The Bank of Spain keeps more than just ingots. Its architectural history, crossed by the desire to project an image of progress and stability, now unfolds to the public with an exhibition that focuses on a key chapter: its art deco transformation during the thirties.
Allegories of a Future, on view through March 28, 2026 at the Cibeles headquarters, is the first exhibition dedicated to exploring the impact of this aesthetic movement on the institution. Curated by Yolanda Romero and Alvaro Perdices, brings together nearly 150 pieces including sketches, original stained glass and unpublished documents, with an ambition that goes beyond aesthetic contemplation: to invite a critical reading of the role of institutional art in the construction of modernity.
Stained glass, power and visual narrative
The central axis of the exhibition is located in the two large spaces born of the 1930s expansion: the Operations Courtyard and the Gold Chamber, both designed by the architect José Yárnoz Larrosa. The first, large and luminous, was conceived as a public square where citizens could access financial services. The second, deep and secret, symbolizes the armored power of the State.
Both spaces are crossed by an aesthetic that, at the time, breathed modernity: art deco. This style, with its clean geometry and restrained sophistication, is embodied in one of its most emblematic elements: the stained glass windows designed by the historic Maumejean House. These compositions, now on display restored for the first time, turn work and technology -agriculture, industry, railroads or aviation- into allegories of a nation in the process of transformation.
But the exhibition is not limited to a celebratory gaze. It also explores the tensions and contradictions of those representations: the absence of female protagonists, the invisibility of working conditions or the use of art as a tool for institutional legitimization. Thus, the story becomes more complex and reflective, questioning the official discourses and showing the reverse side of modernity.
The exhibition is structured in five thematic areas that allow the visitor to understand the depth of this project: from the social context of the 1930s to the architecture of the Cámara del Oro, including the meticulous creative process of the artisans of the Maumejean workshop, whose original cartons, now recovered, are the soul of the exhibition.