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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Sentient_Flesh on 2025-09-22 09:57:53+00:00.
TN: Most links below lead to sources in Spanish. All relevant excerpts have been translated by yours truly.
The British Museum.
Has nothing to do with the following writeup, but just reading those words I’m sure that there have been a number of things that have gone through the mind of the reader. One of them, very likely given how much it is talked about in relation to that place, is art theft. Because as everyone but those in charge of it know, going to places and plundering art might be a bit wrong, kind of a rude thing to do. And despite much of the discourse centering about a certain angle of it, the grubby hands of the Perfidious Albion weren’t only a problem for the Global South, just ask the Greeks.
That said, they weren’t the only ones to do this in history, far from it, in fact art pieces as the booty of conquest was something pretty normal that extended from some nebulous point of the past until, well, the nazis. And getting those back can be just as complicated as the case of the famous marbles.
Now, in the case of Spain, should you ask any Spanish student of history, art or even worse, art history, maybe even archeology, you’d be informed that there have been two major periods in which large amounts of art have been yoinked away from Spain never to return: The first was when Napoleon was around, which resulted in things like the loss of a comically large natural pearl, and the second was in the turn of the twentieth century, when art dealers and the robber barons of the Americas walked through Europe taking anything they could pay for (not necessarily to the legal owners) and dismantling it and taking it back home, which is the reason why the apse of a ruined rural Spanish church is currently in a museum in New York.
Of course all of this from above is basically a big foreign power coming in and exercising its power, be it the forces of a state or private individuals, but, what if it happened from within? What if the thief was coming from inside the house?
This writeup is about the Pazo de Meirás, and the fight to get it (and what it contains) back.
Alright, first of all, what’s a “pazo”?
Pazo is basically Galician for palace. Although more specifically refers to the Galician variant of a kind of manor house, usually built between the 17th and 19th centuries, that are rather common in northern Spain. At the time, the post-feudal ancien regime nobility of Spain normally congregated in luxurious urban mansions that were termed palaces, much like the Italian palazzos, and unlike in the Anglosphere where (except for two exceptions) the term was reserved for the residences of royalty; but quite often the descendants of newly made aristocracy would built homes in their villages (be it the one from their ancestry or the one their title aludes to) that may be a bit more luxurious than those around it, depending on how much they can show off. Pazos can range from just a large stone house with a coat of arms on it, built by then minor rural nobility, to downright sumptuous mansions made by wealthy politicians.
The Pazo de Meirás is this one.
So, from this point onwards, whenever the term comes up, I’m talking about that one specifically, just to not have to call it by name every time.
The pazo - A brief history.
While it existed in several forms since at least the middle ages, the current pazo was built by Doña Emilia del Pardo-Bazán, the second countess Pardo Bazán, who apart from an aristocrat was also a noted novelist, poetess, playwright, literary critic, journalist, editor, professor, socialité, translator, food critic and writer, pusher for art conservation, early feminist and suffragette,
Oh, and she also had opinions™ on Jews. Just saying so it doesn’t come as overly glazing her.
Upon her death, the pazo went to be property of her son Jaime, pictured here in a caricature of the time, who was also a writer and a soldier. He also participated in a failed coup-de-etat, which got him arrested by an Anarchist milita and promptly killed by firing squad. The property then went to his widow Manuela, who sold it two years later to a small organization of various local authorities. They in turn donated it to fellow Galician novelist Francisco Franco. Who may or may not have been a fascist dictator, that’s a point of contention.
Anyway, since the Franco’s got it, they used it as their private summer residence while the guy lived, and given that it was theirs, they kept using it ever since, which some people didn’t take a particularily good opinion on:
The morning of August 30, 2017, [a] group of people, among them various members of BNG [T/N: Galician Nationalist Party] (among them congressman Nestor Rego) broke inside the estate , going inside the pazo and into its roof (…) According to the Sada gendarmerie, part of the group remained in the garden, with signs that read “Return what has been stolen. Francoism never again.” Another went into the roof, where they put on a vertical sign on the front that read “The pazo is of the Galician People. Francoism never again.”
Not only that, but come 2018, when both the country’s governement changed hands to a progressive coalition, and Franco’s daughter and matriarch of the family Carmen Polo kicked the bucket, the Franco’s had kind of a big problem on their hands. As it happens, one of the pet projects of the new prime minister Pedro Sánchez was going against them, hard, beginning with kicking the dictator from his monumental tomb, removing all aristocratic titles conceded to his circle, and so on and so forth. Oh, and they had debts, a non-insignificant amount, so when that year they decided to put the manor for sale, all hell broke loose.
So, now, after this history lesson, you may we wondering, dear reader, if this is just drama about some crusty not-so-impressive manor owned by the family of someone who was extraordinarily unpleasant even for the Austrian man who ruined a moustache style. Well, yes, and also, should you have read the title, it’s about two statues.
The Plundered Portico.
This is the Portico of Glory, main entrance to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, one of the most impressive cathedrals in Spain and final destination of the Camino de Santiago, also known as The Way of Saint James, one of the main pilgrimages of Christendom in general and Catholicism in particular, which runs through much of Western Europe and ends right there, in the shrine where the legend claims is located the tomb of one of the apostles of Big J. It is also one of the masterpieces of Romanesque sculpture, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who sees the picture.
And thus, very, very, very imporant. In fact, part of a World Heritage site.
It’s also, incomplete. As it happens, Franco, who was in a visit to the city in 1960 really liked two statues that were in the portico, which represented Abraham and Isaac (of Bible fame, I’m told that book has a pretty big fandom, a very active one at that) and basically went “I want those”, and being a fascist dictator, well, he dictated. So he got the statues. And they were in the pazo ever since, decorating a side of its chapel in a move that, to my taste at least, is a bit tacky.
In 2017, the mayor of Santiago (de Compostela, for short) sent an official document to the Franco’s asking for the return of the statues. He was met with a “nope”, and quite possibly a “LMAO”, but I’m yet to find proof of that one.
Then, just the next year the government thing happened and Polo’s Wikipedia article changed to past tense.
Old Frank’s family fucking lose their home.
Couldn’t have happened to better people.
The Franco’s had legal issues regarding the pazo for a while. For one, back in 2007, they didn’t want it becoming officially recognized as a historical site, as that would mean they would be legally required to have it open to the public for the inmense amount of 4 days a month, and being their summer home, that’s clearly terrible. So being a noble and politically connected family, they used their resources so that it would not happen, taking the Galician government to cour-
Decree 299/2008, of the 30th of December, by which the Towers of Meirás, located within the municipality of Sada, in the province of A Coruña, are declared an Item of Cultural Interest, in the category of Historical Site.
Well, they still refused to allow it and eventually, in 2017 ended up being fined for an amount that some considered laughable.
But back on topic, in 2018, the Franco’s put the pazo for sale , which was a broadly disliked decision and in July of that year, all parties with representation in the Galician parliament sent a petition to the central Spanish government to take that to court.
And that’s exactly what they did.
[In 2019, following investigations on the topic, a document from 1938 signed by the governor of the region suddenly comes …
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1nniakl/art_preservation_the_not_so_thrilling_tale_of_the/