The Spanish Ministry of Culture withdraws a museum from a museum in order to no longer expose “human remains”

The decolonization of Spanish museums is underway. Since Tuesday, visitors to the Madrid National Archaeological Museum will no longer be able to admire the mummy of a Guanche chef who has been exposed since December 2015. The reason: respect for an ethical commitment charter on the treatment of human remains, adopted by the Ministry of Culture and the 16 Museums of the State a year ago.

The mummy of a Guanche chief is a dry corpse, who lived between the 12th^e and the 13th^e century, comes from a cave of the Herques ravine, on the south-eastern coast of the island of Tenerife, explains the newspaper The country . The guanches were the native people who lived in the Canary Islands when they were won over by the Castile Crown at the end of the XV^e century. The mummy was found with hundreds of others in the second half of the 18th century^e century. Since 1976, the Government of Tenerife also demanded its return for the presentation to the Museum of Nature and Archeology present on the island.

She was on display at the National Archaeological Museum “With a small cartridge”. For Rosa Dávila, president of the Government of Tenerife, the displacement of the mummy is « inadmissible », she declared to the British newspaper The Times. Its withdrawal is a consequence of the policy led by the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, for “Decolonize” national museums. According to the newspaper The avant -garde the simple cartridge present next to the mummy does not justify its presence in the museum’s collections. The Ministry of Culture indicates to The country that he “Would be possible” that it is exposed again if they are accompanied by posters “which add value”.

Nearly 15,000 human remains in museums

Mummies in Peru which are at the Museum of America were also withdrawn on Monday. According to a report by the Ministry of Culture published by the Spanish daily, the total number of human remains preserved in national museums amounts to 14,845. The national archaeological museum has 10,060, including complete bodies, parts and reliquaries. How much will be removed from the collections of the Spanish museums?

The charter which details the directives of the Code of Ethics of the International Museum Council (ICOM), was published Monday morning on the websites of each museum. It indicates that human remains are removed from the collections include bones, mummified people, soft tissues or objects with elements derived from human remains. They must then be kept and treated “With respect and dignity, and in accordance with the interests and beliefs of communities and ethnic or religious groups of origin”indicates the charter.

“Hair, nails, teeth and objects made from them, such as dolls or reliquaries and human body molds” are not considered by this obligation indicates the newspaper The avant -garde . Like mortuary masks, sound recordings of human voice, photographs and funeral objects.

Since the arrival of Ernest Urtasun at the head of the Ministry of Spanish culture, several major projects have been undertaken in the collections of national museums. In 2024, the government notably carried out an inventory, mentioning 5,000 documents looted by the Franco regime, which must be returned to their legitimate owners.