The Barcelona gallery Setdart has auctioned this Thursday 35 pieces of art from Mexico, between the 9th and 17th centuriesdespite receiving an email on Wednesday from the Ministry of Culture of that country in which he was asked to remove those goods for having left “illicitly” his territory.
The Secretary of Culture of Mexico, Alejandra Frausto Guerrero, also sent a letter directly to the Setdart Gallery, dated March 7, to which EFE has had access, in which the same request was made, with the argument that those pieces “they are archaeological assets that are part of the nation’s cultural heritage”.
In the same letter, the Secretary of Culture of Mexico “strongly regrets and disapproves” of the sale of said goods – pictorial works, frames and archaeological pieces – which, it assures, would have been “extracted without authorization and illegally from the national territory. , as its export was prohibited by the Mexican legislation of 1827”.
The letter warns that in Mexico “the corresponding judicial procedures have been initiated before the Spanish authorities, on the pieces in question, with the interest that they be repatriated to Mexican territory through official diplomatic and legal channels.”
Enrique Esteban, co-director of the Setdart Gallery, has assured EFE that the aforementioned letter has not arrivedalthough they did receive an email on Wednesday calling for the auction to be halted in similar terms.
Given this fact, and despite not being a communication sent through official channels, the management of the auction house contacted the Historical Heritage Brigade of the Spanish Police, from where they were assured that they had no knowledge of said request, so they understood that there was no impediment to auctioning the pieces.
The gallery also replied to the sender of the email, despite the fact that the communication had not followed the appropriate channels, through the Ministry of Culture or the Heritage Brigade, informing him that the goods came from people of Spanish nationality who had legal ownership accredited of the pieces and that they could not “withdraw them without any foundation”, explained Esteban.
In this sense, they added that the gallery acted as a simple intermediary and that removing the pieces would go “against the law and would violate the rights of those owners”, while expressing their willingness to collaborate in defense of heritage as long as the appropriate channels are followed. Spanish law.
Diplomatic sources have confirmed to EFE that the Embassy of Mexico in Spain formalized before the Ministry of Foreign Affairs the request to take the corresponding measures, under the Convention on the Measures to be Adopted to Prohibit and Prevent the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property of 1970.
The Secretary of Culture of the Mexican Government had made a last attempt this Thursday to stop the auction through social networks.
“We make a strong call to stop the auction scheduled for today by the gallery @setdart, which intends to profit from 36 Mexican historical chattels from the 17th to the 9th century in Barcelona, Spain. we say it outright #MiPatrimonioNoSeVende.“
— Alejandra Frausto (@alefrausto) March 10, 2022
“We make a strong call to stop the auction scheduled for today by the @setdart gallery, which intends to profit from 36 Mexican historical movables from the 17th to 9th centuries in Barcelona, Spain. We say it outright #MiPatrimonioNoSeVende”, Alejandra Frausto wrote in her Twitter profile.
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