Monday 31 October 2011

Museums of Sitges will be restored, not remodelled


What started as a partial halt to the refurbishing of the museums Cau Ferrat and Palau Maricel in Sitges (Garraf), is now officially a change of plans. The details are still to be worked out, but the CiU-lead municipal government has announced that the most controversial feature in the original plan – the glassed-in ramp on the facade facing the Mediterranean - will not come into existence, which in fact means that some already completed reforms have to be undone.

The now announced changes meet with protests from the earlier PSC-lead local government, which claims that they threaten the financing, since it depends on an agreement between several parties (the Spanish central government, the Catalan Generalitat and Diputació de Barcelona) and also risks delaying the end date with up to two years.

On the other hand, representatives of SOS Sitges – the platform channelling the anger many citizens feel since this project was initiated above their heads – reveal signs of restrained jubilation. As they see it, the town cannot be allowed to destroy an architectural heritage so closely connected with the artists Santiago Rusiñol and Ramon Casas, with the art promotor Miquel Utrillo and the North American collectionist Charles Deering.

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Read more in Catalan – Ajuntament de Sitges – and Spanish - El País

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Related earlier post

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Do you want to read more news from Sitges in English? Click here to find older posts and do not forget to sign up for the free newsletter Penedès in English.

2 comments:

Florenci Salesas said...

Thank you for this article, Wirdheim!

Erik Wirdheim said...

Florenci,

Many thanks to you for leaving a comment.

By the way, couldn't you think of signing up for my newsletter "Penedès in English" (find the form here: http://eepurl.com/gn5E9). So far I don't have one single subccriber in Sitges, where - at least theoretically - there ought to be a lot of potential readers...

And by the way: Could you recommend a good agenda on events in Sitges? The one at sitges.cat (just like the one at vilanova.cat) is inconvenient to work with since long term exhibitions get priority... :(

Thanks in advance!

//Erik