Francoist Service for the Defence of Cultural Heritage in Catalonia

The social revolution that was triggered by the military coup of 18 July 1936 and the subsequent war had a profound impact on cultural heritage. The iconoclastic violence in the Republican zone was quickly countered by protective measures taken by the governments of the Republic and Catalonia. The Republic highlighted its policies of cultural protection in its international propaganda; in April 1938 the Francoists responded by creating the National Artistic Patrimony Defence Service (SDPAN). The photograph shows SDPAN agents in Barcelona’s Estación de Francia receiving the works of art that had been sent to Paris for the exhibit on “Catalan art, from the 10th to the 15th centuries”.

The SDPAN was created as a military unit composed of cultural heritage professionals whose mission was to manage artistic patrimony in territory occupied by the rebel army. It was organized in regional branches, and the Levante Regional Office was responsible for doing this in Catalonia after it was occupied.

The SDPAN plan for Catalonia was created in Aragón by a group of fifty people, most of whom were from Aragon and Catalonia, under the command of José María Muguruza Otaño, commissioner of the Levante region. An advance party commanded by Enric Monjo Garriga was to report on the peculiarities of the situation in Catalonia.

After first acting in the Aragonese provinces of Teruel, Huesca, and Zaragoza, in April 1938, the agents moved into the Catalonian province of Lleida to prepare reports and inventories of what they discovered. With the conclusion of the Battle of the Ebro in November 1938 they turned their attention to the rest of Catalonia, focusing on taking control of the large stores of artistic objects. They created a special “Occupation Plan” for Barcelona, and assigned agents to the various districts of the city.

Once they had established themselves in Catalonia, the SDPAN agents headed for the warehouses the Republicans had set up near the French border in Olot, Peralada, Figueres, Darnius, Agullana and La Vajol to safeguard cultural heritage objects. In this way, the Service’s activity during the war was to take control of the patrimony that Republican institutions had saved and brought together in storage facilities.

When the war in Catalonia ended on 10 February 1939, the SDPAN’s main goal was to transfer the objects in the storage facilities to Barcelona so they could be returned to their owners. This was possible because, in most cases, the Republic’s records made it possible to determine the ownership of objects that had been confiscated or saved. To claim their property, owners had to present documentation testifying that they were supporters of the regime and demonstrating they owned the objects they were claiming, as well as paying the costs associated with storing and conserving them.

This system made it impossible for people who were being persecuted politically, caught up in Francoist punitive processes, or in exile, as well people who had died during the war to reclaim their property. Objects that went unclaimed were given on loan to public and private museums and other institutions, where many remain today.

ECC