Allegories of What Is to Come

The Bank of Spain’s Exhibition Hall is hosting an exhibition from 25 November to 28 March 2026, in which for the first time ever, the Bank of Spain analyses the impact of the art deco movement on its headquarters in Cibeles.  Its extension in the 1930s was a project that combined engineering, design, decorative arts and an institutional message.

Curated by Yolanda Romero, the Bank of Spain’s conservator, and the artist, curator and researcher, Álvaro Perdices, this exhibition focuses on a key episode for the institution: the extension of the Cibeles headquarters in the 1930s by the architect, José Yárnoz Larrosa. The project led to the creation of two of its main architectural spaces: the Operations Floor, which boasts one of the finest art deco stained-glass panels in Europe, and the iconic Gold Vault, inaugurated just a few months before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.

Through a multifaceted and critical approach, the Allegories of What Is to Come exhibition explores some of the contradictions and tensions of a period in which modernism was seen as both a promised land and a disputed territory.

The exhibition brings together around 150 items,  featuring  drawings, sketches and original cartoons of the stained-glass panels designed by Casa Maumejean for the extension. Thanks to the collaboration between the Bank of Spain, the National Museum of Decorative Arts and the National Glass Centre Foundation, these largely unpublished materials have been restored and are on display to the public for the first time.

In this way, the exhibition unfolds as a “thinking device”, inviting visitors to critically reinterpret the visual narratives that have shaped our times through a heterogeneous set of artistic works, documents and diverse materials, such as sketches, furniture, architectural plans, banknotes and archive photographs.

Image Credits:

• Daniel Vázquez Díaz (Nerva, Huelva, 1882 - Madrid, 1969). Landscape of Fuenterrabía, 1927. Oil on Canvas. Bank of Spain Collection
• Joaquín Torres-García (Montevideo, 1874-1949): Industrial Catalonia, 1917. Sketch of the fifth fresco in the Sant Jordi Hall at the Palace of the Regional Government of Catalonia. Watercolour, pencil, and ink on paper/cardboard. Regional Government of Catalonia
• Maumejean Hermanos, Madrid (1923-1970). Sketches for stained glass panels in the entrance hall of the extension to the Bank of Spain. Watercolour and pencil on paper. National Museum of Decorative Arts, deposited in the National Glass Centre Foundation
• 50-cent banknotes from the Council of Asturias and León, c. 1937. Originals, printed using lithography. Printed by: Lithography Control, Gijon, at the Graphic Arts printing house. AHBE, Banknote Collection