The Minister of Governance, Digital Administration and Autonomy, María Ubarretxena, revealed the mystery: the great debtor of the Provincial Treasury of Alava who motivated the payment in kind with four complete series of engravings by Francisco de Goya and dozens of other paintings, some of great value like Aurelio Arteta’s Civil War Triptych, were by Juan Celaya himself. Although it is an open secret, because the paintings belonged to him and he was a great collector, an official Basque Government document signed by Ubarretxena and delivered to the regional Parliament at the end of October at the request of EH Bildu points directly to the The businessman died in 2016 as a defaulter, information that the Provincial Council had kept under lock and key, clinging to the confidentiality of tax files.
The definitive sequence of the incorporation into the public heritage of this large collection of works of art, facts put forward by this newspaper, is now completely clear. The ownership of the pieces, whose last estimate was 4.3 million euros, was passed after the death of the owner of industries such as Cegasa or Tuboplast to the foundation bearing his name, apparently non-profit and created in 2007 for the promotion of Basque culture and Basque culture. It was impossible for the foundation to default since it is not subject to the tax that was paid, the wealth tax. Either Celaya was the debtor, or the paintings had been transferred to a third party, an operation with dubious legal reservations.
However, we now know that in February 2021 this entity informed the Protectorate of Foundations of the Basque Country, dependent on the Regional Executive, that it had inherited both the material and a “debt”. And he had anticipated it since he was considering getting rid of the assets to repay it. It was during the 2022 financial year that the collection was finally delivered. This process was parallel to a transfer from the Celaya Foundation to the Museum of Fine Arts of Álava, also dependent on the collection, for the temporary exhibition of certain works.
Ubarretxena, in his response to the request for information from the parliamentarian EH Bildu Gorka Ortiz of Guinea, the same one who questioned the Provincial Council on the history of the paintings since he also sits in the general assemblies of Alava, also states that the Celaya Foundation has not operated with complete transparency in recent years and, in fact, has been excluded from possible public aid. In particular, this entity did not diligently present its annual accounts in the usual manner. For example, “he presented the 2021 annual accounts after the resolution to close the registrations”. Specifically, he did so in February 2024, a few weeks before the painting affair was publicly revealed. Those for 2022 were delivered in May this year, so yes with all the attention to it. There is no evidence that those of 2023 have been recorded. The measures applied due to these delays, according to Ubarretxena, are the “impossibility” of carrying out procedures beyond “legal exceptions” and, above all, “the impossibility of obtaining subsidies”. or public assistance.
A few coins worth a million dollars
The history of Goya’s engravings and paintings by Arteta and other artists was transcended on April 1. The relevance of the case is threefold. On the one hand, the artistic value of heritage is indisputable. Arteta’s triptych, for example, is valued at €1.2 million alone. It was exhibited at the Guggenheim as a contemporary piece of Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica,” with which it shares a theme. And the four complete collections of original copies of the main series of engravings by Francisco de Goya (“The Disasters of War”, “Tauromaquia”, “Caprichos” and “Los proverbios” or “Los disparates”) reach a value of 1 . 5 million too. Celaya, on the other hand, was a very important figure in Basque social life. And finally, the 4.3 million dación in payment represented 20% of the total patrimony income for the year 2022 of the Álava estate, one of the smallest in Europe, and could suggest a higher undeclared hidden asset to 250 million euros, since the maximum rate is 2.5%.
Many of the paintings – and among them the most important pieces of the collection – were already in the hands of the Museum of Fine Arts after the 2018 agreement. The museum, for example, had already exhibited Arteta’s triptych before become himself. full ownership. One of the points criticized by the opposition, which denounced the “obscurantism” of the Alava Treasury in this operation, is that six years ago the collection was valued at a price much lower than that which was later obtained to settle the tax debt. In figures, a price initially set at 191,000 euros was set for the Goyesque engravings and we now learn that they were worth almost ten times more. Arteta’s triptych also increased by 0.2 million.
This summer, the Culture sector of the Provincial Council highlighted the “qualitative” relevance of this art collection. In June, seven of these pieces were exhibited to the public in the Vitoria Art Gallery, including the Arteta as the crown jewel. Six others were to be definitively restored “in the fall”. Likewise, it was explained that the technical teams were going to “intervene” on three of the four series of Goya engravings. The importance of three wooden sculptures was also highlighted, including one dating from the 13th century.
The artistic advisor of the Celaya Foundation claims to be unaware of the details of this operation. The entity, as such, did not respond to calls from this newspaper. When the news broke, he limited himself to stating that they had no tax debt.
