Mystery solved: the debtor who paid the Álava Treasury with ‘goyas’ and other paintings was the businessman Juan Celaya

The Minister of Governance, Digital Administration and Self-Government, María Ubarretxena, has revealed the mystery: the great debtor to the Provincial Treasury of Álava that motivated the payment in kind with four complete series of engravings by Francisco de Goya and dozens of other paintings, some of great value as Aurelio Arteta’s Civil War triptych, was Juan Celaya himself. Although it was an open secret, because the paintings had been his and he was a great collector, an official document from the Basque Government signed by Ubarretxena and delivered to the regional Parliament at the end of October at the request of EH Bildu points directly to the businessman who died in 2016 as the defaulter, a piece of information that the Provincial Council had kept under lock and key, clinging to the confidentiality of the tax files.

The definitive sequence of the incorporation into the public heritage of this great collection of works of art, facts advanced by this newspaper, is now completely clear. The ownership of the pieces, whose last estimate was 4.3 million euros, passed after the death of the owner of industries such as Cegasa or Tuboplast to the foundation with his name, apparently non-profit and established in 2007 for the promotion of the Basque and Basque culture. It was impossible for the foundation to be the defaulter since it is not subject to the tax that was settled, the Heritage tax. Either Celaya was the debtor or the paintings had been transferred to a third party, an operation of dubious legal reserve.

However, it is now known that in February 2021 this entity informed the Protectorate of Foundations of the Basque Country, dependent on the regional Executive, that it had inherited both the material and a “debt.” And he anticipated him since he was considering getting rid of the assets to pay it off. It was in fiscal year 2022 when the collection was finally delivered. This process was parallel to a transfer from the Celaya Foundation to the Álava Museum of Fine Arts, also dependent on the collection, for the temporary exhibition of some of the works.

Ubarretxena, in his response to the request for information from the EH Bildu parliamentarian Gorka Ortiz from Guinea, the same one who asked the Provincial Council about the history of the paintings since he also has a seat in the General Meetings of Álava, also states that the Foundation Celaya has not operated with complete transparency in recent years and, in fact, has been excluded from possibly obtaining public aid. Specifically, this entity has not diligently presented its annual accounts in the usual manner. For example, “it presented the annual accounts for 2021 after the registration closure resolution.” Specifically, he did so in February 2024, a few weeks before the matter of the paintings was publicly revealed. Those for 2022 were delivered in May of this year, so yes with all the focus on her. There is no evidence that those for 2023 have been registered. The measures applied due to these delays, according to Ubarretxena, are the “impossibility” of carrying out procedures beyond the “legal exceptions” and, above all, the “impossibility of obtaining subsidies or public aid.” ”.

Some million-dollar pieces

The history of Goya’s engravings and the paintings of Arteta and other artists transcended on April 1. The relevance of the case is threefold. On the one hand, the artistic value of the heritage is unquestionable. Arteta’s triptych alone, for example, is valued at 1.2 million euros. It has been exhibited at the Guggenheim as a contemporary piece to Pablo Picasso’s ‘Guernica’, with whom it shares a theme. And the four complete collections of original copies of the main series of engravings by Francisco de Goya (‘The disasters of war’, ‘Tauromaquia’, ‘Caprichos’ and ‘Los proverbios’ or ‘Los disparates’) reach a value of 1 .5 million too. On the other hand, Celaya was a very relevant character in Basque social life. And, finally, the 4.3 million dación in payment represented 20% of the total income from Assets for the year 2022 at the Álava Estate, one of the smallest in Europe, and could suggest an undeclared hidden asset above 250 million euros, since the maximum rate is 2.5%.

Many of the paintings – and among them the most relevant pieces in the collection – were already in practice in the hands of the Museum of Fine Arts after the 2018 agreement. The museum, for example, had already been exhibiting Arteta’s triptych before becoming with its full ownership. One of the points criticized by the opposition, which denounced the “obscurantism” of the Álava Treasury in this operation, is that six years ago the collection was valued at a price much lower than that which was later obtained to settle the tax debt. In figures, initially a price of 191,000 euros was set for the Goyesque engravings and it has now been learned that they were worth almost ten times more. Arteta’s triptych also rose by 0.2 million.

In the summer, the Culture area of ​​the Provincial Council highlighted the “qualitative” relevance of this art collection. In June there were seven of these pieces on display to the public in the Vitoria art gallery, including the Arteta as the crown jewel. Six more were scheduled to be definitively restored “in the fall.” Likewise, it was explained that the technical teams were going to “intervene” in three of the four series of Goya engravings. The importance of three wooden carvings was also noted, one of them from the 13th century.

The artistic advisor of the Celaya Foundation claims to be unaware of the details of this operation. The entity, as such, has not responded to the calls from this newspaper. When the news broke, he limited himself to stating that they had no tax debts.