Spain’s Ministry of Culture has ordered a Madrid museum to remove a mummy from view as part of a government policy to “decolonise” state-owned museums.
The Guanche mummy went on display at Madrid’s National Archaeological Museum (MAN) in 2015. It is the preserved remains of a 35-40-year-old person who it is believed lived between the 12th and 13th centuries and was laid to rest in a cave in the Herques ravine in Tenerife.
A member of the Guanches, the mummy belonged to the indigenous people who inhabited the Canary Islands from the first millennium BC alone until Spanish colonialism conquered the archipelago in the 15th century, killing many and assimilating the rest into Spanish culture.
Until this week, the Guanche mummy was on display in the MAN’s area dedicated to the Canary Islands and protohistory. It has now been removed as part of the Ministry of Culture’s new letter that requires human remains “must be treated with respect and dignity, and in accordance with the interests and beliefs of the communities and ethnic or religious groups of origin.”
It’s part of a move by Minister of Culture Ernest Urtasun to “decolonise” the state’s museums. Last year, his department commissioned a report on the treatment of human remains, a document which stated the Guanche mummy had been put on display “with a brief label that does not justify its presence”.
Urtasun told El Pais that “it would be possible” for MAN to put the mummy back on display as long as it is accompanied by labels “that add value”.
As it stands, the mummy is set to be moved to the museum’s extensive warehouses. However, since 1976, the Canary Islands have campaigned for the return of the mummy.
Rosa Dávila, president of the government of Tenerife, says the mummy should be housed in Tenerife’s Museum of Nature and Archaeology, saying it is a “a symbol of our ancestral culture … with an incalculable historical and cultural value for our people, which we have been claiming for more than 50 years.”
In 2010, Spain approved the request to return the mummy. The government later rejected the request twice on the grounds that it was too fragile to be moved.
The report on the Guanche mummy details its provenance. Discovered in 1763-1764, it was one of at least a thousand mummies in the cave wrapped in “exquisitely sewn skins”. Of the discovered bodies, the best preserved one was sent to Madrid and has passed through multiple institutions before coming to MAN.
It concludes that the mummy should remain in MAN for preservation reasons: “It is the responsibility of the Museum to try to maintain it in the best possible conditions so that future generations can continue to admire this legacy of the Guanches, always taking into account the respect that the mortal remains of someone who in distant times was a person integrated into that society deserve.”
As a result, the mummy’s lack of visible presence in the museum continues to aggravate Canary Island politicians.
Lope Afonso, the Canary Islands tourism minister, said: “The return of the mummy would not only correct a historical debt, but would also strengthen culture, pride in the Guanche heritage and respect for ancestral traditions.”
