Work created with Alán Carrasco at the Academia de España en Roma.

La inversión pacífica [The Peaceful Reversal] is a simple act involving an emblem that was built and installed by the Franco regime and subsequently removed under the Historical Memory Law. This heavy, embarrassing coat of arms was stranded for years behind the bars of a basement in the Academia de España en Roma [Academy of Spain in Rome]. Its unique situation is a reflection of Spain’s complicated relationship with its own past, even today.

This crest, listed in the inventory as a “pre-constitutional coat of arms”, was made in the 1940s after the Catholic Nationalists won the Spanish Civil War as part of a massive order placed by the fledgling regime to give the nation new symbols. What at first appeared to be carved limestone turned out to be mass-produced cast concrete.

For some reason, this particular relic got lost on its way from the facade to the scrapyard and ended up gathering dust beside the boilers. When they stumbled upon it, artists Irene de Andrés and Alán Carrasco decided to highlight this anomaly by proposing a “reversal” that would return it to the main floor of the Academia de España en Roma but deny its own representation.

The piece was later shipped to Spain for exhibition and subsequently donated to the academy in Rome, where it has now become a work of art. This last part required the fascist emblem to be stricken from the official inventory, thereby achieving its total deactivation.