The author of the theft of the work of Gargallo got in touch with the Town hall across a letter written with cut away letters of a newspaper. If they wanted to recover the work, they had to put an announcement in the section Several of the economic announcements of The Avant-garde. The key age "bandaged ocarina in the good state". After this brief text the contact telephone number had to be published for the negotiation. Rafael Pradas and Joan Anthony Benach, persons in charge of the Councillorship of Culture, asked me if he wanted to transfer my house and telephone number. I gained access, and police officers assigned to the brigade specializing in thefts of works of art settled in my dining room with a thing that was recording the conversations and to that they were giving the ear whenever the phone was sounding. This way I met J. R., the inspector who was ordering the group. A subtle Galician that when the called phone companhy was of political sign (the debate one was living of not of the Spanish socialist party to the revenue in the NATO), was extinguishing the tape recorder of the thing and was mentioning that it was there for the G of Gargallo, not for González's G. It neither called nobody interested by the ocarina telephoned the one that had stolen the medallion. But those days of forced coexistence allowed me to meet the police officer who years later would detain René Alphonse van der Berghe known as Erik Belgian.

Sixteen years later, one day of June, 1997, Francesca Español, passionate teacher of History of Medieval art in the University of Barcelona, entered the Sotheby's division in Barcelona to buy the catalog of an already realized auction, thing that usually does with relative frequency. The acquisition of backward catalogs, cheaper than those of the auctions in force, they serve the same to him like work material.

That day of June, Francesca Español was going after the track of a piece of Catalan gold work removed years behind. There was not staying any copy of the auction that he was interested in and the teacher saw of spent the catalog in which there were appearing the photos and the information of the pieces to auction on Wednesday, the 2nd of July in the central Sotheby's head office in London.

METHOD OF WORK

"The method of work of the teachers of Art history is based on the visual memory and on the stylistic analogy", tells Spanish, which continued:" This method was the one that it provoked that I was surprising the photos of two pieces to be auctioned that were appearing on the page 19 of the catalog: there were presenting themselves as two works of art proceeding from the Netherlands, but it seemed to me that there were two of the pieces of the chest of Sant Martirià, stolen in the monastery of Sant Esteve, Banyoles, in 1980. On having observed thoroughly two photos, at first sight, I associated with the stolen works the image of Sant Benet more than that of the Virgin. The experts of Sotheby's who defined two works as a Flemish art were not misled. The Catalan figurative art of the Middle Ages is not original; it was eclectic and he benefited from unlike influences contributed by artists of several countries, Italy, basically, who settled in Catalonia. The proceeding ones from the north of France contributed the influence of the Netherlands".

Francesca Español bought the catalog, ran towards his house, looked in his file for the photos of the images that there was part of the chest of Sant Martirià and confirmed that the works to be auctioned for 15.000 and 20.000 pounds sterling like starting price were part of the set of 26 pieces stolen by Erik Belgian during the years in which it pillaged the religious art of chapels, churches and Spanish monasteries. Still today it turns out to be relatively easy to remove works of art, if it is that something of value stays in old temples of small peoples of Castile, León and Gallicia, communities that in a major measurement have suffered the pillaging, but at present art is stolen more in single-family dwellings than in the half thousand of the already harvested temples.

When the teacher Francesca Español verified that his intuition had not played the past bad one, it got in touch with the episcopate of Girona. The police machinery was started and Interpol intervened preventing the auction. The experts coincide with a point: "The world of the auctions is opaque".

The stolen works of art come to antiquarians' hands that usually do not reveal his origin. Of the antiquarian, the works of art go on to collectors' hands that, in case of police intervention, exhibit the invoice that he credits that they acquired the work on the legal market of antiquities, document that also auctioneer shows the house. Quite legal. But under the apparent legality it moves the reality of the market, which there takes neither to that nor the antiquarian, nor the house of auctions, nor the collector they show big interest to find out the origin of the work that enters on the market. The chain of complicities seeks protection in the permissive legislation that allows the impunity of the antiquarians, the collectors and the auctioneers. The market of the stolen art one says that it moves in the world approximately ten trillion dollars per year.

Who steals works of art in Spain? Generally it are usually Spanish that act as alone or organized in groups of three or four persons, like maximum, because the groups formed by many delinquents devote themselves to more lucrative business: from the traffic of drugs or stolen vehicles, to the theft of jewels, goods easier to place on the market that the works of art, a genre that needs of time for his commercialization. Between the theft of a valuable work of art and his appearance on the market they usually happen several years. Between the theft of the figures of the chest of Sant Martirià and the appearance of two of them in the auction in London had passed 17 years.

WHO STEALS IN SPAIN?

Those who steal the works of art are the first link of the chain: they are those who place them on the market across peristas that they usually have precedents of crimes of receptación. These peristas, the second link of the chain, sell the works to other peristas cleaner policialmente and more introduced on the market. The fourth link is the antiquarian, who a few times ignores the illicit origin of the work that there offers him the perista and others, the majority, he tries not to ask very much. The research work to recover a stolen work breaks when this one comes to hands of a particular, last link of the chain. In the slang of the investigators, the work "stops moving". In his trip from the first link up to the last one, the stolen work of art increases his quotation: a valuable image for which the author of the theft does not perceive much any more than thousand euros costs hundreds of thousands when it comes to the collector.

24 statuettes and 2 side reliefs that were forming the sculptural set of the chest were stolen the night of January 20, 1980. It is supposed that a member of the band hid in the monastery and, when this one closed, disconnected the alarm and opened a door to the rest of thieves so that the pieces of the chest were dismantling one to one.

This is what the investigators of the theft supposed in due time and what there supports today lawyer Carles Mascort, who for order of the episcopate of Girona has carried out the negotiation to recover the pieces in power of a marriage of Dutch collectors, which affirms that he bought them legally to an antiquarian. Of the removed they stay for recovering seven pieces, which are not known where they are. If from the theft up to the location of two key pieces for the resolution of the case they had to happen 17 years, eight have had to happen more so that they could have recovered 17 pieces of the valuable Gothic reliquary of the XVth century. Eight years of negotiations, finished in defeat, between the collectors and the Spanish Department of Culture. Years of strip and it slackens as for the price to be paid for the works, because in the Europe without borders there happens the paradox of which only from 1993 the stolen art can recover without having to compensate economically his holder, although this one alleges that he acquired it ignoring that it was coming from a theft. In practice, today, and despite this board, the European juridical space is still confused: every country tends to protect interests of his nationals before demands presented by citizens or entities of other countries.

- How did his negotiation start, lawyer?
- creating a confidence climate after the ultimatum given by the owners of the pieces on having broken his negotiation with the Department of Culture and to demand to negotiate, giving from term until February, straight with the episcopate.

- What did he surprise?
- that 19 of 26 removed pieces proved that they were in the same hand.

- What is what he cannot explain yet?
- the economic agreement [confidentiality clause exists with the marriage collector] and the collection of anecdotes through that I have lived.

THE HEIGHT OF THE AUDACITY

To lawyer Mascort, as to any sensible person, he is surprised that after the damage caused to the artistic patrimony of the country, Erik Belgian keeps on living in Spain, specifically on the beach of the Sun, enjoying official approval and social recognition, although nothing has collaborated in the police investigations to recover abroad what it stole in Spain. Cynic, he offered in 1994 to the episcopate of Girona to try to locate the pieces that it had stolen. He was asking for 40 million pesetas. The episcopate answered him that it was not treating with thieves. To the cathedral of Roda de Isábena, in Huesca, which years earlier it had pillaged, it donated 19 pictures painted by him. "With the donation I demonstrate that a citizen can collaborate in the maintenance of the artistic patrimony", they tell that he said put in a patron's unusual role. It turns out incomprehensible to lawyer Mascort well that he lives." A thing is that they have prescribed his crimes; different other one, which they him laugh thank you", opinion that the teacher Español shares: "Unheard-of meeting that one invites him to give conferences. It is the height of the audacity and irresponsibility, for his part and that of those who invite him".

- he is a cultivated guy, expert in art and good forger of painting - the inspector J. R. explained to me when it stopped him.

- a nice type, in sum - I mentioned to him with sarcasm.

- it comes closer the human typology of the swindler. If it is you who are not the harmed one, you see him like an agreeable guy who enjoys the life. It even is generous in certain circumstances.

The inspector J. R. remembered that the police officers of his group who were following the delinquent had telephoned him sometimes to inform him that it had begun to have dinner in a luxurious restaurant along with other persons, supposedly traffickers in works of art.

The police officers were not entering. The letter was expensive. It was something that was usually recuring between the police officers who were following swindlers of high standard of living. The inspector J. A., excellent gourmet who was writing kitchen cookbooks in his free moments, had supported with his subordinates many conversations to the Toto:

- Do I enter and have dinner close to his table? - the police officers were asking.
- Does the expenses diet cover it? - the chief was asking.
- But what you say, uncle! It gives for a bottle of mineral water.
- since then, buy to yourself an anchovies sandwich and have dinner in the door, male.

Like the good swindlers, whenever it could, Erik Belgian had lunch or had dinner in restaurants with doors that were giving to two streets, and the police officer for that patient was waiting cursing the hours died opposite to the principal entry was losing his track when this one was leaving the restaurant for a rear. They stopped him in a Castelldefels restaurant. He said that he was made stop because his flight was already untenable.

"If his flight says that it was already untenable, something will have had to do the police", said to me with sarcasm the inspector J. R.

CRIMINAL BRIGADE WITHOUT RESOURCES

Day by day, trying to accumulate tests, months and months of pursuits and lost tracks. Some day will have to tell itself the means penury, economic and of material, with that in the years of the Franco period and many years of the democracy the Criminal Brigade worked. Be enough the anecdote of which in a decalogue on how he had to behave a delinquent who had to flee of a police pursuit was advising himself to flee for a freeway because there existed the safety of which the police car that it was chasing would remain without gasoline. It has never been known who wrote that decalogue. I always suspected that it was a group of police officers with sense of humor and of the reality.

Erik Belgian has not been a vulgar art spoliator. He knew what it was stealing, although the legend is not true of that was not damaging the works that it was removing. That convalescent figures of the chest of the monastery of Banyoles are in good condition it does not mean that other works that it stole were not suffering mutilations vandálicas in order to obtain a major benefit: it sold to pieces a few Gothic beams and parcelled up a chair of the XIth century, considered the only piece.

In general, which steal works of art are individual without art history knowledge. Nations who operate allowing to go for the intuition and who a few times are right and others take an image that is a cast without artistic value or trocean the reredos stolen to sell it to the weight. This delinquents' typology is identified by the police because, in addition to stealing the work of art, they make use of the trip to burst the brushes that gather mites for charitable works or asking for the mediation of the local saint.

"To continue the track to stolen works of art is a very patient work", was saying to me the inspector J. R. while it was spending the hours smoking sat along with the thing connected to my phone.

"A work for the patient people", said to me some years later A. C., sober commander of the Civil Guard, responsible for the group for artistic patrimony of the Operative Mainframe computer. The inspector and the commander were endorsing similar histories: that of the agents covering itineraries that go from the shanty of outlaying districts in which the first link lives up to the stately house in which he inhabits the last one of the links. In this trip, the agents happen of dressing tile us to the suit with tie, they use with the thief of the first link the direct language of "you go to swallow more hosts that in an Eucharistic congress as me you do not say soon to whom you sold the Virgin that you stole in a chapel", and a polite one "excuse that it bothers him: would it have the amiability to show me the certificate of buy of the Virgin that he acquired one month ago?" with the collector suspicious of buying the work knowing that it was coming from a theft.

In the shanty a good work of art can appear by surprise. In the domicile of the gentleman with money that, for investment or pleasure, he invests in works of art, the surprise can be to discover that the work that was considered stolen of a church was sold by the proper parish priest, a problem derived from the fact of that until there was promulgated the law of Patrimony of 1985 was legal to sell goods of the Church, proprietress of 80 % of the artistic patrimony of the country.

It is the surprise that there took Francesc Viadiu, ex-deputy of Esquerra Republicana that, as delegate of Public Order of the Generalitat in Lleida, ordered in 1936, to prevent from pillaging, nobody to enter the diocesan museum of Solsona.

"From there only one piece did not go out because two anarchists who were directing the hundred of men who were patrolling the streets of Solsona wanted order. The surprise I took it in 1985, when the person in charge of the museum was sued from 1939. The priest denounced that in the years of war works of art were stolen and it turned out that he had sold them. Thieves were looking out and the thief was inside", remembers Viadiu.

THE THIEF WAS INSIDE

Did it come of out or there was inside the thief who in May, 1991 stole of Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya the portapau Comte d'Urgell, piece of gold work of 1400? Was the valuable piece in a safe or in a simple closet? Of the safe or closet - a few voices affirm the first and different thing the second thing-: how many keys were there? One? Five? Be one or five, the lock only was opening a special key. Who could open the safe or the closet and in the presence of whom? The case is that one day this work disappeared, without about the theft nothing more having been known. A theft, it is not doubt, committed by anybody with access to the key of the closet or the safe. Saying of more incisive form: the portapau did not take an anyone.

It was the most valuable work of the museum. It was coming from the funds of the monastery of Sigena, in Aragon devastated along the war. The nuns, of the order of Saint John, saved as the works of art could. The portapau stayed in deposit in Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya and some years later they sold it to be able to support the construction of a new convent.

"The existence of the valuable portapau was known by few persons. It was not exhibited to avoid problems with Aragon. That's why he kept in a closet", he affirms a deep gullet.

- Were great those who were putting the hands in the closet?
- very few.

- Is it a work that it is possible to place on the market?
- his singularity is very difficult, given.

- then: to steal for pleasure deprived of collector?
Enigmatic smile of the informer. A last question:

- Was the theft aired?
- there was administrative silence for fear of the scandal.

In one of the rooms of his buffet, decorated with African art pieces, lawyer Mascort has recognized after the reporter that the experience lived with the recovery of the pieces of the chest stolen in the monastery of Sant Esteve allows him to affirm that to recover stolen works of art is a difficult police work.

The inspector and the commander told to me that to continue the tracks of stolen works of art was hard, but not the worst thing: the worst thing there were the boring, complex, interminable bureaucratic steps that have to settle with those who swear and perjure themselves for his holy mother who in the sky is to have bought the bona fide work.

Attention be paid to the fact of which it was in June, 1997 that was known that Sotheby's was auctioning two of the pieces stolen by Erik Belgian in the monastery of Sant Esteve and in Sotheby's the Virgin and Sant Bernat continue in January, 2006.

If this step was bored, complex and interminable enclosed when the owner of the stolen work agreed to pay indemnification to the one that had bought it, as in case of the Banyoles monastery, we do not say how it must be of boring, complex and interminable the step now that the stolen work has to return to his proprietor without this one must pay an indemnification.