The treasure sold at a loss by political leaders of the Spanish Second Republic
On Thursday 20 March, at 7 p.m., the bookshop La Central del Raval (6, Carrer Elisabeths, Barcelona) hosts the presentation of the book El tesoro del «Vita». La protección y el expolio del patrimonio histórico-arqueológico durante la Guerra Civil (Publicacions i Edicions de la UB, 2014), by Francisco Gracia and Gloria Munilla. Joaquim Nadal, professor of History and director of the Catalan Institute for Research on the Cultural Heritage, gives the presentation. The authors Francisco Gracia, professor of Prehistory from UB and director of the Research Group on Protohistoric Archaeology (GRAP), and Gloria Munilla, lecturer of Arts and Humanities at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), participate in the presentation too.
On Thursday 20 March, at 7 p.m., the bookshop La Central del Raval (6, Carrer Elisabeths, Barcelona) hosts the presentation of the book El tesoro del «Vita». La protección y el expolio del patrimonio histórico-arqueológico durante la Guerra Civil (Publicacions i Edicions de la UB, 2014), by Francisco Gracia and Gloria Munilla. Joaquim Nadal, professor of History and director of the Catalan Institute for Research on the Cultural Heritage, gives the presentation. The authors Francisco Gracia, professor of Prehistory from UB and director of the Research Group on Protohistoric Archaeology (GRAP), and Gloria Munilla, lecturer of Arts and Humanities at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), participate in the presentation too.
The exhaustive research —two years and a half looking through archives in Madrid, Mexico and Tel Aviv— carried out by Gracia and Munilla shows incontrovertible that the government of the Spanish Second Republic used materials and collections that were part of the national treasure of art and archaeology to fund the exile. The use of these materials and funds demonstrates an elaborate scheme that lasted since the end of the war until the beginning of the democratic transition.
Far from revisionist trends that strive to distort the history of the Spanish Second Republic, the War and Francoist Spain, El tesoro del «Vita» is a controversial book that develops an exhaustive, detailed and irrefutable research which brings to light facts hidden by republican leaders for many years: human miseries, opaque business made with public funds that began just when the war started, in the summer of 1936, and endured during Francoist Spain until the elections that took place in 1977.
Nowadays, the Vita is a luxury yacht anchored at Naples port, but at the end of the Spanish War it served to move a huge amount of public goods that Republican leaders, headed by Juan Negrín and Francisco Méndez Aspe, took out of Spain and sent them to Mexico. Researchers Gracia and Munilla also play down the supposed unselfishness and lack of interest of Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas in receiving Spanish Republican exiles. That annoyed Mexican opposition party and the Spanish community living there who most of them supported Franco. Cárdenas knew well what was inside the Vita; regarding the weak economic situation of Mexico, the country needed investment.
One part of Vitaʼs cargo was goods of the Government of Catalonia. The war treasure of the Catalan government was given by Lluís Companys and Josep Tarradellas to Negrín, under duress, just before crossing French borders. The detailed inventory of these materials proves that they included valuable pieces of Catalan heritage that could easily become money to be used by the Catalan Government in the exile. Gracia and Munilla describe how the government of the Second Republic, headed by Juan Negrín, aware of the initiative, demanded the Catalan Government to cede those goods when crossing the borders, promising that they would be returned once they settled in Paris. The promise was never kept and it caused a financial ruin to the Catalan Government.
Once the Civil War ended, when the beginning of the Second World War was eminent, the two greatest Republican figures in the exile, president Negrín and PSOE leader Indalecio Prieto, who were in disagree, led two associations that helped Spanish refugees: SERE and JARE, respectively. Both were funded to a large extent with the resources they got to get out of the country. They got public resources mixed up with political party resources; they even got the limit where a political party ends mixed up with where personal affairs begin. In short, the case of Vitaʼs treasure proves the true waste and lack of scruples of the Republican government who sold at a loss public heritage to face pecuniary needs of the exiled elite.
The history of the yacht deserves an entire chapter. After fighting in the Civil War, it was part of the North-American fleet and fought in the Second World War. In 1947 —re-named as SS Ben Hetch —, it led the epic trip of 600 Jewish survivors of the German concentration camps in Palestine. Once Israel was declared independent, the yacht was included in the Israeli army and named INS Maʼoz K-24; it participated in important military missions. Once the navy took it out of circulation, it was purchased by an Italian company that named it Santa Maria del Mare; then, it served as ferry-service to communicate Naples and the island of Capri until 2002. It was completely restyled between 2008 and 2009 as a luxury yacht. Now, it awaits a purchaser at the port of Naples.
To conclude, the book is an exhaustive, rigorous, clear and well-written study that brings us closer to an unknown reality and offers a new view of our recent history. Professor Gracia concludes: “First, the case of Vita is an example of how far a government can go; and second, it shows that those who assume legal representation of the use of historic and art heritage had private benefits without being accountable to society; this is a dangerous precedent”.