The story
Joaquín Sorolla, the Valencian painter, was 21 when he painted The Second of May, a large canvas of the 1808 street fighting at the Monteleón artillery barracks in Madrid. It won a second-class medal at the National Exhibition of 1884 and was bought by the Spanish state. Since 1886 it has hung far from Madrid, on loan from the Prado, in a library and museum in Vilanova i la Geltrú, a seaside town south of Barcelona.
That loan, and many others, go back to Víctor Balaguer, a Catalan poet and historian who also served as a minister in Madrid. He founded the library and museum to thank the town for its support during his political career, and the building, designed by the architect Jeroni Granell, opened in 1884. Balaguer's standing brought a first deposit of old paintings from the Prado, and further deposits followed, so that within a few years about 50 Prado works hung here.
The place is a library as much as a museum, and its picture rooms mix local gifts with Spanish court painting. Visitors find a portrait of Queen Maria Luisa by Francisco Goya, El Greco's Saint Francis and Brother Leo meditating on death, a Saint Philip by Jusepe de Ribera and a penitent Saint Jerome by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. Balaguer also gathered antiquities, and the Egyptian collection, the first in Catalonia, includes the mummy of a child named Nesi.
