Jesús García Calero: The beyond Urtasun

In ABC we had been asking Ernest Urtasun for a year and a half at every time he gave us for this issue and until today he had not even said this mummy is mine. Nor are there more clues about how the technical report and count of affected remains have been made, an interesting debate because it invokes criteria well known as those of the ICOM, yes, in an interpretation of new sensibilities.

Funeral rites define human communities and, as such, are the foundation of archeology and paleontology. Knowledge about many civilizations, from which almost nothing is known, comes from the study of their burials. There is nothing new under the sun. Francisco de Quevedo wrote in 1621 that “death do not know her, and you are your death.” And he also said in that ‘dream of death’ that “the skull is the dead and the face is death and what you call dying is to finish dying and what you call is birth is to start dying and what you call living is dying living ». .

The Ministry of Culture now adopts a new interpretation of the ICOM agreements, the UN International Museum Organization, without the ICOM having updated the agreements since 1984 since 2004. Those who were present then (or we were pending to inform ) We know that rules were established: that mummies (especially the Egyptian) would be shown with maximum dignity, not spectacular, and that they would not be in a Central place of the tour, but in a room where the public could see them only if so. The Egyptian ICOM refused to withdraw them and therefore has modernized its exhibition at the Museum of Civilizations. It was also in the MAN, which installed them in a room, the Guanche already submitted it to such a discreet lighting treatment that there are those who pass by without seeing it.

Even if politicians do not do it, in a Quevedesco sense, science must continue to learn from mummies. The MAN conducted a study of its mummies with the most advanced broadcasting techniques that was already published in scientific journals and of which we gave a good account in ABC with a report on foot of CT in the Quironsalud clinic. The study was published two years later, counting secrets that excessively justify the interest of these pieces.

Minister Fosor has not satisfied this first step. The sweet mummy Guanche, in his eternal dream, will be followed as many human remains in the national museums that depend on his power, except those that are formed by hair, nails and teeth “detached or voluntarily delivered” (is that he has guasa the Minister, do not tell me), because they are things that are saved by the hair, they see.

There is a policy point show in all this. The scenery, that Hamletian silence of Urtasun for a year and a half, and this surprise decision is very colorful among the decolonial groups. Just in case, his second in the Ministry, Jordi Martí, establishes in statements to the avant -garde that “we must take” that anti -colonial logic of this matter, address human remains and remove them from the exhibition, come from where they come from. In case someone thinks of Franco’s mummy, it is clear that we are not talking about the same government effort. In fact, in addition to the worthy Mrs. Guanche del Man, the showcases of the Museum of America will be overshadow , and it is already a coincidence, in the Quimbaya Treasury room, the one that Urtasun would want to return illegally.

I agree on the modernization of museum speeches, which must be done for the present, but I doubt that this new sensitivity that is invoked to withdraw these archaeological remains and that begins precisely by the two museums most indicated by the political ambitions of Add and Urtasun for returns of returns (the lady of Elche is always invoked), and several decolonial issues, have only one scientific objective. It seems that certain national museums bother them, for their speech or their origin, for their way of explaining our history. Maybe for them, as for the mummies, a new beyond is already thought of.