Simon Hunter
TWO CLIMATE activists glued their hands to the frames of Goya’s Las Majas paintings in Madrid’s Prado Museum on Saturday, in the latest of a series of protests in art galleries around the world.
The female protesters also wrote “1.5ºC” in black paint on the wall between the two works of art.
Via a Twitter account called FuturoVegetal (Vegetable Future), a video of the protest was shared, accompanied by a message that read: “Last week the UN recognised the impossibility of keeping below the Paris Accord limit of average 1.5ºC temperature rise compared to pre-industrial levels.”
A series of messages were posted below that tweet, including one that said: “We need change now. We need a #VegetableFuture”.
According to Spanish news agencies, government sources confirmed that the protesters had been removed from the museum “without any additional problems”.
The same sources said that the glue and the spray used to paint the wall were made of plastic, which is why they were not detected when the pair entered the world-famous museum.
The protestors are part of an environmental organisation called Last Generation (Última Generación), which made clear in a statement that their aim was not to damage the paintings, but rather to make society aware of the issue of climate change.
Today’s protests in Madrid comes after a similar incident on October 14, when activists threw a can of tomato soup at Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting in the National Gallery in London, also with the aim of drawing attention to the climate crisis. They then glued their hands to the wall.
Then on October 23, activists threw mashed potato at a Monet painting in a museum in Potsdam, Germany. They also glued their hands to the wall.
