David MoránSEGUIRBarcelona Updated: Save Send news by mail electrónicoTu name *

Your email *

email *

Ten more days and the re-opening would have coincided with the third anniversary of the exhumation of Salvador Dali in that moment, it is becoming increasingly clear, everything began to twist, but as it is not the oven for rolls, or to go tempting fate, both the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres as its satellites in Púbol and Portlligat, will reopen its doors on the 11th of July.

it Will be, all in all, a partial return, because, as explained by this Tuesday the president of the Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation, Jordi Mercader three spaces going to put the close on the 13th of September, provided that the situation does not allow keeping them open, in an attempt to control expenses and try to minimize the colossal impact of the coronavirus.

“There is a slowdown in economic activity, has come to stay,” he warned Mercadé, who has advanced the entity, with 80% of foreign visitors, and 85% of the income linked to the visits projected for this year a loss of € 4.5 million. The good news, or less bad, is that the foundation came from close by 2019 with a profit of 4.2 million euros, cushion, according to Mercadé, has enabled it to “cope with current expenditure and the investments committed”.

Managing the future

all in all, the institution has had to apply a STRONG all the staff, about 120 workers in total, and estimated to open during the summer will involve an investment of 500,000 euros. “We have made an effort in the reduction of spending that has allowed us to buy the time needed to manage with serenity the future of the institution. The changes should come toward the end of the year,” said Mercadé.

The new strategy, he added, is based on enhancing additional income from either of temporary exhibitions outside of Spain or of closer ties with the publishing world. About the latter, Mercadé advanced that Taschen will publish, is expected during the first quarter of 2021, a great book anthology about the work of Dali, and is currently studying the possibility of preparing a new edition of “The secret life of Salvador Dalí”.

The immediate future, however, passes through the re-opening of the 11th of July, which will coincide with the inauguration of the Teatre-Museu de Figueres of “Dalí: surrealism is me,” temporary exhibition, which took advantage of the stop international exhibition, brings together for the first time a dozen of the artist’s works from the funds of the Foundation. “We will have a dozen canvases of the best time daliniana; works that are in other rooms or that they are the most requested for temporary exhibitions and travel often,” he underlined Mercadé.

The exhibition aims to be a further incentive to try to attract the local audience to a few museums, with over a million tickets sold in 2019 saw the past year as increased visitors, italians, americans, Dutch, germans, japanese, and Korean. This summer, and in the absence of international tourism, the foundation will seek the complicity of the administrations to cover a few seats reduced that will allow to receive and 1,176 people per day in Figueres, 375 in Púbol and 120 in the house of the painter in Portlligat.