For years, Americans had a handful of "soft" ways to stay in Spain longer than a normal vacation, or to turn a property purchase into a residency plan. Spain did not slam the door shut. But it did remove shortcuts, tighten the math, and make border time much easier to track.
Reducing the maximum number is not only beneficial in general, it is first and foremost an advantage for group members themselves, who will now be offered an experience that brings them closer to the works.
The Reina Sofia's new rehang opens, quite pointedly, with a painting of a detained man sitting, head bowed and wrists shackled, as he waits for the arbitrary hand of institutional bureaucracy to decide his fate. The picture, Document No , was painted by Juan Genoves in 1975, the year Francisco Franco died and Spain began its transition to democracy after four decades of dictatorship.
A group of polychrome wood panels discovered under the floorboards of a house in Toledo in 2018 are going on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid. They were found during construction of a hotel planned to go up over several buildings in the Bajada del Pozo Amargo street next to Toldeo's Cathedral. They had been stripped from their original location on the upper part of the walls of a quadrangular hall and reused as raw carpentry material in the house's subfloor.
Ba-rro: "Our starting point is always the context and what already exists." We are interested in recognizing the value of things simply because they are there, without assuming that everything must be preserved as a matter of principle. The question isn't what can be kept, but what deserves to be kept in each specific project. The decision to preserve, reveal, or remove doesn't stem from universal values or a nostalgic impulse, but from a situated interpretation:
Concéntrico is an urban innovation laboratory that invites reflection on the city through architecture and design. Since 2015, it has carried out more than 180 interventions in Logroño, Spain. The new 2025/2026 season of the festival expands on this experimental spirit with three international calls for proposals that bring the ideas in the book Concéntrico: Laboratorio de Innovación Urbana (Park Books, 2025) into action.
Oskar: We matched on Tinder in Bali the day before he left, so we didn't physically meet. He was living in Melbourne at the time, and I actually had plans to move there. Santi: A month later, I asked him on a date. We watched Bridesmaids at an outdoor cinema. Oskar: I was obsessed. But I didn't have a permanent place to live... Santi: ...which is when my friend and I found a three-bedroom and needed another roommate. Oskar: We moved in as friends. Santi: At least, that was the plan. But that first night, I was really cold and I found my way into his room.
Dating to the 1st-2nd century A.D., the bronzes are about 20 inches long and mounted to rectangular bases. They capture the little girls in dynamic movement, frozen in the act of propelling themselves forward, their fingers splayed wide on each side of the partridges just about to catch them. The craftsmanship is superior, every detail on the toddlers and partridges realistically depicted with fine materials. The eyes are inlaid with white stones and one of the girls still has her metal irises.
We visited the Female Artists of the Mougins Museum, in Mougins, a small village on a hill near Cannes. Full of exclusively female artists from Berthe Morisot in the 19th century and Frida Kahlo in the early 20th to contemporary figures such as Tracey Emin it houses an incredible collection of often overlooked art and artists. We visited on a rainy October day and it was remarkably quiet and calm. I particularly enjoyed the abstract works well worth a trip up the hill.
Designed in close dialogue with the Prado's conservators, the coats meet strict functional requirements essential to restoration work. They are constructed from high-quality, non-reflective materials that prevent any glare from interfering with the surface of a painting-an essential consideration when working millimeters away from a Velázquez or a Bosch.
MADRID - The most famous portrait of Maruja Mallo depicts the artist covered from head to toe in seaweed. She is crowned and draped with long, rope-like strands of kelp, her arms raised triumphantly like an all-powerful marine goddess. This unconventional photograph, snapped in 1945 by the poet Pablo Neruda on a Chilean beach, was no doubt carefully orchestrated by the Spanish artist, who viewed herself as an extension of her unique work, where female energy is a conduit for natural and even cosmic forces.
From figures with multiple legs and noodles for arms to frolicking trees, Paco Pomet summons the absurd. Known for his uncanny oil paintings rendered mostly in monochrome and enlivened by colorful details of overly stretchy limbs or celestial objects, a sense of nostalgia greets surreal scenarios. The artist often derives his imagery from vintage black-and-white photographs, adding an absurd dimension to history.
Taking over the colourful Casa Gilardi, Luis Barragán's last commissioned residence, built for the advertising executive Francisco Gilardi in the mid-1970s, the German artist Gregor Hildebrandt transforms the house's stylish rooms with an ever-expanding exhibition of his enigmatic works across various media. Known for transforming outmoded analogue recording media-including audio cassettes, VHS tapes and vinyl records-into paintings, sculptures and large-scale installations, the Berlin-based artist's conceptual works explore themes of memory, nostalgia and the physical representation of intangible sound and sight.
I was intrigued by the similarity between two paintings recently featured in the Guardian: the Ecce Homo as restored by Cecilia Gimenez (Cecilia Gimenez, famed for Monkey Christ' mural mishap, dies at 94, 30 December) and Tete de Femme by Pablo Picasso (1m Picasso portrait up for grabs for 100 in charity raffle, 31 December). Perhaps Cecilia's work is in need of a reappraisal. Steve Shearsmith Beverley, East Yorkshire
'trace] the evolution of the imagery of affection, seduction, conversation, male camaraderie and the sociability of the café and theatre, as well as merry-making, flirtation, courtship and child-rearing in Renoir's art'