Arte, botín de guerra

For the Franco regime, the Republic was the enemy of heritage and religion, whose power was controlled by the "reds", and barbarism, chaos, iconoclasm and the theft of patrimonial assets dominated its territory. However, this accusation, which it would maintain with insistence throughout its existence, hid for decades the work of republican safeguarding of works of art and their destiny in the immediate postwar period. The author of this book (recognized expert in the study of the future of heritage during the war and postwar period in Spain and director of several international conferences on the subject, the last one held at the Prado Museum in 2019) had been wondering for years what had been. the destination during the first Franco regime of the thousands of works saved and stored by the Republic during the war. After the award of two R&D projects dedicated to this field and after five years of research, he pours the surprising results here. Part of the study of Republican and Francoist policies during the war to focus on the fate that Francoist managers gave to these works in the immediate postwar period. The essential nucleus of the book analyzes Franco's management of approximately 17,000 works stored by the Republic, which were in many cases returned to their owners, although a large number were diverted to other recipients, who, however, recognized in many cases as theirs. The study of the deliveries in deposit of thousands of these pieces to museums, organizations, the Church and even individuals is an unprecedented research novelty, which led to the looting, the diaspora and the disappearance of numerous works. In many ways, this Francoist plunder has unquestionable parallels with that carried out by the Nazis in the same years. It is art as spoils of war.