The artistic event of the moment for the Aragonese establishment is an exhibition on Francisco de Goya in the Aljafería, the medieval palace where the community’s Cortes are based. 62 works can be seen there from the month of December and for at least the next two years, including 34 oil paintings, four albums of prints, other loose engravings, drawings, a couple of sculptures, correspondence… It is the first of a new series to materialize of initiatives to vindicate the painter in his land of origin, with an eye toward the bicentennial of his death, in 2028. If they prosper, then they will have their doors open to the Plaza del Pilar, next to the basilica that guards the great Zaragoza totem, at least three buildings (there may be four) dedicated to his memory. Feeding such an offer will require, in a land with stingy cultural budgets, “the largest mobilization of economic resources carried out so far in the community at the service of a cultural project,” according to the commitment announced by the regional government; in addition to a lot of imagination, seeking complicity between institutions and with the private sector and resorting to the virtual because… is there so much Goya in Aragon?
The paintings that feed the exhibition in the Aljafería, titled ‘Goya, from the museum to the palace’, are from his youth, there are also some long portraits and, likewise, a few rarities. It is an appreciable collection, and well known: almost one hundred percent the same one that was presented with free entry until November 2023 in the Zaragoza Museum, state-owned and autonomously managed, which has since been closed for renovations. To see it in its new location you have to pay seven euros, nine if you go with a guide.
Even though you have to go through the cash register, it is going to be, and already is, a public success. Among other things, because of the promotional campaign that the Cortes have financed, because of its extension in time and because the exhibition includes a visit to the Aljafería: if you look up, you find yourself visiting some of the noblest spaces of a magnificent building that is the great northern jewel of Islamic art in Europe.
The host, the president of the regional Parliament, Marta Fernández (Vox), seeks to gain a more institutional profile with this exhibition. Although at its inauguration it was not avoided to explain that it has been installed in the “Christian zone” of the Aljafería (the building was the residence of the Aragonese monarchs after the Saraqusta taifa was completed), ignoring what truly distinguishes the monument: its Muslim origin.
Fernández, who also alluded at that event to the unity of Spain and the defense of bullfighting, highlighted that the original proposal to move the Goyas to the medieval palace came from Arancha Echeverría-Torres, member of the Vox executive in the province of Zaragoza and her “cultural advisor”. It is an idea that has fit with the plans of Jorge Azcón, previously as mayor of Zaragoza and now as regional president for the PP, to take advantage at home of the ‘hook’ of one of the main painters in history when he gets closer the bicentenary of his death in Bordeaux, with its foreseeable national commemorations and also in other countries.
From academic to virtual
Francisco de Goya made his career in Madrid and today he is in first place in the Prado. But to tie his name and his memory definitively to his birthplace, to Zaragoza, is an old and shared desire in this city, although the means to materialize it are discussed. In the last three decades, there has been notable progress in the knowledge and appreciation of his youth, with the restoration of the paintings he left in temples in several municipalities (including those in the Pilar basilica or the Aula Dei charterhouse in the capital. Aragonese), with some acquisitions of works, organizing exhibitions and high-level scientific meetings, working from the Goya Foundation in Aragon on a catalog raisonné of all his production that has become a reference, with other publications, also promoting tourist routes…
A cultural center was about to materialize, in the abandoned School of Arts, next to the Museum of Zaragoza and connected to it, where works preserved in their land of origin could be brought together, both in public and private hands, and present them with a shared discourse that contextualizes them in a temporal, geographic and emotional map. But the 2008 crisis ended up aborting the project when it was very advanced and already had a proposal for an architectural solution from the Swiss Pritzkers. Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, who had won the corresponding ideas competition. The way was clear for Ibercaja to take over the name of the Goya Museum and thus rename in 2015 the artistic center that previously bore the name of the professor and collector José Camón Aznar, on Espoz y Mina street in Zaragoza, where it now conserves. permanent his own collection, which stands out for having all his main series of engravings, and which has just closed for renovations.
What has come after has diluted some ways of doing things marked by the desire for dissemination and by academic criteria and, lately, paved the way for other more marketing-oriented ones to promote the ‘Goya Zaragoza’ brand, very much to the taste of Azcón’s successor to the in front of the Town Hall, Natalia Chueca. Among these, some spring ‘goyaesque festivals’ that have been celebrated since 2022 with parades, theatricalizations of paintings and large-scale reproductions of these in which to take photographs or the well-known ‘videomapping’ shows, or the placement in the streets of busts of Goya, also large in size, worked on by young artists.
Buried remains
Francisco de Goya was a Zaragoza native who was born in Fuendetodos because the residence his family owned in his city was being renovated and he found accommodation for a time in the town, in the home of one of his uncles. But soon they were back at home in the Aragonese capital, where his five siblings were born and he spent most of his childhood. They lost it years later when they could not afford the loans requested for that rehabilitation. The archaeologist and historian José Luis Ona, determined to “mark Goya’s work biographically”, identified in a book this and nine other properties, already rented, in which he lived in his youth in Zaragoza. One of them remains standing, at number 4 in the Plaza de San Miguel, poorly signposted. In other locations, not even that.
The very touched Zaragoza that survived the Sieges of the French in the Goyesque era has continued to be implacable with its historical-artistic heritage, especially due to urban speculation, but also due to neglect. That first family home wore a plaque that identified it between 1928, when it was placed on the centenary of Goya’s death, and 1946, when it was demolished precisely in the year of the 200th anniversary of his birth! And a golden opportunity has just been lost to study, at almost no economic cost, what several of the local Goyistas demanded, what remains of their cellars (a lot is assumed) and foundations. The current Salamero plaza, where it was located, has been the subject of a comprehensive remodeling for three years after the collapse of an underground parking lot in 2020. During these works, remains appeared where expected, which, after several municipal versions on the matter, , ended up being buried again, without much further explanation.
At the same time, the same City Council was already working on a project to present Goya without works by Goya in the Plaza del Pilar, in La Lonja. I wanted to stop programming temporary exhibitions there and put it at the service of one of those ‘immersive experiences’ with projections about popular artists that are so in vogue and who usually tour various cities making box office, but in the Renaissance building, protected as an Asset of Interest Cultural, it would have a permanent character. It was considered installing elevators on the façade that faces the Echegaray and Caballero avenue to provide access to an upper floor, which would be enabled, thus gaining space. The Provincial Heritage Commission stopped this project at the end of 2022 due to its concerns, but the council did not reject the idea of making the Lonja, which is protected as an Asset of Cultural Interest, a Goyesque center (or that, at least, be refurbished for a major exhibition on the artist during the bicentennial).
Natalia Chueca has just assured that there will be no aggressive intervention in the monument, after a campaign to collect signatures against it, although the City Council does not give up on ‘touching’ the Lonja with the perspective of the bicentennial. And now, with the Popular Party in the autonomous and municipal power, it goes hand in hand in its projects with the Aragonese Government, which, for the moment, has sought an alternative for that virtual installation with the desire that it can be operational this year : the church of San Juan de los Panetes, at the other end of the same Plaza del Pilar.
Likewise in this square, in what used to be a courthouse, the regional Executive intends to open one more Goyesque center by 2028. With a million-dollar investment, it will be supported by the collection that is now exhibited in the Aljafería and that would no longer return to the Zaragoza Museum.
And finally, the Goya Museum of Ibercaja will also appear on the Plaza del Pilar, opening a new façade on the neighboring Santiago street. Work is already underway on an intervention commissioned from architect Sergio Sebastián that will significantly expand its exhibition space and incorporate its own ‘immersive experience’.
Thus, a few meters away, in the biggest tourist attraction in Zaragoza, up to three buildings dedicated to the artist will open by 2028 (four if the Lonja also ends with this destination), whose work can also be seen in the Pilar basilica itself, decorating a dome and the vault of the coret, and in the immediate Alma Mater Museum, the former diocesan one, which preserves its portrait of Archbishop Joaquín Company.
Quiet unrest and open protests
At the same time, among the purposes that the Government of Aragon and the City Council now share, a possible urban planning operation has also been proposed in this Goyesque environment, with a pedestrianization towards the Ebro. And there are other initiatives such as renaming the Delicias intermodal station as Goya.
The plans for the next Goya bicentennial with a round date have not yet had the advice of the scientific community usual in other times. When three of the main Aragonese experts were consulted, two of them openly questioned its rigor and timeliness and the other said they were waiting to see how they were implemented. They agree that the majority feel that they are being ignored and point out the ‘break’ that it will mean for the Zaragoza Museum if it reopens without its works by Goya. But these reproaches are expressed in private.
In other sectors of the local world that is attentive to artistic issues, criticism is open. They have been visualized in the signature campaign (about 10,000 have been collected) to stop the intervention in the Lonja, promoted by the heritage dissemination company Gozarte. And they are shared by the ZGZ Cultural Block, an active citizen platform that brings together some 300 creators and managers. Rocío Gallardo acts as spokesperson: “We ask for a cultural model that is not solely based on consumption, always paying and occupying public spaces to do so. The topic of Goya is coming up in the assemblies and we are going to address it. The goyesca is a staging of this current policy of selfies, of waste, which totally attacks cultural rights. It falls within a city model that we reject and the idea is to continue taking actions,” he proclaims.
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