Girona City Council receives a subsidy of 777,000 euros from the Government of the Generalitat de Catalunya for the Casa Pastors

Girona City Council and the Department of Culture have announced that the Government of the Generalitat of Catalonia has granted a subsidy of 770,000 euros for the Casa Pastors. The agreement, which has been made public by the minister of Culture, Natàlia Garriga, and the vice-mayor and councilor for Culture, Quim Ayats, foresees that this money will be used to adapt Casa Pastors as a Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art from Girona.

Specifically, the funding includes the rehabilitation of this building and the provision of the corresponding museographic facilities and services as well as the impetus for its commissioning. The subsidy will be distributed as follows: 2022: 76,603 euros; 2023: 200,000 euros; 2024: 250,000 euros; and 2025: 250,000 euros.

It is expected that there will be a second phase, which corresponds to the period 2026-2028, with a contribution from the Department of Culture that is expected to be 800,000 euros intended for the initial impetus for the opening of the Museum, to be counted from the moment in that the museum goes into operation.

"In this space it is very possible that vestiges of relevance will appear that will contribute new data and witnesses to the knowledge of the city's history. In addition, all this information will provide added value to the new museum equipment to be built at Casa Pastors. In the future, the findings could be included in the discourse of the future museum or, in the case of finding objects, be integrated into the Girona History Museum", said the vice-mayor and councilor for Culture of the Girona City Council, Quim Ayats.

For her part, the Minister of Culture has declared that "this project will highlight the past and present of the Girona and Catalan heritage, and will make the historical heritage of this space, with its Roman and medieval remains, and the "contemporary art from Girona". "We want this future museum to reinforce Girona's cultural commitment and fully connect with the good work done by the rest of the museum facilities in the city, and in the country in general", said Natàlia Garriga.

The estimated cost of the project, for the period 2022-2028, is 9,853,270.22 euros, of which a budget of 6,916,870.21 euros is established for the excavations and works, and for the museum project and impulse the opening budget is 2,936,400.01 euros. Girona City Council has expressed its intention to provide the rest of the necessary funding, through the contribution of its own and third-party resources, which will take the form of subsidies and sponsorships, among which it is planned to renew the commitment of the Provincial Council of Girona

So far, 636,000 euros have been allocated to the investment, excavation and works at Casa Pastors and the museum cataloging of the Santos Torroella collection, in the period 2017-2022. This amount is divided into 17,000 euros from the project competition, 318,000 euros from the drafting of the project, 20,000 euros from the archaeological intervention that has been carried out so far, 35,000 euros from the demolition of some of the spaces of Casa Pastors and 246,000 euros in inventory and cataloging. Girona City Council contributed 316,000 euros of the total, and the Generalitat de Catalunya contributed 320,000.

Since 2017, Girona City Council began the process to create a new exhibition space in the city to house the modern and contemporary art collections that the council maintains in the City History Museum , comprising approximately 7,000 works among which the Rafael and Maria Teresa Santos Torroella collection stands out.

The exhibition "The bet for new art" is extended

Precisely, the vice-mayor Quim Ayats and the councilor Natàlia Garriga have visited the exhibition L'aposta per l'art nou. Itineraries of the avant-garde in Catalonia through the Rafael and Maria Teresa Santos Torroella collection at the Girona History Museum. The Girona City Council has approved this month to extend the exhibition calendar until September 11 given the interest that the exhibition has aroused.

Awarding of excavation works

The Local Government Board of the Girona City Council has also approved the contracting of the archaeological excavations, which will begin this spring and last four months. The contact will be formalized in the coming days with Baula Recerca Arqueològica SL. These excavations are an essential step to be able to carry out the works to rehabilitate the building at the headquarters of the new Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Girona according to the project of the architect Jordi Bosch Genover. Once the two offers presented in the tender procedure have been evaluated, the contract has been awarded for an amount of 165,905 euros.

Excavation work at Casa Pastors began in December 2019, but had to be stopped soon after due to the need to demolish the walls of the west courtyard for safety reasons. The continuity of the excavations put the stability of the walls at risk, as it compromised its foundations. The demolition of these elements was carried out in 2021. Now, once these works have been carried out, the excavations will resume.

Casa Pastors is located on the northwest side of the perimeter of the old Gerunda and next to the Sobreportes portal, one of the old entrances to the city. The building integrates remains of Roman and medieval walls, from the castle of Montcada and Sobreportes. It was a seminary (16th and 17th centuries), home of the aristocratic Pastors family (19th century) and headquarters of the Girona defense command during the French War (19th century). At the beginning of the 20th century, it was acquired by Cristòfol Grober and exchanged with Girona City Council in exchange for some land to build a factory. Between 1973 and 2013 it was Provincial Court.