The Sant Jordi room, the most emblematic space of the Palau de la Generalitat, is about to begin a journey back in time to recover the appearance it had in 1616, when the architect Pere Blai finished its construction. The work to remove the paintings that cover the walls and ceiling of the room, commissioned during the Primo de Rivera dictatorship and which have no artistic connection with the Renaissance architecture of the room, will begin on May 2 and it is expected that be ready in sixteen months, by September 11, 2024, Government sources report.
The project has been entrusted to the company Urcotext, specialist in heritage and winner of the public tender, with a budget of 1.9 million euros.
In a first phase, this year, the removal of the paintings will be carried out. Then, pictorial and constructive surveys will be made to determine the type of materials underneath and their thickness. It is known, from the coves that have been practiced, that under the canvases there is no visible stone, but plaster. This is how it was originally, when it was built, as a chapel, and it will remain that way, although a minimal provisional adaptation will be made with a felt covering, in a light tone that will restore the sober and luminous appearance it once had, add the aforementioned sources. .
In the arches and the vault of the ceiling, as it is a more complicated geometry, the canvas paintings were complemented with some floral motifs painted directly on the plaster, which will now be left, consolidated and also covered with a provisional finish so that they look homogeneous with the rest.
The murals that are going to be removed occupy a total of 858 m². It is a large extension, and hence the duration of the works. Specifically, there are 24 large-format paintings on canvas, on the walls, and another 45 smaller ones, around the ceiling and dome.
In the last legislature, a technical commission, made up of ten heritage experts, considered the murals “a highly renowned ideological work” that hides an architecture of superior artistic value. The authors, local artists, recreated commissioned scenes such as the Compromise of Caspe, the battle of Lepanto or the arrival of Columbus in Barcelona before the Catholic Monarchs. The experts endorsed its removal in 2019, provided that it was done “with the maximum technical guarantees to preserve its integrity and ensure conservation” and that the replacement project included all the Renaissance architectural and decorative elements of the hall, which it considered essential.
This is how it is planned in the construction project. As for the paintings, they will be preserved with the maximum technical guarantees, in a reserve of the Generalitat.
“It must be clear that we are recovering heritage, we are recovering a Renaissance space, which now has some paintings from 1926-1927 that do not correspond to the space, which go from the ceiling to the floor and go over Renaissance architectural elements†, emphasizes Júlia Roca, the architect responsible for the heritage of the Palau de la Generalitat, who comes up against the voices that have criticized the action. “There is nothing against these paintings, they are simply better elsewhere, and if a museum wants to, it can exhibit them,” she adds, while asking that the debate not be distorted.
In any case, remember that as it is an action on heritage, everything is reversible. And, if there was any doubt, the Generalitat has a digital clone of the entire room, portrayed to the millimeter in its more than 400 m², from the shots of a laser scanner captured in January 2022.
In less than a month, a tangle of scaffolding will be deployed in the Sant Jordi room and the works will begin. Before that, the adjacent offices will be released, such as that of the Minister of the Presidency, Laura Vilagrà , who will go to the other end of the Palau. And it will be necessary to take down the monumental lamp that hangs from the dome to be able to access that area of ​​the ceiling. Then, the project for which the presidents Jordi Pujol and Pasqual Maragall have already commissioned reports will begin to be a reality.
