The Lady of Elche returns home

At four o'clock in the afternoon, the train carrying the artistic treasures returned by France to Spain, including "The Lady of Elche," arrived at Port-Bou station. Luis Monreal, the Commissioner of National Artistic Heritage in the Levante region, and Ángel Olivera, the Artillery Captain of the Artistic Heritage Defense Service, who was representing the Spanish government, were awaiting its arrival to take charge of the treasure. The curator of the Louvre Museum and representative of the French government, Mr. René Hugues, arrived at the head of the expedition. Once in Port-Bou, he handed over to the Spanish commissioners the 35 crates, weighing a total of six tons, containing the treasure.

The mail train arrived at Barcelona station at 10:15 p.m. It will depart for Madrid at 9:30 p.m.

In Madrid, the French ambassador will officially present the aforementioned objects.

The captain stated that this expedition also includes the objects that were supposed to enter Spain through the Irún border. In addition to the famous sculpture "The Lady of Elche," the Visigothic crowns from Guarrazar have also arrived; the Visigothic gold lanterns; the famous gold and jeweled crown of King Recesvinto; the pre-Roman reliefs from Osuna; the Iberian sphinx from El Salobral; and the Iberian collection from the Calaceite excavations, weighing nearly five tons, which is the largest in the world.

On February 12, just three days after the first news, ABC published new information about the arrival of the Lady of Elche to Spain: "In a few days, the official delivery to the Spanish authorities of the art treasure now returned by France to Spain will take place. Along with Murillo 's 'Immaculate Conception' and the Lady of Elche, all the works comprising this treasure are featured in an exhibition to be held at the Prado Museum. Among the major works of Iberian art that have been part of the latest expedition are the so-called 'Stele of Apollo', the Sphinx of Salobral; a fragment of a warrior statue, a stone decorated with interlacing, a corbel with a ram's pediment, a capital, and numerous bas-reliefs. Also included in this shipment is an extremely rare example of Celtic art: the famous fragment of a gold chain from Ribadeo, of extraordinary value because it is unique.

The Guarrazar treasure, which also arrived from France, consists of the six famous Visigothic votive crowns (the main one being that of Recesvinto). As for the 52,000 documents in the Simancas Archive, which include those on the French surrender of Francis I at the Battle of Pavia , they are also now in Spain, having come from the French archives where they were kept. They arrived in San Sebastián just yesterday.

In September of that same year, ABC editor José D. De Quijano published the exhibition of what he called 'Iberian Lady' at the Prado Museum.

«She has just settled definitively in the ancestral National Seat of Art, which by right she was entitled to share with so many other children of genius, the disturbing and prodigious Iberian Lady, who after a dream, more than twice a thousand years old, one day emerged - almost half a century - from the bowels of the earth on the Loma de Alcudia, to the surface of the Hispanic soil, there where the canopy of the palm trees slashes the luminous blue of the Elche sky. And after the unburied, centuries-long dream, the exile - national shame! - that alienates from the Homeland the glory of the presence and possession of such a prodigy.

Those were days of dark omens, when the matronly beauty of a sedentary Spain—pulseless and faithless—was artificially held upright, just as the corpse of Doña Inés de Castro was on her throne, the disaster and total liquidation of a glorious Empire imminent. Those were tragically foolish days, of joyful and confident national unconsciousness; and it was clear all around—or perhaps it is clearer now—that Spain lacked champions to effectively defend the integrity of its spiritual heritage.

And so the expatriation of the Lady of Elche was possible, her grave and serene eyes barely awakened to the light, blinded for two thousand years, and since then open to the admiration of a cosmopolitan world in a foreign land for almost ten decades. And so her unavoidable repatriation has been possible in this hour of national recovery of renewed impetus and imperial dreams in which Spain—resurrected—no longer lacks a champion.

The Lady of Elche returned to her Spanish homeland, and as a dethroned queen, restored to her homeland and her throne, she received Madrid's homage in a popular, symbolic reception lasting two months, temporarily installed in one of the lower rooms of the Prado Museum.

From June 27 to August 31, more than thirty thousand visitors have paraded before its grave and hieratic beauty, giving a spontaneous and joyful welcome in fervent homage.

And now, with the exhibition closed at the end of August, the Iberian Lady has been definitively installed in the Museum's central gallery, inestimably enriching its fabulous artistic treasure, which is Madrid's greatest pride.