Another ignorant restoration in Spain: disfigured 1920s relief

Spain is increasingly confirming itself as the home of devastating restorations: after the most recent case, a copy from Murillo atrociously repainted this summer, the latest ignorant restoration in a long series, this time it is the turn of Palencia, an important city of 80,000 inhabitants in Castile, where the restoration of a relief on the façade of a 1923 building has caused outrage and hilarity. The building, at number 9 Calle Mayor, the main street of the Castilian city, is the former headquarters of the Federación Católica-Agraria (today it is instead the headquarters of a banking institution), and the relief depicts (or rather, perhaps it should be said... “depicted”) an allegory of agriculture, with a peasant woman in front of a pair of stick animals.

The woman’s face has been horribly disfigured, and comments are rife on Spanish social media: “it looks like a cartoon,” says painter Antonio Guzmán Capel, the first to notice the horrible intervention. According to others it was meant to be an homage to Picasso, for still others the face resembles that of Donald Trump, and everyone remembers the case, which has become world-famous, of Borja’sEcce Homo, the first of the infamous “Spanish restorations” to gain worldwide fame: in short, irony runs rampant on the net after yet another disaster of improvised restorers who have become something of a plague in Spain. The former headquarters of the Federación Católica-Agraria is one of the most conspicuous buildings on Calle Mayor, but no light has yet been shed on the incident: perhaps, it is speculated in the newspaper Publico.es, during recent restoration work on the building a part of the relief came off and was therefore badly replaced, probably in the hope that no one would notice the misdeed.

The debate about the profession of restorer, which had already been animated this summer, is thus rekindled in Spain: in the Iberian country, in fact, the profession is not regulated, and the goal of the Professional Association of Conservators and Restorers of Spain (ACRE) is to change the state of affairs.

In the following images: the Federación Católica-Agraria building (from Google) and the survey before and after.

See also: the 10 strangest or most disastrous restorations of recent times

Another ignorant restoration in Spain: disfigured 1920s relief

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