The Sant Jordi hall, the most emblematic space of the Palau de la Generalitat, is about to start 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 dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and which have no artistic connection with the Renaissance architecture of the room, will begin on May 2 and it is expected to be finished in sixteen months, by September 11, 2024, according to Government sources.
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, the protection and removal of the paintings will be carried out this year. 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 practised, that under the fabrics there is no exposed stone, but plastered. This is how it was originally, when it was built, like a chapel, and it will be left like this, although a minimal provisional adjustment will be made with a felt covering, in a light tone that will return its sober and bright appearance, add the aforementioned sources.
On the arches and ceiling vault, as it is a more complicated geometry, the canvas paintings were complemented with floral motifs painted directly on the plaster, which will now be left, consolidated and also covered with a finish provisional so that it looks homogeneous with the rest.
The murals that will 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 on the vaults of the ceiling and the dome.
Last term, a technical commission, made up of ten experts in heritage, considered the murals as "an ideological work, very connoted", which hides an architecture of superior artistic value. The authors, local artists, recreated commissioned scenes such as the Compromís de Casp, the Battle of Lepant or the arrival of Columbus in Barcelona before the Catholic Kings. In 2019, the experts endorsed the removal, as long as it was done "with the maximum technical guarantees to preserve its integrity and ensure its conservation", and that the replacement project included all the Renaissance architectural and decorative elements of the salon, which were rated as essential.
It is as planned in the work project. As for the paintings, they will be preserved with the highest technical guarantees in a Generalitat reserve.
"It must be clear that we are recovering heritage, we are recovering a Renaissance space, which now has paintings from 1926-1927 that do not correspond to the space, that go from the ceiling to the floor and pass over architectural elements of the renaissance", underlines Júlia Roca, architect responsible for the heritage of the Palau de la Generalitat, about the voices that have criticized the performance. "There is nothing against these paintings, they are simply better in another place, and if a museum wants to, it can exhibit them", he adds, while asking that this debate not be misrepresented.
In any case, remember that since this 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 web of scaffolding will be deployed in the Sant Jordi hall and the works will begin. Before that, the adjacent offices will be freed, such as that of the Councilor of the Presidency, Laura Vilagrà, who will go to the other end of Palau. And the monumental lamp that hangs from the dome will have to be removed to access this area of the ceiling. Then, the project for which the presidents Jordi Pujol and Pasqual Maragall already commissioned reports, will begin to become a reality.
