Palma (EFE)
The candidate of the purple party for the presidency of the Balearic Government, Antònia Jover, accompanied by the secretary of Republican Horizon, Rafa Mayoral, and other officials of the organization have demanded this Wednesday at the gates of the palace the end of the “omertá that surrounds the transfer of Marivent”.
The Egyptian painter and patron of Greek origin Juan de Saridakis built his coastal residence in Palma from 1923 to 1925, and his widow, Anunciación Marconi, donated the gardens, the building and the art collection it contained to the Balearic Islands Provincial Council, in 1966. with the condition of turning it into a museum and center of creation.
Podemos explains in a statement that in 1973, half a century ago, the use of the palace for private enjoyment was ceded to the then princes of Spain, Juan Carlos and Sofía, in breach of the agreement signed with the family, which led to legal proceedings for the one in which the heirs of Saridakis recovered the artistic pieces and furniture initially ceded to the Balearic people.
They demand that judicial documentation be open access
The Republican party wants to have access to the records of the case that caused this loss for the autonomous community “for having made exclusive use of the space by the royal family.”
Jover believes that his partners in the Government chaired by the socialist Francina Armengol, PSOE and Més per Mallorca, have to push in that direction. “With fifty years of obscurantism, enough”, he has remarked.
Mayoral has insisted that judicial documentation must be open access so that society knows the causes of “a huge loss of publicly owned artistic heritage.”
The deputy has compared the Marivent palace with the Pazo de Meirás, which was the residence of the Franco family and has been recovered as public property: “In both cases, the expropriation by apparently legal means of a public asset occurs.”
A court of first instance first, the Provincial Court of the Balearic Islands later and the Supreme Court finally in June 1988 established that Marivent’s movable assets should be returned to the heir of Saridakis because the assignment agreement according to which the building should house a museum and a training center for artists.
The heir’s claim only referred to the furniture, art collections, engraving and painting tools, books and trousseau ceded to the Provincial Council, but not to the palace.
The Supreme Court ruling clarified that this heir, José Carlos Hermann Marconi, waived in a public deed in 1978 the right to revert to the palace while it was used by the head of state or his successor and heirs as a residence during his visit to the islands.
After the dissolution of the Provincial Council, the rights over the transfer of the widow of Saridakis passed to the Autonomous Community of the Balearic Islands, which was the institution that unsuccessfully sued to try to preserve Marivent’s furniture and works of art.