Divorce with ‘velázquez’: a decide orders that the Prado guard a worthwhile canvas that metal magnate Aristrain and his ex-wife are combating for | Culture | EUROtoday

There are {couples} who battle over their pet or books after they divorce. And there are others, no less than one other, that does it for a Velázquez. José María Aristrain de la Cruz, one of many richest folks in Spain, has been denounced by his ex-wife for staying a Velázquez in his mansion in Madrid. She considers that it was a present that he gave her and that it belongs to her within the distribution, though she was nonetheless within the magnate’s mansion. According to sources accustomed to the case, a decide in Madrid has ordered the Ministry of Culture to discover a place for it to be guarded till the litigation is over and the Government selected the Prado Museum. Since final March 17, the portray has rested within the gallery’s storage rooms.

In December 2007, the Retiro room in Madrid put up for public sale one of many few Velázquez that stay in personal palms. This is a duplicate portrait of Philip IV, though with variations, of the one on show within the Prado Museum, in the identical room. Las Meninas. Philip IV seems standing, virtually life-size. The monarch, who was about 20 years previous on the time, is dressed solely in black, with an austere swimsuit. The beginning worth was 2.5 million euros. It isn’t a lot for a portray like this, however its state of conservation was faulty and it had been tough to attribute the portray to Diego Velázquez.

Although there have been sure doubts, the public sale home introduced stories proving the authorship. In 2000, as revealed on this newspaper, Professor Peter Cherry, from the Department of Art History at Trinity College, University of Dublin, said that “the characteristic details of the painter’s brushstrokes and his punctual and precise touches, typical of the works made by Velázquez in his first years in Madrid, were detected in the work.” The diary Abc expanded that “Carmen Garrido also considered, in an article published in the magazine Goyathat the portrait was an autograph replica of the Prado painting.” A former director of the museum, Alfonso Pérez Sánchez, considered it a work by Velázquez, “but very damaged and clumsily restored.” And Enrique Valdivieso, professor of Art History at the University of Seville, also endorsed the authorship of the canvas to Velázquez.

Even so, the auction was deserted. Not even the State bid for the canvas.

In 2015, the Isbilya art house in Seville put the painting up for auction again, this time for a starting price of 750,000 euros. On this occasion there was a buyer. Although its identity was never revealed, it was acquired by José María Aristrain’s then wife, Gema Navarro, to whom he was remarried. He did it with his money, who was already immersed in an investigation for tax crimes.

For Aristrain, money was never a problem. At only 26 years old, he inherited a fortune from José María Aristrain Noain. Although born in Argentina, he returned to the Basque Country where his family had left and in the 1940s he set up a foundry. The steel business was fantastic for him. So much so that when in 1980, for the first and only time in Spain, income tax returns were published, he was the second taxpayer in the country, only behind José María Ruiz-Mateos. Threatened by ETA, he always refused to pay the revolutionary tax. In 1986 he died in a strange helicopter accident while flying over the French Riviera.

An inherited empire

At only 26 years old, the son inherited the empire and developed an obsession with security and discretion. Hunting, cars and bulls are his passion. Aristrain ran the businesses without hardly showing his face. In 1997, he entered Aceralia thanks to the privatizations undertaken by the Aznar Government. In 2006, India’s Mittal launched a takeover bid and Aristrain, who supported Mittal, took 3% of ArcelorMittal. He became one of the main shareholders of the company, the largest steel company in the world. Forbes That year he was ranked 10th among the richest Spaniards thanks to a fortune of 1.2 billion euros. Today he estimates 1.4 billion.

The painting was added to his art collection. He also collects cars, such as an exclusive Ferrari GTO, a legendary example of which only a handful of units were manufactured in the sixties and which is worth more than 50 million euros. It has one of the largest estates in Spain – Valdepuercas, in Cáceres -, a mansion in Seville – San Leandro -, a farm in that province where it raises fighting bulls, an entire block near Génova Street that includes the old British embassy, ​​a chalet in Somosaguas, a 55-metre-long yacht and an old tugboat converted into a leisure boat named Steel (steel).

However, Aristrain moved its tax residence to Gstaad (Switzerland) 20 years ago and Arcelor’s entire operation was taxed in Luxembourg. The Spanish treasury did not smell a euro and began to investigate.

In 2011, the Madrid Economic Crimes Prosecutor’s Office filed a complaint against him and, by order of the judge, on June 21 of that year, his homes and offices were entered and searched. The Prosecutor’s Office accused him of having faked his residence outside of Spain to defraud the Treasury of 211 million. It is a figure that, in terms of amount, placed it at the level of the lawsuits of large corporations. “This change of tax domicile to Switzerland as of 2006 does not respond to reality, its sole purpose being to avoid paying the personal income tax and wealth tax that corresponded to him as a resident in Spain,” mentioned the State Attorney’s Office.

The case dragged on for years. When he finally came to trial, in 2023, Aristrain appeared in a wheelchair and armed with a team of prestigious lawyers and experts. Among other things, he alleged that when he acquired the mansion in Switzerland he did so including an art collection valued at around 10 million euros, something that no one who only pretended to reside would do.

The Prosecutor’s Office and the Tax Agency went to clues such as the use of his cards and that in the membership of the Swiss ski club he used he gave his home in Madrid as his address. The case ended in acquittal, but the Supreme Court has ordered a repeat of the trial from the beginning.

After being acquitted, Aristrain separated from his second wife, Gema Navarro Mangado. The process was not peaceful. With the first, María Palma, he also had a divorce that ended in court. In one of those hearings, Aristrain declared: “That he doesn’t know his revenue as a result of he doesn’t rely his cash, he has many corporations and he loses and wins within the inventory market. That he doesn’t bear in mind his revenue since he was born, that he’s not involved.”

He was married to Navarro in separation of property, something that, in principle, guarantees that the divorce will not have a great controversy. She left the boards of directors she was on. In the case of Tubacex, for example, the reason given was “loss of confidence.”

But even so, the divorce process ended in litigation in Switzerland that settled the pension for their common child. However, there was still something missing. The portrait of Philip IV.

The canvas had been left in the mansion in the center of Madrid, which he owned. She claimed it, without success, and did not have access to the home. So a few months ago he filed a complaint for misappropriation, according to sources close to the case.

The matter fell to the Investigative Court quantity 11 of Madrid, which on February 12, and in settlement with the Prosecutor’s Office, requested the Ministry of Culture to take custody of it. He valued the significance that the portray attributed to Velázquez may have for the historic heritage. The ministry selected the El Prado warehouses and on March 17, the Heritage brigade moved it to the museum.