization of museums, have blown in favor of returning pieces to their original locations.

The result has been an increase in demands for the return, either temporary or permanent, of multiple works of art, from Picasso's Gernika to the Lady of Elche. From the Guanche mummy recently removed from display by the National Archaeological Museum—due to the new policy on human remains of Ernest Urtasun's Ministry—and claimed by the Canary Islands, to the so-called Quimbaya treasure housed at the Museum of the Americas in Madrid, claimed by Colombia. From the Parthenon Marbles in Athens housed at the British Museum to the Montezuma headdress in Vienna. Or the Benin Bronzes, a product of the British plunder of 1897.

In October, the State and the Generalitat Valenciana agreed on a technical committee to study the transfer of the Lady of Elche.

These claims have varied circumstances when they were acquired—although for some, even those acquired legally were often obtained under unequal conditions—and in some cases, their claims have already received positive responses, as in the state reports on decolonization of museums in the Netherlands and France. In other cases, without going into the substance of the petition, the extreme fragility of the pieces is the central reason cited for not relocating them.

This is what happened in Spain with Picasso's Gernika , which the Basque Country has requested for its temporary or permanent return on several occasions, including the opening of the Guggenheim, where architect Frank Gehry had dedicated a gallery to the work. The Spanish government has always cited its extremely difficult conservation conditions as a reason not to move it.

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And in October of last year, three weeks before the horror of the Dana, Pedro Sánchez and the Valencian Carlos Mazón agreed that the State and the Generalitat would create a technical committee to analyze the feasibility of a temporary transfer of the Lady of Elche. The Minister of Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, stated that the Government understood the territories' request to have "masterpieces," but warned that "technical criteria" and the "possible damage to heritage" must be respected when undertaking transfers.

The United Kingdom's defense of the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon has focused, among other things, on the fact that they were rescued from Turkish-occupied Athens, where the Parthenon had been used as a mosque and powder magazine and destroyed by Venetian bombardment, and that they had been better preserved in the British Museum. Mexican President Manuel Andrés López Obrador also fought for the Moctezuma headdress at the World Museum in Vienna. The response was that it is too fragile, and inside the museum, they don't even dare move it, and its display case has been arranged in such a way that it wouldn't budge if there were an earthquake in Vienna.