El Huesca reconoce la propiedad aragonesa de bienes de Barbastro-Monzón.
The Minister of Education, Culture, and Sports of the Government of Aragon, Tomasa Hernández, emphasized on Wednesday that the ruling issued by the Provincial Court of Huesca «recognizes a very exhaustive and detailed Aragonese ownership of the parish of Barbastro-Monzón.»
The Provincial Court of Huesca rejected the appeals filed by the Episcopate of Lleida, the consortium of the Museum in Lleida, and the Generalitat de Catalunya regarding the ownership of the 111 assets in the Aragonese parishes.
In December 2019, the court had already established the Aragonese ownership of these assets and ordered their immediate return to the parishes of Barbastro-Monzón. The assets were returned, but the consortium of museums in Lleida, the Lleida Diocesan Museum, and the Generalitat’s Episcopate were not satisfied and appealed. However, the Provincial Court of Huesca has now ruled in favor of Aragon in this matter.
«The only exceptions to their claims relate to the ribs, which do not impose, but the rest of the ruling orders the assets to be relocated to their original locations,» said the Minister.
«The basis for ordering the transfer is the declaration of ownership. They have put forth several reasons for the challenge, but the court reminds them that the fundamental basis for this challenge is precisely to determine who is the owner of the asset, who is the rightful owner,» the Minister added.
They also argued lack of territorial competence, as they intended for the competent courts to be in Lleida. They supported this lack of competence based on the moveable nature of the assets. The court determined them to be moveable by nature, without further consideration, even though they may have been attached to real estate in the past.
«One of the key issues in this dispute was the lack of active legitimacy invoked by the Bishop of Barbastro-Monzón,» the Minister explained. In this case, the assets…
In this regard, he detailed that this is an issue that «may be canonical in the distribution of the diocese, and the recognition made by the Bishop of Lleida may have an administrative or ecclesiastical character, but it only serves as evidence for deposit.»
The Catalan institutions also invoked an unfair delay in the exercise of legal action. «Over a hundred years have passed, but neither of the parishes nor the Episcopate of Barbastro-Monzón made an express statement to waive the exercise of this action, creating the impression in the Episcopate or Diocese of Lleida that they will never claim it because they have always been there as a storage facility.»
The 111 recovered assets are in a different legal state, as 28 of the institutions have already recognized in the past that they belonged to the claiming towns. For the rest, they have not been able to prove the necessary title for the transfer of ownership, so the parish property will pass to another legitimate owner.
«There are even 17 assets that were removed to protect them from the Civil War and later presented there, but there is an initial ownership because the transfer registration service was the original head, which are the Aragonese parishes. For the rest of the property, the only relevant documentation is that of the Episcopate of Lleida for these documents.»
Finally, they claimed adverse possession, the passage of time, «but the public dismissed it because they never held them as owners.» For all these reasons, «we are completely satisfied, as the Provincial Court of Huesca has come to recognize in a very meticulous and detailed manner that they were the rightful owners of these assets,» concluded the Minister of Culture.
FUENTE
