Calathus from the Cabezo del Tío Pío Necropolis

The main Francoist cultural institutions carried out “policies of dispossession,” through which they appropriated artistic assets taken from individuals persecuted by the dictatorship. These ended up in museums via the National Artistic Heritage Defense Service (SDPAN), the organization whose supposed object was he restitution of the tens of thousands of artistic objects that the Republic had seized to prevent their destruction. Instead, the SDPAN instead distributed them to various institutions which to this day fail to acknowledge these assets are on public display as the result of looting.

One of the most striking cases is that of the National Archaeological Museum (MAN). During its first meeting on 31 July 31, 1939, the museum’s Francoist Board, carried out several illicit appropriations. The SDPAN offered its director, Blas de Taracena, a lot consisting of ten gold coins, fifty-two silver coins, and seventy made of copper and bronze. The minutes preserved in the MAN archive record how the presidency of the Board—the museum's highest governing body—agreed to thank the service for the delivery of the coins. The Board also decided that the transfer would not be recorded as a loan, meaning it would not be a temporary arrangement until the rightful owners were found. The president, Manuel Escrivá de Romaní, Count of Casal, authorized the coins to be registered as “a definitive donation instead of a loan.”

Another of the most serious examples is the collection of Iberian ceramics owned by Carlos Walter Heiss, a collector who was stripped of the objects for serving in the Republican army, which the museum kept in 1941. Today, visitors can see the gallery dedicated to this collection, with a display case containing a kalathos (the Iberian vessel shown in the photo), labeled as originating from the necropolis of Cabezo del Tío Pío in Archena (Murcia). What is not disclosed is that this prized piece comes from the looting carried out by the museum itself, years after its attempt to purchase it from the owner failed. On 7 May 1941, Heiss's collection was already in the MAN’ store rooms, where it had been placed by the Junta for the Seizure and Protection of Artistic Heritage, the Republic’s agency charged with protecting cultural heritage. That day, the museum's director, Taracena, and the SDPAN's deputy general commissioner, Joaquín de Navascués, signed off on the appropriation of Heiss's assets. "The museum director takes custody of 83 numbered objects and 39 unnumbered ones," the minutes state. None of this is explained in the display of the artifacts

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