Last year, this newspaper dedicated a series of eleven chapters to Navarre's heritage exiled beyond its borders. On this occasion the protagonism will be for a series of cultural assets that are no longer in the place for which they were made, for various reasons, although all of them are located within the borders of Navarre.

Many spaces configured as living realities, with their decoration and furnishings, ceased to be so when works of art that are now found in other areas, such as museum halls, were removed from their surroundings.

In the ecclesiastical properties, of town halls and other corporations, tracing is easy because they are open to the public and because they have diverse documentation. However, tracing private collections is very difficult because of their family character and the suppression of the entailed estates in the 19th century.

The great commotion with the nineteenth century disentailment
The consequences of the disentailment and exclaustration were a real disaster for the buildings and, even more so, for most of their furnishings. Of the few that were saved, some ended up in different temples. Altarpieces, choir stalls and other pieces of furnishings were saved because order parish priests and other communities that had lost their furnishings in the War of Independence. In some places, the transfer was motivated by the suppression of some parishes as a result of the new benefit plans, as happened in Tudela.

We will dedicate a couple of chapters to altarpieces, others to pictorial or architectural ensembles and the decorative arts, the great heathens because of their vulnerability and the profitability of selling silver and gold. The choir stalls suffered great damage. The one of Leire -today, again in the monastery- was barely saved in its integrity. Those of La Oliva, Antonianos de Olite and part of that of Irache were relocated to Olite, Valtierra and Dicastillo.

Around the same time, the suppression of the entailed entailed estates, which included valuable goods, such as portraits, paintings of different themes or jewels, caused a great increase in their sales in order to recover economies battered as a result of the great social changes, leaving the mansions where they had spent centuries. If we add to this the fact that many nobles made their families abroad and took their patrimony to the court, we can explain how today it is very difficult to find knowledge of all that heritage.

Museums, depopulations and closures of secular temples
At the end of the 19th century, when the disastrous consequences of the disentailment and exclaustration for the cultural heritage of Navarre became clear, the Commission of Monuments of Navarre took care of the safeguarding of many objects within the province. In 1910 the Archaeological Museum was created in the Chamber of Comptos. Later, in 1956, the Museum of Navarre was inaugurated and, finally, the Diocesan Museum opened its doors in July 1960. Other attempts were unsuccessful, for the time being, such as the one planned for the cathedral of Tudela in 1967, with the support of the Ministry of Information and Tourism. With the passage of time, various institutions and entities opened others, such as the monastery of Tulebras, Gayarre in Roncal, Corella, Roncesvalles... etc. Of all of them, the Navarra and the Diocesan of Pamplona were the ones that collected cultural heritage from different localities and origins. Other relocations were not lacking, such as the main altarpiece of the cathedral that went to the parish of San Miguel de Pamplona, after years of storage and various offers from Cascante or Calahorra.

Emblematic pieces such as the chest of Leire arrived at the Museum of Navarre. This piece had been transferred to Sangüesa, after the disentailment of Mendizábal and later, in 1865, to the cathedral of Pamplona. In 1947 it passed to the Diputación and in 1966 to the Museum. To this institution came a large group of mural paintings, of which Carlos Martínez Álava gave an account in this same newspaper on May 9 of this year. Another of the outstanding pieces of the Museum, the portrait of the Marquis of San Adrián by Goya, was acquired by the Diputación Foral in 1953 for two million pesetas, and was incorporated in 1966.

The Diocese of Pamplona was nourished both from cathedral collections and from various objects collected from different towns.

A new panorama in the relocation of singular artistic pieces is currently being created as a result of the depopulation and closure of some convents. Their altarpieces and pieces of liturgical trousseau have been relocated, as we will see in one of the articles of this series, in different parishes of the archdiocese of Pamplona.