Spain starts decolonization of public museums

[ in Spanish ] The Spanish Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, has reported to the parliamentarian Commission on Culture about the review of the “colonial framework” carried out in Spanish museums, institutions “anchored in gender or ethnocentric inertia that have often hindered the vision of heritage, the history and artistic legacy”. Conservatives are against.

Specifically, in line with the “international commitments assumed by Spain”, “a review process” will be carried out of the collections of the State Museums dependent on the Ministry of Culture.

Such processes are already incorporated into the temporary programming of the National Museum of Anthropology and the Museum of America.

The last museum has explicit images of colonial violence, currently shown with an outdated context.

It is considered ‘the paradigm of a colonial museum, an example of a book, a very faithful reflection of how a colonial narrative was constructed to talk about America’.

Main opposition party, the People’s Party accused Urtasun’s initiative as “a debate forcibly imported … from the extreme left or woke left”. Going further than Sémper, the hard-right Vox Party called Urtasun a “hispanaphobe”.

Arguments from the right of Spain’s political spectrum have largely centred around the idea that the left want to tarnish the county’s image and tear down museums, censoring the great art and culture it has produced.

RM* thanks for the contribution to this item