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CLIMATE CRISIS

Activists glue hands to Goya frames at Spain’s Prado museum

The two environmental activists stuck themselves to the frames of Goya's famous 'Las Majas' paintings in Madrid's El Prado and scrawled graffiti referencing the "+ 1.5C" global temperature target on the wall.

Activists glue hands to Goya frames at Spain's Prado museum
The two environmental activists stuck themselves to the frames of Goya's famous 'Las Majas' paintings and scrawled graffiti referencing the "+ 1.5C" global temperature target on the wall. Photo: Pixabay.

Two climate activists from a group known as ‘Futuro Vegetal’ on Saturday each glued a hand to the frames of two paintings by Spanish master Francisco Goya at the Prado museum in Madrid, police said.

Though the protest did not damage either painting, the protesters scrawled “+1.5C” on the wall between the two artworks in reference to the Paris Agreement target of capping warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Both activists were detained, police said.

The incident comes amid a wave of art gallery focused protests across Europe in recent weeks, including two protesters who threw tomato soup over Van Gogh’s iconic Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London in October, and Italian activists glueing themselves to artworks.

READ ALSO: Why are protesters glueing themselves to Italian artworks?

Climate activist group Extinction Rebellion posted a video online showing the two activists each with a hand fixed on a painting before the museum’s security officials move in.

The group said the two artworks in question were “The Naked Maja” and “The Clothed Maja.” The action was a protest in the face of rising world temperatures which will “provoke an unstable climate with serious consequences for all the planet”, the group said in a statement in Spanish.

It is the latest in a number of similar protests by climate activists targeting famous artworks in European cities. On Friday, a group splashed pea soup onto a Vincent van Gogh masterpiece in Rome. “The Sower”, an 1888 painting by the Dutch artist depicting a farmer sowing his land under a dominating sun, was exhibited behind glass and undamaged. Four activists were arrested, according to news reports.

The climate activists from Last Generation called their protest “a desperate and scientifically grounded cry that cannot be understood as mere vandalism.” They warned the protest would continue until more attention was paid to climate change.

Other actions have seen cake or mashed potatoes used in recent weeks.They have targeted masterpieces such as the “Mona Lisa” by Leonardo da Vinci in the Louvre in Paris or “Girl with a Pearl Earring” by Johannes Vermeer at The Hague’s Mauritshuis museum.

All of those paintings were covered by glass and were undamaged.

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CLIMATE CRISIS

Spain logs its hottest August on record

Spain saw its hottest August since records began in 2024, with average temperature at 25 degrees Celsius (77 Fahrenheit), the national weather agency said.

Spain logs its hottest August on record

“August 2024 was the warmest in history in mainland Spain,” the AEMET meteorological agency said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday evening.

The average temperature was two-tenths higher than that in 2003 and 2023, which were previously the warmest Augusts in the country, it said.

Judging by temperatures recorded so far this year, 2024 could end up being the warmest year in Spain since records began, tied with 2022, the agency said.

Up until now, 2022 was the hottest year on record, with average temperature at 15.7C.

In August, the EU climate monitor, the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said that it was “increasingly likely” that 2024 would end up being the hottest year on record worldwide.

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