Raphael Minder

The referendum proposition was hotly debated in Switzerland, which has maintained compulsory military service and has a long tradition of marksmanship, including what is billed as the world’s largest annual shooting competition.

The government had warned voters that Switzerland, which is not a member of the European Union but follows many of its rules, could lose its membership in the Schengen Area — which allows free movement among 26 European countries — if it rejected stricter gun rules.

Polls closed at midday local time, and the final results showed that almost 64% voted in favor of tighter gun controls, in line with what opinion polls had predicted. Only the citizens of the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland rejected the gun initiative.

Turnout was about 43%, on a day when the Swiss also voted on other local and federal issues, including on financing their pensions system. Opponents conceded defeat but warned that the new regulations would undermine traditional values.

Under the new law, Switzerland will strengthen labeling and registration rules for private weapons and for their main components. Anticipating objections, the Swiss government said it had extracted some concessions from the European Union, particularly to continue to allow Swiss soldiers to keep their weapons at home, including army-issued assault rifles, following initial military training. Army reservists are then required to take these weapons to regular shooting practice until the age of 34.

Swiss citizens will also retain the ability to buy semi-automatic weapons, but only if they can show they regularly train with them. Switzerland does not require medical or psychological tests to purchase such weapons. The law will also leave untouched weaponry and registration procedures for shooting courses and competitions held in Switzerland.

The Swiss Parliament approved the new rules in September. But firearms and hunting lobbyists and associations, with the support of the right-wing Swiss People’s party, campaigned to force a national referendum.

One of the arguments made by opponents is that Switzerland has had relatively few mass shootings. In 2018, 22 homicides were committed with a firearm in Switzerland, down from 43 the previous year.

This article originally appeared in <a id="d19cbc96-ef4a-3dcb-acd1-d4de6d1d0f41" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/19/world/europe/switzerland-vote-gun-law-eu.html">The New York Times</a>.

Non-EU Switzerland votes to tighten firearms laws to align with EU rules

Swiss voters agreed Sunday to tighten the country’s gun laws to reach parity with European Union anti-terrorism legislation that came into force following attacks in Paris and elsewhere.

His death, following a stroke, was confirmed by the Spanish government, which decreed an official day of mourning.

Rubalcaba was part of the generation that entered politics just as the country was transitioning from dictatorship to democracy, after the death in 1975 of Gen. Francisco Franco.

Born on July 21, 1951, in Medio Cudeyo, Spain, Rubalcaba was a chemist by training. He lectured in universities both in Spain and overseas, and his initial climb up the ranks of the Socialist Party was linked to his expertise in education, culminating in his appointment as minister of education and science in 1992, a decade after the Socialist Party first won office, under the leadership of Felipe González.

One of his final tasks during González’s premiership was challenging. As the official spokesman of the government, Rubalcaba tried to play down a series of political scandals that eventually forced the Socialists out of office. Some of these scandals related to fraud, but perhaps the most damaging one concerned the discovery that the Spanish authorities had been using an unlawful paramilitary force to kill the terrorists of ETA, the Basque separatist group.

In March 2004, Rubalcaba played a critical part in the comeback of the Socialists, who were returned to power in an election that took place amid a national tragedy, shortly after the Madrid train bombings that were Spain’s worst terrorist attack.

As soon as the bombs exploded on commuter trains bound for Madrid’s Atocha station, the then-conservative government sought to attribute the killings to ETA. The government then maintained that claim even amid mounting evidence that the bombings had been masterminded by Islamic rather than Basque terrorists.

A day before the election, Rubalcaba urged voters to make the conservative government pay for this, saying that “Spaniards deserve a government that doesn’t lie to them.” The fierce debate over who was responsible for the bombings provoked street demonstrations and eventually helped José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the new Socialist leader, unseat the conservative Popular Party in the election.

Under Zapatero, Rubalcaba held different ministerial jobs, most significantly that of interior minister, which again put him at the heart of Spain’s struggle against ETA.

In 2006, a significantly weakened ETA declared a cease-fire, but then broke the truce a few months later, when Basque terrorists bombed the parking lot of Madrid’s airport, killing two people. Rubalcaba then coordinated efforts to dismantle ETA, with Spanish police arresting several ETA leaders, often in cooperation with its counterpart in neighboring France. ETA declared another cease-fire in October 2011, and then formally disbanded last year, ending one of Europe’s longest terrorism campaigns, which had killed more than 800 people.

But by 2011, Spain was sinking into a banking crisis and facing record unemployment. An increasingly unpopular Zapatero handed over the leadership of the Socialists to Rubalcaba, in the runup to another national election, forecasting that the leadership change could save the Socialists. Referring to Rubalcaba’s past as a champion sprinter in college, Zapatero said that “somebody who is a sprinter and has been capable of running 100 meters in just over 10 seconds is capable of winning elections in 10 months.”

But in November of that year, the Socialists suffered a humiliating defeat, and the Popular Party returned to office with a parliamentary majority.

Even so, Rubalcaba survived a challenge to his Socialist Party leadership, narrowly defeating Carme Chacón, who had been the defense minister in Zapatero’s administration. Two years later, after voters once more shunned the Socialists in the elections to the European Parliament, Rubalcaba withdrew from politics. He returned to academia, teaching chemistry at the Complutense, one of Madrid’s major universities.

Rubalcaba is survived by his wife, Pilar Goya. The couple did not have children.

Rubalcaba’s death coincided with another election campaign, as Spain holds municipal, regional and European Parliament elections on May 26.

After hearing that Rubalcaba had suffered a stroke, Pedro Sánchez, the Socialist prime minister, cut short a trip to Romania to visit Rubalcaba in the hospital. The Socialist Party suspended its election campaign activities on Saturday to respect the day of mourning for Rubalcaba.

Sánchez said Rubalcaba was an example of “commitment to the cause of democracy and freedom in Spain, to which he dedicated his whole life.” Zapatero wrote that Rubalcaba was “essential and decisive in ending terrorism in Spain.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="5310c7f2-b6ad-3815-a407-9505e3436964" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/12/obituaries/alfredo-perez-rubalcaba-dies.html">The New York Times</a>.

Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, who helped end Basque terror, dies at 67

MADRID — Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, a former leader of Spain’s Socialist Party who is credited with helping end Basque separatist violence, died Friday in Madrid. He was 67.

The ruling, announced Tuesday, is the latest in the long-standing ownership dispute over “Rue Saint-Honoré, Après-midi, Effet de Pluie,” a 1897 painting by Camille Pissarro.

The federal court held that ownership was governed by Spanish law, which allows buyers to retain works they purchased if they did not possess “actual knowledge” the works had been stolen, a position held by both the Madrid museum possessing the painting, the Thyssen-Bornemisza, and the prior owner.

But U.S. District Court Judge John Walter was critical of Spain, which owns the museum, noting that its position was “inconsistent” with an international agreement it had signed, the Washington Principles, that encourages governments to find “just and fair” solutions in cases where looted art is identified.

The German Jewish owner, Lilly Cassirer, had been forced to sell the painting to a Nazi art appraiser in 1939 for the equivalent of $360. The work eventually landed in the Madrid museum as part of the collection acquired by Spain from Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, an industrialist.

The initial claim was filed in 2001 by Claude Cassirer, Lilly Cassirer’s heir, who lived in California. After his death in 2010, other family members took over as plaintiffs, alongside the United Jewish Federation of San Diego County.

Thaddeus J. Stauber, a partner at Nixon Peabody, a U.S. law firm representing the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation, welcomed Tuesday’s ruling. A court had previously found in favor of the foundation in 2015, but this latest ruling differed in that it focused on the plaintiffs’ argument that the foundation had actual knowledge, when the painting was acquired in the early 1990s, that it had been stolen, Stauber explained in an email response.

In its ruling this week, the California court found that Thyssen-Bornemisza paid “fair market value” when he acquired the Pissarro painting for $300,000 in 1976 but should have done more to discover the exact ownership history of the painting and trace it back to Nazi looting, because some details hinted at a complicated provenance.

“Although the ‘red flags’ should have raised the baron’s suspicions, they fall well short of demonstrating the baron’s actual knowledge, i.e. that the baron had certain knowledge that the painting was stolen, or that there was a high risk or probability that the painting was stolen,” according to the ruling.

A law firm that has represented the Cassirer family, Kendall Brill &amp; Klieger, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In 1958, Lilly Cassirer received financial compensation from the German government for the loss of her painting. But as part of the settlement, she did not waive her right to seek its return.

The court this week said that in 1976, Thyssen-Bornemisza was given “minimal provenance information” by the Stephen Hahn Gallery, which sold him the work. But the judge pointed out possible indicators that a “sophisticated art collector” like Thyssen-Bornemisza overlooked, such as that “some of the labels on the verso of the painting appear to have been intentionally torn off or removed.” The baron also ignored “the well-known history and pervasive nature of the Nazi looting of fine art during World War II” as well as the more specific fact that “Pissarro paintings were often looted by the Nazis,” the court said.

Overall, the court found, “there is no evidence that the baron made any inquiries regarding the painting’s provenance or conducted any investigation of the painting’s provenance before purchasing it.”

When Spain took over the Thyssen collection, it conducted no investigation into the origins of artwork that the industrialist, who died in 2002, had acquired before 1980.

The Pissarro painting has been on display in Madrid since the Thyssen museum’s opening in 1992. The museum now ranks among the most visited places in the Spanish capital, within walking distance of the Prado, Spain’s flagship art museum.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/arts/design/court-rules-spanish-museum-can-keep-a-painting-seen-as-nazi-loot.html" id="994f1cb5-8fb9-3888-a9be-558b0616f6d6">The New York Times</a>.

After a long legal battle, a federal court in California has ruled that a Spanish museum can keep an impressionist painting, rejecting a claim by relatives of a German Jew who was forced to sell the painting before fleeing the Nazis.

Court Rules Spanish Museum Can Keep a Painting Seen as Nazi Loot

When King Charles III of Spain commissioned the building in the 1780s, he wanted a museum of natural science to celebrate the spirit of the Enlightenment. But when his ultraconservative grandson, Ferdinand VII, came to the throne three decades later, he put a stop to that. “He wanted to showcase the wealth of his collection rather than make any kind of contribution to scientific progress,” said Javier Portús, curator of an exhibition that celebrates the Prado’s bicentenary.

“The irony is that the Prado opened in a period of clearly regressive thinking in Spain,” he added.

The exhibition, called “A Place of Memory” and running through March 10, shows how, right from the beginning, the Prado navigated the often choppy waters of Spanish politics, as the country went from being an imperial power to a nation divided by civil war, and then through dictatorship to the democracy it is today.

The Prado was regularly threatened by domestic turmoil in Spain, particularly during the civil war in the 1930s, when the paintings were removed from the museum and taken to a safe haven in Switzerland.

At other times, upheaval benefited the museum. In the 1830s, to help pay off Spain’s public debt, the country’s monasteries, along with their artwork, were expropriated, and some of those pieces later found their way into the Prado’s collection after it was declared the national museum in the 1870s.

But through two centuries of shifting politics, the Prado kept its place as a symbol of Spain’s cultural wealth. “I think the Prado represents the best image of Spain, because it’s a place that has always somehow managed to stay above our political divisions,” said Antonio Muñoz Molina, a writer and member of the Royal Spanish Academy.

The Prado opened during a golden age of museum expansion in Europe. The Louvre was inaugurated in Paris in 1793, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in 1800 and the National Gallery in London in 1824.

But for many visitors, “it’s probably a surprise to hear the Prado is only 200 years old, because we so often think about its great collection from the 16th century,” said Taco Dibbits, director of the Rijksmuseum, in a telephone interview. Among the treasures from this period are the portraits by Titian and other artists of Emperor Charles V, whose territory covered almost 1.5 million square miles, including much of western Europe from Flanders, where he was born, to Western Spain, where he died. The portraits became part of the Spanish royal collection and eventually landed in the Prado.

Compared with some other national museums, the Prado is “really unique as the collection of an emperor who had the best from the European countries over which Spain once reigned,” Dibbits said. “It’s special in being very international, but on the other hand, in also having a very clear national identity.”

The bicentennial exhibition focuses on some of the many foreign painters who visited the Prado to discover Diego Velázquez and the other great Spanish masters. Those visitors included artists such as Édouard Manet of France and the Americans William Merritt Chase and John Singer Sargent. They not only left their names in the visitors’ book but also copied or incorporated into their paintings what they had admired and studied in Madrid.

The show also highlights some of the brightest and most innovative periods for the Prado, including during the Second Republic in the early 1930s, when the Prado played a pivotal part in an educational program to introduce ordinary citizens to culture.

In that drive, a pioneering traveling exhibition took copies of the Prado’s masterworks to 170 towns across Spain, many of them in isolated farming regions. A 1932 photograph in “A Place of Memory” shows a crowd of rural folk wearing berets and headscarves, viewing a copy of Velázquez’s “The Spinners.”

“Illiterate people who had never gotten out of their villages suddenly discovered Velázquez and the incredible artistic wealth of Spain,” Portús said during a recent tour of the exhibition. “It’s the kind of pedagogical undertaking that you could now perhaps imagine doing with the internet and social media,” he added, “but that was unprecedented for a museum on such a scale at that time.”

The next time the Prado’s masterworks went on the road, however, the circumstances were more dire. Shortly after the military coup of July 1936 — instigated by Francisco Franco and some fellow generals against the Republican government — Madrid became one of the main battlegrounds of what eventually extended into a three-year civil war. During one of the air raids on the city in November 1936, nine bombs fell onto the roof of the Prado. (A fragment of one is displayed in the show.)

When the Republican government abandoned Madrid for Valencia and later Barcelona, it took almost 2,000 artworks, including more than 300 of the most important items from the Prado’s collection. Eventually, the works were transported to Geneva for safekeeping.

“Everything divided the two sides who fought the war, except perhaps that everybody agreed about the Prado’s importance,” said Jesús Ruiz Mantilla, a writer and culture journalist. “Once Franco wins, his first worry is to bring back the Prado’s paintings.”

Franco won the war in April 1939, starting a period of dictatorship that ended only with his death in 1975. His regime not only added works to the collection, but also financed two new extensions to the museum’s buildings, as well as replacing the wooden floors with marble.

But Franco did little to promote academic research at the museum, and the Prado’s exhibitions at the time were modest and unadventurous, according to Portús. The regime cared mostly about using the museum’s sumptuous setting to welcome foreign dignitaries during official state visits.

Only a fragment of the museum’s recent history is explained on the walls of the exhibition, however. There is little, for instance, about the building’s architecture and evolving role in Madrid as the city added other great museums such as the Reina Sofía and Thyssen-Bornemisza after Spain’s return to democracy.

Last year, foreigners accounted for almost 60 percent of the Prado’s visitors. But while the museum has become an international tourism magnet for Madrid, Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, a Spanish film director and former board member of the museum, said the institution “continues to contribute a lot to the self-esteem of Spaniards, to our nationalist pomp as a democracy and monarchy, in the best sense.”

He recalled how his perception of the Prado was shaped during his first childhood visit, in the midst of Franco’s dictatorship. “It looked to me like this wonderful set of cartoon images of our great history,” he said, “full of incredible colors that contrasted with a Spain that was then very gray.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/arts/design/prado-museum-madrid-200-anniversary.html" id="e0cd856c-cd0b-3a11-a9f7-007511342450">The New York Times</a>.

MADRID — The Prado was not designed to be one of the world’s great art galleries. But as it celebrates its 200th anniversary this year, Spain’s national museum can boast of welcoming almost 3 million visitors a year to what has become one of Europe’s finest painting collections.

The Prado Museum, Spain's Cultural Jewel, Turns 200

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Raphael Minder

Articles written by the author

Non-EU Switzerland votes to tighten firearms laws to align with EU rules

Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, who helped end Basque terror, dies at 67

Court Rules Spanish Museum Can Keep a Painting Seen as Nazi Loot

The Prado Museum, Spain's Cultural Jewel, Turns 200