The Spanish Government has published a list of more than 5,000 works of art seized by the Franco regime so that they can be returned to their ancestors.
During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), which led to the fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco ruling the country until his death in 1975, Franco’s nationalist forces confiscated thousands of paintings, sculptures, jewelry and other precious objects to his political opponents.
Many objects were also lost in the chaos of the conflict or were gifted to Franco’s dictatorship by his supporters. This week, 88 years after the start of the Civil Warthe government of Spain has prepared a catalog of 5,126 pieces of all these objects so that they can be returned to their original owners or their descendants.
In the first days of the nationalist uprising, in 1936, the Government of the Second Republic The Spanish government created the Superior Board of the National Artistic Treasure, an institution designed to protect valuable cultural assets from the inevitable looting brought about by Franco’s military junta. These assets were kept in safe deposits.
As Franco’s troops took control of Spanish territory, the National Artistic Heritage Defense Service to ensure that these assets were returned to their original owners once the war was over.
However, this never happened with many of the objects after the war, nor after 1975. Instead, they were deposited in institutions and museums across the country.
The list has been drawn up from the funds of nine state museums: the Costume Museum-Ethnological Heritage Research Center, the National Archaeological Museum, the National Museum of Romanticism and the National Museum of Decorative Arts, the National Museum of Anthropology, the Museum of America and the Sorolla Museum, in Madrid; the National Museum of Ceramics and Sumptuary Arts ‘González Martí’, in Valencia; and the National Museum of Sculpture, in Valladolid.
“The investigation in the funds of the state museums managed directly by the Ministry of Culture and in the different archives that guard documentation related to the seizure process during the Civil War, allows us to trace the history of the pieces from their seizure to the present“says the Ministry of Culture.
The Spanish Ministry of Culture has published the list of objects on the internet as part of the Government’s effort to make “justice, reparation and dignity” to the victims of Francoism.
It is the first of the Government ministries to comply with the Democratic Memory Law Spanish, which came into force in 2022 to combat the so-called ‘pact of oblivion’, a political decision by the left and right parties to avoid facing the Franco legacy after 1975.
Other impacts of the Democratic Memory Law include a national DNA bank planned to help identify the remains of thousands of people in unmarked graves of the era, a ban on groups glorifying the Franco era and memorials to those who were murdered during his dictatorship.
“The preparation and publication of the inventory are the first steps on the way to restitution of seized property“, reads a statement from the Ministry of Culture. “The will of the Ministry of Culture is to return to their legitimate owners all those assets that can be identified.”
Anyone who believes they have a claim to property can submit an application to the Ministry. “The first step has been to inventory and if no one asks for it, we’ll see what we do. Each piece has its history and we want to do everything with the maximum legal security“said the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun.
