Rocío Vázquez: It’s worth it

“I think it is worth not being together,” wrote Joaquín Sorolla to his wife Clotilde during one of his stays in Seville to take a series of royal portraits and, in love with the beauty of the Alcazar, fifty of his works. … land. It was worth it – hopefully also for the faithful wife – because today, more than a century later, Sevillians and visitors can enjoy an exhibition of 15 of these paintings thanks to the collaboration between the Real Alcázar Board of Directors, the Sorolla Museum Foundation and the Unicaja Foundation. The particularity of this exhibition lies in the fact that these works are seen for the first time in the very setting in which they were painted, in a sort of Russian doll game that seems to have no end. “Sorolla at Real Alcázar” is one of the Town Hall’s bets of the year. And in an age dominated by the entertainment of Christmas shows, an oasis to keep local culture high and not buried by purely fun alternatives. Anyone who complains that these weeks there are only lights and videomappings with inappropriate themes, transcriptions of zanbombas and drunk shots, does so by vice. Because another culture is possible and is not at all hidden. All you have to do is cross the threshold of a museum. As in Fine Arts, where in this case the Department of Culture and Sports of the Government of Andalusia recently inaugurated “Los Bécquer, a lineage of artists”, another major exhibition which jointly presents oil paintings and drawings by José, Joaquín, Valeriano and Gustavo Adolfo and which was possible thanks to the agreement between private collectors and museums from Andalusia, Madrid, the Basque Country and France. Among other benefits of the exhibition, it allows you to discover the almost unknown side of the author of “Rhymes and Legends” as a designer. The letter for this end of year from the department headed by Patricia del Pozo will, however, be insufficient to beat the visitor record in the second most important art gallery in the country, reached during the Murillo Year with more than 400,000 people, although we obtain a figure very similar to that of 2024, around 324,000 visits. In a context where the Convent of La Merced Museum awaits a long-awaited and necessary expansion, the Sevillian public should rethink the support it gives to the heritage entrusted to it. Each activity carried out in the Fine Arts, in the Alcázar, in Artillería or in Santa Clara, to give a few examples, must be approved by the local citizen before the tourist, especially if it is of the quality of the proposals mentioned. A year ago, the success of the Machado exhibition was surprising, not only for what it showed, but also for what it demonstrated: that there are reasons to be proud, even if we are often overwhelmed by the shadow of complaint.

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