Colombia formally demanded the return of the Quimbaya treasure to Spain on May 11. Five months later, his Minister of Culture Juan David Correa explains to elDiario.es that he “still has not received an official response to the letter” with which they made the request. “It is not a question of creating a conflict but of being able to speak”, he believes, “this never ceases to hurt me as a minister because I think that cultures, arts and knowledge must serve to establish conversations and get to the heart of the problem. problems in another way.
The Colombian politician was in Madrid this summer, where he visited the exhibition Colonial memory the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and the Arkhé Archives, among other institutions. He did not meet any Spanish leaders. However, he explains that he did not come “to seek an official meeting with the Government, but rather to serve the diaspora for a day”. “I didn’t ask to be heard,” he adds. And he specifies: “I would not want to create a confrontation between ministers. I don’t play like that. What I need and want is to be answered, even if it isn’t.
Sources from the Spanish Ministry of Culture consulted by this media indicate that, for their part, “there is no news on this issue”.
“Let’s give each other a chance to talk.” Let’s talk about the Quimbaya collection, the Galeón San José, Santa Marta. If the debate is dominated by the extreme right, it becomes the owner of cultural dialogue and I am opposed to it,” defends Juan David Correa, “talking is a way to begin to understand each other.”
The past five months coincide with the National Holiday, Hispanic Heritage Day, celebrated this Saturday, October 12. “When you receive silence and you see what is happening with certain sectors of the extreme right in Spain, with these campaigns about conquerors as heroes, with this idea of imposing a story in Latin America about Hispanicness, in our case on the The celebrations of the 500 years of Santa Marta that we propose is not a celebration, it is a commemoration Not to establish a historical fault five centuries later, but so that we can talk about. what happened,” he explains in this context.
Juan David Correa assures that the history promulgated by the extreme right harms their “culture and their dignity”. “We demand respect from people who carry out these types of campaigns. We believe that we deserve peaceful intercultural dialogue because we also feel part of Spain, because we speak its language, we recognize valuable and important cultural heritages and we love Spain.
It’s not about creating conflict but about being able to speak. This never ceases to hurt me as a minister, because I believe that cultures, arts and knowledge must be used to establish conversations and get to the heart of issues in another way.
Juan David Correa
— Minister of Culture of Colombia
Against the ultra-speech, the Colombian minister invites to include in the dialogue “those who do not feel good about what has happened, such as the indigenous peoples of the Sierra de Nevada or the Afro peoples reduced to slavery and subjected to brutal conditions.” This is why he insists that “it is not a question of starting a battle but of speaking”.
The Urtasun Museums Decolonization Project
It was at the beginning of 2024 that the Spanish Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, announced that he would carry out a “review” of the collections of state museums to “establish spaces for dialogue and exchange which allow us to go beyond the colonial framework. We had to wait until August to see the first stages of its project to decolonize art galleries, even if for the moment it only concerns two collections: those of the Museum of America and the National Museum of Anthropology. The administration has created two advisory groups which will prepare a technical report which, as indicated, “will serve as a basis for the development, in 2025, of the preliminary design of the new permanent exhibitions” of the two centers.
Urtasun’s commitment reached the ears of the Colombian government, which therefore decided to demand the return of the Quimbaya collection, which is still in the Museum of America in Madrid. Juan David Correa regrets and apologizes for “the embarrassment” caused by the “leak before arriving” letter. “This indelicacy cost us the conversation and I don’t want it to continue,” he comments.
“I propose that we establish public conversations in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Cádiz, Bogotá, Santa Marta, Pereira… And let’s listen to everyone’s reasons. Why don’t we explain to people what the Quimbaya collection is? It has cultural value, that’s what we want to claim,” he says. “If we refuse to talk about it, the only thing we will continue to produce is distrust. It is not a question of reaching a false consensus, but of creating mechanisms of dialogue where we can understand the reasons of the other,” he asserts.
What is the Treasure of the Quimbayas?
The one known as the Treasure of the Quimbayas is a jewel made up of 121 gold coins that the then President of Colombia, Carlos Holguín, gave to Queen María Cristina at the end of the 19th century; in gratitude for interceding in a border conflict between his country and Venezuela. The gift was not without controversy, given that Holguín offered it to Spain without authorization from the Colombian Congress.
If we refuse to talk about it, the only thing we will continue to produce is distrust. It is not a question of reaching false consensus, but of creating mechanisms of dialogue allowing us to understand everyone’s reasons.
Juan David Correa
— Minister of Culture of Colombia
“The collection is composed of archaeological goods (ceramics, goldsmiths, lithic and organic) associated with the Classic Quimbaya period that were looted by local guaqueros and delivered by the Colombian government to the Kingdom of Spain in 1893, ignoring their cultural value for our Nation,” they explained in the letter with which they demanded their return. They thus justified the reason why they made this request, “aware of what it implies and recognizing the effort that the Spanish authorities have made for its conservation and protection”.
Their request is also supported by a ruling issued by the Constitutional Court of Colombia in 2017, which qualifies the aforementioned donation as illegal: “The transfer of the Quimbaya collection violated clear norms of the Political Constitution of 1886 then in force. » The text contained the order to begin repatriation, which the Colombian government had not implemented until now. “It is not the whim of a man, of a party or of a sensitivity,” affirms Juan David Correa.
“Can we talk about this sentence or not?” Can the Spanish know in what conditions the Quimbaya collection was delivered to Spain or do they not deserve to know? Was it a legitimate or fake gift? “Is it possible to talk about the fallacious nature or not of the gifts?” asks the minister, affirming that these are subjects that are in conversations today, but not only in Colombia. To illustrate, let us quote DahomeyMati Diop’s documentary on the return to Benin of 26 works of art looted by France.
Juan David Correa deliberately asks a question: “What would have happened if a 19th century Spanish leader had decided to tell us about the disasters of Goya’s war and today they were falsely located in a Colombian museum? What would happen today with Spanish society facing a collection that represents the deepest part of its core, as a painter like Goya does? “That’s what I want, to remove the ghosts, the cobwebs in a modern way. Why not us? “The world will continue to be convinced that we cannot speak, that we must hide. »
What would have happened if a 19th century Spanish leader had decided to tell us about the disasters of Goya’s war and today they were falsely located in a Colombian museum? What would happen today with Spanish society?
Juan David Correa
— Minister of Culture of Colombia
“I’m not stupid to think the world is black or white, or that it must end. I think that by recognizing love, affection and differences, we can move forward,” he predicts. It is for this reason that he criticizes the fact that “certain sectors of the extreme right” are under “pressure” to organize celebrations on October 12 on Hispanicity: “I do not feel part of Hispanicness . I feel part of the interculturality of Spain, America, its peoples, the slaves, the indigenous, the Catalans, the Basques and all the communities that claim in one way or another cultural values that it is important to reappropriate.”
