The National Police has recovered a sculpture of a bull of Iberian origin dating from between the 4th and 5th century BC. It is a piece from looting and has been located in a museum belonging to a private foundation in the province of Tarragona.
The investigation, which began in 2020, has managed to find the person responsible for the looting: a resident of a town in the province of Córdoba. On that date, the agents found the archaeological piece, which was intact and restored. However, it caught the attention of the researchers that it was clearly made up of two stone blocks.
And it is that for some time now the National Police carried out steps aimed at locating and recovering two stone blocks that were part of the sculpture of an Iberian bull. There were references to them in an academic article from 2004 published by a prestigious archaeologist, as well as a review on a blog by a person living in Córdoba.
For this reason, the researchers contacted these two people who made it clear in their statement that they were able to see the two fragments shortly after their appearance in the field, a fact that had happened when a person was carrying out agricultural work at the end of the the 90's.
At that time, the current Spanish Historical Heritage Law was already in force, so the finding had to be communicated to the competent authorities as it was property of the public domain. A communication that, according to the police force, was not carried out. For this reason, the recognition of the finding and subsequent sale by the person who found it proves the illicit origin of the piece.
