The feeling here is that we are not facing the inauguration of just another museum, but that the opening of Faro Santander, the former headquarters of Banco de Santander today inhabited by Tiziano, Velázquez, Rubens, Tàpies, Cristina Iglesias, Frida Khalo and Leonora Carrington, is not only the culmination of one of the most ambitious projects of recent years, but the starting point of a transformation that will turn the Cantabrian capital into one of the most vibrant cultural poles. and unique from Spain. “We are part of what is about to arrive, we open the door to everything that comes behind,” says its director, Daniel Vega, who this Monday, after the opening ceremony, was in charge of leading King Felipe VI through the different spaces of the building rehabilitated by the architect and Pritzker prizewinner David Chipperfield: 10,000 square meters of cultural center with views of the bay and the Centro Botín by Renzo Piano, which since 2017 marks the new direction of a city who is trusting his future to art.
While the Botín Center was a family project, born from the efforts of Emilio Botín, Faro Santander depends on the banking foundation and has Ana Botín as its main promoter. The first is radically committed to contemporary art, the second has more to do with a museum of fine arts, where, among others, the Banco de Santander Collection will be permanently exhibited, which until now remained semi-hidden in the banking city of Boadilla del Monte. “In no way do we come to compete,” says Vega, who was previously director of Exhibitions and Conservation of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. "We come to contribute, to complement, to try to bring things that we think do not exist at this moment, to integrate into what already exists."
That is the key to what he calls the “Santander model”, which has nothing to do with that of cities like Malaga, based on franchises of large museums, but everything that already exists and is being promoted is very “genuine, they are projects born here, linked to the local and very different from each other.” But like all cultural revolutions, this one has not emerged overnight either. For years, the Port Authority has enabled different spaces for art (the Cabo Mayor Art Center, the Nave Sotoliva, the Embarcadero Palace...) that have been a center of excitement, but it is “what comes after” that will end up giving the city a unique character. Last May, the businessman and collector José María Lafuente inaugurated Cultura Material, a space of more than 600 meters where he plans to organize exhibitions from the part of the collection that he did not sell to the Reina Sofía Museum (the large FoodCultura collection of the artist Antoni Miralda, Ceseepe's studio or the toys of Juan Bordes, with whose funds he has organized his current exhibition...). The center also houses the library of more than 40,000 items. The Lafuente Archive itself, now part of the Reina Sofía Museum, will open its doors (not yet dated) in the old Bank of Spain. And, on the other side of the Bay, in Puertochico, next year the new Museum of Prehistory and Archeology of Cantabria (MUPAC) will be inaugurated, which preserves key pieces from the Altamira caves.
At the opening ceremony, which in addition to the King was attended by the Minister (Minister of Industry and Tourism, Jordi Hereu, the president of Cantabria, María José Sáenz de Buruaga and the mayor of the city, Gema Igual, Chipperfield referred to the project as “an example of how the private sector can make important contributions to the common good.” “For generations,” he noted, “this building was known as a bank and, to a large extent, the city perceived it from the outside. Today, "It has reinvented itself as a space for culture, meeting and public access. By opening the building and making it more accessible, Banco Santander makes a valuable gesture: a gesture of responsibility towards the city, its inhabitants and citizens," said the architect, responsible among others for the restoration of the Neues Museum in Berlin or new museums such as the Jumex in Mexico. The mayor has also expressed gratitude to Ana Botín, recognizing that it is "the largest private investment in the history of the city."
The expectation aroused by Faro Santander is great (it hopes to attract some 200,000 visitors) but that does not free it from citizen controversies after five years of construction. The last one is due to the pedestrianization of the section of street that passes under the glass arch, the “heart” of the Chipperfield project, where today three figures by Juan Muñoz appear (Conversation Piece I) and serve as a link between the façade of a two-piece building built at different times that was once a hotel, a regatta club and since 1923 the headquarters of the Banco de Santander. A complaint from neighbors, upset by the change of route of a bus line, has brought to court a case reminiscent of that carried out by Dutch cyclists, who managed to maintain their right of passage through the tunnel or central passage of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
It is through this passage that you access a lobby presided over by a magnificent helical staircase (“the Chipperfield signature,” says Ana Botella, the Director of Programs) from which you can access the five floors, with 3,000 square meters dedicated to exhibitions. In this first stage the protagonists are two women, Leonora Carrington and Frida Khalo. The first shows Symptomatic Surrealism, which until last August was in the Freud Museum in London and focuses on the artist's time at Dr. Morales' psychiatric sanatorium in Santander in 1940, after being raped in Madrid by a pack of requetés. A stay in which she was subjected to strong electroshock sessions that destroyed her, despite which she managed to take refuge in writing (the autobiographical story Memories from Below) and painting, with works such as Down Below and Villa Pilar, the latter a gift to her therapist that can be seen in Spain for the first time.
Not without controversy, the presence of Frida Kahlo, with no less than fifteen works, including Self-portrait with monkeys or Self-portrait with a bed, in which she is shown smoking next to a doll, is part of the long-term agreement reached by the Banco de Santander Foundation to manage the Gelman collection, which also includes works by Diego Rivera, Maria Izquierdo, Rufino Tamayo and José Clemente Orozco, in addition to an important photographic collection. According to Mexican legislation, the works will have to return in 2028 (they have a temporary export permit for two years) but once that period has passed they will be able to return to Santander or leave for other parts of Europe, according to the art collection, is María Beguiristain, director of art and exhibitions at Fundación Banco Santander.
Beguiristai is also in charge of the unknown collection that the bank itself has, made up of the sum of different collections and which, although it will continue to have a presence in Boadilla, is now shown here in a thematic proposal by María Dolores Jiménez Blanco that will not be able to be seen in full until the 17th since part of the rooms where the works of Picasso or Goya will be located have had to be left empty to host the opening ceremony.
The center, which defines itself as art, culture and technology, includes an auditorium, a Cube room where three immersive experiences are presented through the history of Banco de Santander and the city itself, developed by Zanskar, Layers of Reality and Intervento, and on the upper floors a cafeteria, a restaurant and terraces with views of the bay.
These spaces not only support the museum, but also invite people to use the building throughout the day, as does an exquisite space dedicated to children, Llamita, because, says Botella, "art starts from play and this space is designed to light the flame. Institutions must encourage play, it is the beginning of everything."
