{"id":7242,"date":"2026-04-18T22:40:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T22:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/7242\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T22:40:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T22:40:11","slug":"guernica-has-been-moved-many-times-is-once-more-too-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/7242\/","title":{"rendered":"Guernica Has Been Moved Many Times. Is Once More Too Much?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"storyParagraph\">&#13;<br \/>\n                                        Spain&#8217;s most famous protest painting is now at the center of a political standoff of its own. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/smart-news\/where-does-this-anti-war-masterpiece-belong-in-spain-a-request-to-borrow-picassos-guernica-sparks-a-bitter-debate-180988533\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Smithsonian<\/a> magazine&#8217;s Ryley Graham reports, in part via El Pais, that Basque leaders want Pablo Picasso&#8217;s Guernica temporarily sent from Madrid&#8217;s Reina Sof\u00eda Museum\u2014its home since 1992\u2014to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao for events marking the 90th anniversary of the 1937 bombing that inspired it. Graham notes the Guggenheim sits a short distance from the town of Guernica, and <a href=\"https:\/\/news.artnet.com\/art-world\/picasso-guernica-loan-outrage-2762929\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Artnet<\/a> reports the proposed exhibition would begin Oct. 1 and run through June 30, 2027.&#13;\n                                    <\/p>\n<p class=\"storyParagraph\">&#13;<br \/>\n                                        The Basque government says it will pay all costs and set up a special technical team to oversee the move\u2014with Basque government leader Imanol Pradales arguing last month that it&#8217;s a &#8220;serious political mistake&#8221; to shut down the idea. Madrid has thus far said no. Spanish culture minister Ernest Urtasun rejected the loan request on April 7, citing a fresh conservation report from the Reina Sof\u00eda warning that any new transport could worsen cracks and paint loss in the 25.5-foot-long canvas, which has endured more than 30 past moves. &#8220;Celebrating the 90th anniversary of Guernica should also mean ensuring that this work can last another 90 years,&#8221; Urtasun said.&#13;\n                                    <\/p>\n<p class=\"storyParagraph\">&#13;<br \/>\n                                        Basque officials pushed back on the report, which they say wasn&#8217;t what they asked for: &#8220;We didn&#8217;t request a report on the painting&#8217;s state of conservation\u2014we already know its condition\u2014but rather a report analyzing the conditions under which it would be possible to move it and temporarily relocate it to the Basque Country.&#8221; Artnet notes the Basque government has made numerous loan requests dating to the 1990s; the artwork has not left Madrid since 1981. A 2000 request by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theartnewspaper.com\/2026\/04\/10\/spanish-culture-ministry-denies-loan-picassos-guernica-bilbao\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Art Newspaper<\/a> reports had Guernica from 1957 to 1981, was also denied.&#13;\n                                    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; Spain&#8217;s most famous protest painting is now at the center of a political standoff of its own.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3626,82,4694,4695],"class_list":{"0":"post-7242","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-madrid","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-madrid","10":"tag-pablo-picasso","11":"tag-spanish-civil-war"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}