The large mural by Joan Miró that presides over the facade of T2 at El Prat airport will change location, as the Barcelona artist himself would have wished. Aena has decided to move it to the facade of T1, taking advantage of the remodeling of the terminal to install new security filters. There are few precedents in the world for the transfer of a work of art of this dimension and relevance.
The action, the cost of which has not yet been budgeted, will serve to revalue the ceramic mural, since it will be placed in a noble location, more in line with its artistic and historical importance.
The entire process of adapting T1 and definitive transfer of the mural will last around two years. But the work to move the work will start in the coming weeks, according to sources from the airport manager. A committee of experts made up of members of the Fundación Enaire – the owner of the mural – and the Miró Foundation will analyze the best method to transport it without it suffering any damage.
It is a large-scale work, fifty meters wide and ten high, made up of 4,865 ceramic pieces designed in collaboration with the prestigious ceramist and art critic Josep Llorens Artigas. Opened in 1970 to welcome visitors arriving by air in Barcelona, ??the evolution of T2 has not kept pace with its purpose. After the opening of the modern T1 in 2009, the old terminal has been losing weight. This is where the pure and hard low cost airlines now concentrate their activity, and in front of the mural there is a nondescript car park. A location and use that do not do justice to the creator of the Constellations.
The situation will be reversed. Aena plans to call for tenders for the T1 improvement works in the coming months, with a series of actions that will affect the main facade. The company will install in the terminal new filters with scanners that will allow passengers to pass security checks without having to remove liquids or laptops from handbags and suitcases. In order to fit these filters, the entire facade will have to be moved a few meters towards the area where the current access roads are. It will be there where the ceramic mural will be repositioned – see graphic -.
Apart from moving the facade and the arrivals and departures indicator, Aena plans to extend the central cover of T1 and cover patios. The remodeling is independent of the possible expansion of the airport, still in the negotiation phase between the central government and the Generalitat, and is included in the strategic plan of the manager for the period 2022-2026. The listed company, 51% owned by the State through Enaire, is already in contact with the family of the architect Ricardo Bofill to preserve the original architectural design of the terminal.
Aena’s decision to move the mosaic fulfills a wish formulated by Joan Miró himself to this newspaper. In a handwritten note sent to the journalist Lluís Permanyer in 1971 (see the attached article), the artist tells him that “this mural has been designed in a way that can be easily dismantled and placed in another place, with which it is seen that it foresees the possible eventuality that in the future the needs of growth will force the airport to be moved to another more suitable area”.
It has not been a transfer but the modernization of the airport that has relegated the old main terminal to a secondary role, which has not recovered and will not recover the pulse it had when it concentrated all the flights.
The displacement of the mosaic between terminals thus responds to the doubts expressed half a century ago by a visionary Miró. But the relevance of the operation will once again place Barcelona’s most universal artist under the spotlight. The operation of moving the mural will be a work of engineering worthy of being explained.
The city has never turned its back on Miró, who was born in Passage del Crèdit, very close to the site of the Rambla where his famous pavement mosaic is located. The foundation that defends his work has just dedicated to the artist one of the best exhibitions that have been seen in Barcelona in decades, in collaboration with the Picasso Museum.
His works such as the mosaic on the Rambla or the sculpture Woman and Bird, in the Escorxador park, are well preserved and set in relief. The MNAC, for its part, has in recent years had the gesture of calling its press conferences and other public events in front of the Mural for IBM, a fact that serves to give visibility to an excellent work of ceramic art which the artist did for the computer company in 1978.
But, in some way, a certain collective passivity or lack of determination prevented Joan Miró’s name from being forever associated with El Prat airport, as promoted by its foundation and as claimed for years by the same chronicler Permanyer. In the midst of the pro-independence process, the government of Pedro Sánchez saw the political opportunity to honor the Catalanist and Pactist legacy of Josep Tarradellas by renaming the facility after him, in the face of the silence of the Generalitat and the Barcelona councils and the meadow
The opportunity was thus lost to associate the airport with an inspiring name for any global art lover, in the vein of Liverpool-John Lennon, Rome-Leonardo Da Vinci, New Orleans-Louis Armstrong or of Lyon-Saint Exupéry.
Now, the same Executive of Pedro Sánchez is launching a rescue operation for the most voluminous Miró, which, finally, can bring about some historical justice. Because it cannot be ruled out that, naturally, T-1 at El Prat airport will be called Terminal Miró. Such is the impact that the mural can have in its – once again – privileged location.
