The visual arts sector once again asked the Government this Wednesday to lower cultural VAT, currently at 21%, as it had already demanded in 2024 and previous years. The manifesto signed by more than a thousand artists and galleries calls for the adoption of a reduced rate for sales of works, as proposed by a 2022 European directive, which other countries in the area have already adopted. “We no longer have time. We have to transpose the directive. Yes or yes. It is difficult for the government to justify this wait. We are running out of air. We are suffocating, and not only the galleries, but also the artists and, therefore, part of cultural creation”, declared the spokespersons of eight organizations from different regions of Spain.
In a room of the Circle of Fine Arts in Madrid, where the artist Jordi Teixidor, National Prize of Fine Arts, and the designer Teresa Solar read the document, a representation of the sector gathered and analyzed the consequences that maintaining VAT at 21% has for Spain, while France, Italy, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium have already lowered it according to the European indication (to 5.5%, 5%, 7% and 8% respectively). “The loss of competitiveness compared to these countries is leading us towards irrelevance,” they said.
Spain occupies sixth place in the European art market, according to data provided by the sector, a position that could continue to decline after the recent reduction in cultural VAT in Portugal a few days ago, from 23% to 6% from 2026. “This has been another hard blow,” we heard at the meeting. A worthy example: Luis Valverde, director of Espacio Mínimo, exhibits the Portuguese artist Ana Vidigal. “I am considering the opportunity to continue working with her because I know it is cheaper to acquire it in her gallery in France and now also in her country,” he said.
“It is also a discriminatory situation against other creative sectors such as music, the performing arts or cinema, which benefit from a reduced rate on the sale of their creations,” they add. “We believe that art is culture. We wonder if the work of artists is not considered essential for society. In the visual arts we are always told that the one who buys is rich, this does not happen to the one who occupies the seat of the Teatro Real.”
Arco illustrates this inequality well. In the same space, even in the same corridor, a buyer who buys a work in a French gallery will pay less VAT than if he wishes to buy a work by the same author in a Spanish gallery. It is for this reason that, in last March’s edition, at 12:30 p.m. on the first day, the Spanish spaces, after being warned by the organization via the public address system, turned off the lights in their stands for a few minutes as a sign of protest. “It was a toast to the sun, as other proposed measures can be,” said Valverde, who proposed closing these spaces to the public. “We can maintain minimum services, from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m., by appointment on Saturday. So, until this situation is reversed.”
Pedro Marín, from the Guillermo de Osma gallery, raised the possibility that these spaces would stop lending works to museums and other public institutions, in a room in which Manuel Segade, director of the Reina Sofía, was present, among others. “It is free, invisible and invisible work,” he declared, “that it is the museums who will ask the ministries to take into account the work that we do.”
At one point in the debate after the reading of the manifesto, a representative of the Ministry of Culture asked to speak. Ángeles Albert, general director of Cultural Heritage and Fine Arts, was among the audience and heard how the sector accuses the government of inaction. For years, Ernest Urtasun’s Ministry of Culture has been in favor of reducing VAT, but, as Albert herself has defended the position of this portfolio, it is the Treasury which, they say, hesitates to make this decision: “Unfortunately, it does not depend on the Ministry. I do not want to have the impression that Culture does nothing. In fact, sometimes we have the feeling that we are working against the Treasury.”
The sector assures that there have been months of “silence” in the response of the competent ministries. “The time for information has passed, we have already requested and handed over the data to the Treasury, which assured us that it had a proposal that we have not seen. The Ministry of Culture must continue to put pressure,” they responded to Albert.
This is not where the sector has made decisions on the next steps to take. There is only one conclusion: “We need to do something forceful, to use a term if the word radical scares us.”
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