A Beloved Lady of Spain, Hostage in a Tug-Of-War

By MARLISE SIMONS

ELCHE, Spain -- Once in a while, something happens that offends the strong sense of honor of someone in Spain and the displeased party will not rest until the grievance is redressed. One such affront explains why a delegation from the city of Elche, led by the mayor, recently marched into a Madrid museum, surrounded a statue and sang an angry song.

The statue was the Lady of Elche, Spain's most famous ancient icon. As every Spanish schoolchild learns, this finely chiseled face, framed with an elaborate headdress and necklaces, represents an Iberian priestess or princess and is believed to be some 2,500 years old.

And as everyone in Elche knows, she was found at a rich archeological site just outside this city 100 years ago. Therein lies the problem.

Elche, a sunny place of palm groves, shoe factories and some 200,000 people in the Valencia region, has asked to borrow the Lady this summer to commemorate her discovery.

Because Elche will then also celebrate the 2,000th anniversary of its foundation as a city, the mayor wants the Lady to be the centerpiece of a special exhibit to be held in a 15th-century castle downtown.

But to Elche's shock, a government commission has said no. It argued that the precious sandstone bust is too fragile to make the 250-mile journey from its home in the National Museum of Archeology, in Madrid, to Elche, in southeastern Spain. Some museum officials said the government had refused for political reasons.

Elche's request and Madrid's rebuff are a slice of what is called the "autonomy question," the growing demand for status and power by the regions of Spain as they reassert their historical and cultural identity.

Whenever Basques, Catalans or Valencians want to expand their rights, it is usually at the expense of the power of Madrid, which for centuries has exercised tight control over the nation.

Since democracy returned two decades ago, Madrid has gradually loosened its leash, giving the 17 regions, each with its own government, more say in issues like taxes, education and the use of local languages. Some conservatives fear that decentralization may go too far, pulling Spain apart.

That fear also includes the fate of the country's artistic treasures. "If they'd get away with it, the regions would empty out Madrid's museums and take home their cultural properties," said a curator in Madrid.

Calls for loans or restitution of cultural goods already exist. Barcelona is asking for the transfer of the historic archives of Catalonia, which are kept outside the region, in Salamanca. The Basque city of Bilbao has asked Madrid to send it Picasso's "Guernica," which depicts an air raid on the city near Bilbao.

"It's preposterous to say that it's unsafe to transport the statue," said Rafael Ramos, director of Elche's archeology museum. "Far more delicate works of art travel around the world all the time," he said, noting that the Lady has already been to Elche once, about 30 years ago.

"I think Madrid is afraid that we'll have a popular movement to keep her and people will not want to give her back," he said.

Ivan Aranda, a coordinator of the festivities at the town hall, insisted that Elche "is definitely not planning to keep the statue," adding: "We have asked to borrow it just for two months. It's really important to us."

The snub from Madrid has now swollen into an issue of not just local but also regional pride. The town councils of Alicante, Benidorm, Santa Pola and other nearby cities have passed motions supporting Elche's request. Several political and civic groups sent out Christmas cards bearing the statue's picture. A local musician has composed a ballad about the affair, which the Mayor and other citizens sang the other day in the archeology museum in Madrid.

Adding to this, Elche feels newly vilified by the recent Spanish edition of an American book asserting that the statue is a 19th-century fake.

John F. Moffitt, an art historian at the New Mexico State University, says in his book, "Art Forgery: The Case of the Lady of Elche," that the shape of her nose and eyes are too delicate to have been carved in pre-Christian Spain. He argues that spots where the statue is chipped reveal a whiteness inside the stone that does not match the grayish exterior and could not have remained so pristine.

Many scholars have dismissed Moffitt's thesis. To most experts, the bust, which is about two feet high, represents the finest example of early Iberian civilization and dates from the late fifth century B.C. Specialists at the Louvre Museum in Paris, which owned the statue until 1941, said there was no doubt about its authenticity.

The American's claim infuriates Ramos, the director of archeology of Elche. Strolling across a high plateau, about a mile or so from Elche, he points at excavations that expose the rich history of the site known as La Alcudia.

He stops first at remains of a Roman villa and an early Christian church, then heads for the temple devoted to an Iberian moon goddess. Near there, among the palm trees, a young farm boy digging an irrigation ditch came upon the Lady in 1897.

Now in the laboratory of Alcudia, Ramos points to a statue recently dug up that was also chipped, and like the Lady shows that the inside of the stone is snow-white. "People claiming that the Lady is a fake are just seeking publicity," he said.

This dispute and the battle to bring the Lady to Elche continue. "We will not give up," said Noelia Gutierrez, a student at La Alcudia. "The whole town will go crazy when she comes."

Oddly, despite the government's ban on travel, the Lady is expected in the Grand Palais in Paris in September. There she is billed as one of the leading pieces of the show "The Iberians."

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