El Escorial: imperio y estómago

Over the course of his research into the royal monastery of El Escorial, David Bestué came to realise, when discussing his findings with others, that not many people had actually been there. As for those who had, they were now left with somewhat hazy memories of it. It seems that people are either indifferent about the place, or else they celebrate it patriotically, revelling in all its anecdotes and curiosities. For some, this monastery complex is a curse, the vestige of something that just won’t go away; others, though, see it as a kind of hallowed storeroom, packed with the living essence of Spain.

This text calls into question the unchanging values which still feed into the idea of staunch and robust Spanish greatness. It talks about the war-hungry and authoritarian government of King Felipe II, about the plundering of America, about the building’s different periods of glory and decay, and about its many fires, lootings and reconstructions. The monastery is like a chalice, one which is either full or empty, depending on the situation in Spain and the shifting perceptions of religion, the army and the monarchy. More than just a poetic, eternal, silent and unshakeable rock, the monastery is Spain’s black box: it records all the country’s shocks and upheavals, regardless of attempts to cover them up. It is the symbol of something which is thought to be permanent, central, hegemonic; it is both a physical and an ideological structure.

David Bestué (Barcelona, 1980) is an artist who works in sculpture and writing. Of his individual exhibitions, highlights include Realismo, La España moderna and, at the Reina Sofía Museum, Rosi Amor, a material and formal investigation, inspired by the Madrid neighbourhoods of Las Tablas and Vallecas, as well as El Escorial, a setting which has been an ongoing source of interest for him over the past few years. With Caniche, he has published Historia de la fuerza (2017), a visual study of the technological, material and structural evolution in Spain, based on the modern history of its engineering.