Spanish statue joins pantheon of botched art restorations

During Spain’s boom years provincial capitals competed to open the most spectacular cultural attractions, such as Bilbao’s stunning Guggenheim and Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences.

Now the northern city of Palencia has become the latest victim of a reverse trend as botched art restorations have swept across Spain. 

The wave of bad art started in 2012 with the notorious blurry-faced Ecce Homo, better known as “Monkey Christ” that brought octogenarian have-a-go restorer Cecilia Giménez fame, a museum in her home town of Borja and even a musical in her honour.

The latest restoration fail to provoke disbelief among locals and social media mockery is the appearance of a potato-head-like face atop a carved figure that is part of a decorative exterior of an early 20th-century high street bank building in Palencia.

Where the features of a smiling maiden surrounded by farm animals were once on display, there is now a round ball with two uneven and crooked pit-like eyes, a childish button nose and a taut mouth, which some observers have cruelly likened to that of Donald Trump, the US president.

“Seeing as he has to leave the White House, he’s moved in here,” commented Victorio Macho Rogado on Facebook in response to a post by Antonio Capel, an artist from Palencia, who first drew attention to the botch job.

Mr Capel said that the head of the original figure had fallen, prompting someone to commission an amateur restoration to rival the Monkey Christ, a wooden carving of St George in Navarre brightly painted as if he was Playmobil figure, and the near-fluorescent Virgin and Child sculpture in Rañadoiro, Asturias, among others on a growing list of shame.  

Spain’s Professional Association of Restorers and Conservators drew attention to the latest botch job and the importance of using professionals to restore artworks, tweeting an image of the Palencia blob head under the hashtag “#ThisIsNotARestoration”.