A letter reveals what Franco paid (and what he still owed) for the Goya painting he wanted to give to Hitler

On October 20, 1942, a letter arrived at the Generalissimo’s Civil Household demanding payment of 9,000 pesetas from Francisco Franco for three copies he had commissioned of a Goya painting, specifically the Portrait of the Marchioness of Santa Cruz, which the dictator had bought with the intention of giving it to Adolf Hitler. Franco liked the painting so much that he commissioned these versions as gifts, but when the time came to pay, he failed to do so, as revealed in a document that art historian and gallery owner José de la Mano, a passionate admirer of the painter, purchased in late 2025 at the El Rastro flea market in Madrid.

The Marquis of Lozoya, Juan de Contreras, tasked by Franco with finding a gift for Hitler, politely requested in his letter to Julio Muñoz Aguilar, the dictator’s assistant, a solution to “an old matter,” as he describes it. “Almost a year ago, Ramón Serrano Súñer [Franco’s brother-in-law and minister] called me to tell me to urgently acquire a first-rate Goya, which should be placed at the disposal of His Excellency the Generalissimo,” he writes. “The choice fell on the magnificent Portrait of the Marchioness of Santa Cruz, and the agreed price was one million five hundred thousand pesetas, plus three copies of the same painting, which I commissioned from the painter Nuñez Losada, an excellent copyist, at a price of 3,000 pesetas each,” he continues. “I received a check from my cousin José Navarro for the amount of 1,500,000 pesetas. Therefore, the three copies by the artist remain to be paid for, that is, 9,000 pesetas more.”

“We knew the history of this painting well, but we knew a piece was missing regarding Franco’s purchase in 1941,” explain the owners of the DELAMANO Old Masters gallery in Madrid. “This letter proves the amount the dictator paid — it was always believed to be less, one million pesetas — and also confirms that he commissioned three copies to give to the family that owned the painting [the heirs of the Marchioness], not just one, and identifies the painter who created them." Calculating the equivalent price today is difficult; if the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is used as a reference, the cost in 2026 would be between €2.5 million and €3 million ($3-$3.6 million). In terms of wealth, this can be considered a transaction reserved only for an economic elite capable of acquiring a masterpiece for $12 million in today’s market.

The story of the Goya painting that Franco wanted to give to Hitler has gone from urban legend to proven fact in a series of chapters that have been unfolding over almost a decade. Several books and scholarly studies have attempted to reconstruct the journey of a piece that passed through the hands and homes of noble Spanish families and those of the dictator, which was illegally exported and finally recovered by the Spanish state before returning to the Prado Museum in 1986.

The latest installment of the story isn’t limited to the letter. Weeks after it was bought at El Rastro flea market, one of the copies Franco had commissioned surfaced. “I’m obsessed with Goya; twice a week I scour specialized websites for all kinds of materials about the artist. Also, for my work, I have to review every auction held worldwide,” says De la Mano. “In one of these reviews, I found a Portrait of the Marchioness of Santa Cruz in the auction catalog for a mansion in the south of France. That’s when I thought, ‘This is one of Franco’s copies.’”

He bought the painting “blindly,” he says, because the work was cataloged as 19th-century and its provenance attributed to the supposed heirs of the Marchioness. “I bid over the phone and won it,” the gallery owner recounts. Upon receiving the piece, he was able to verify that Núñez Losada, the painter to whom the Marquis of Lozoya refers in the letter demanding payment of his debt, had copied Goya’s signature, but underneath indicated that it was a copy of the Aragonese artist’s original. Bingo! It was one of those versions. “I don’t usually have this kind of luck,” the art historian admits with a laugh.

“The painting has a yellowish tone because it copies Goya’s original with its oxidized varnish, that is, when the piece was still dirty,” the gallery explains. “The scarcity of painting materials after the Civil War has resulted in extensive craquelure, making the painting appear even older.”

How much is a work like this worth? “It’s of such high quality that it shows it was copied from the original, attempting to capture Goya’s style,” the gallery notes, though it doesn’t want to reveal the price. “It has more symbolic than commercial value; after all, it’s a copy of a Goya painting.” In 1941, the average annual salary in Spain was less than 4,000 pesetas, which gives an idea of the value of copies at that time.

The perfect gift

The first chapter of this bizarre story begins in 1805, when Goya painted the portrait in which he disguised the young Marchioness as Terpsichore, muse of dance, poetry, and song. In her hand, he placed a lyre on which he drew a lauburu, a Basque symbol consisting of a four-headed cross, which would be one of the reasons Franco chose this work as a gift.

In 1939, the dictator, well aware that one of Hitler’s weaknesses was art, gifted him three paintings by Zuloaga, as historian Arturo Colorado recounted in his 2018 book, Arte, revancha y propaganda (Art, Revenge, and Propaganda). But this didn’t seem enough, so to continue courting the man who appeared destined to rule the world, Franco created a committee tasked with finding a more significant artistic treasure: a Goya. “Further proof of how he manipulated cultural heritage for his own benefit. He used it whenever it suited him, as a weapon in secret negotiations or as propaganda,” Colorado explained in an interview with this newspaper.

The task fell to archaeologist Julio Martínez Santaolalla, the Marquis of Lozoya, and Serrano Suñer, with advice from, among others, the artist José María Sert. They chose Portrait of the Marchioness of Santa Cruz for its neoclassical style and were completely convinced when they realized the resemblance between the lauburu on the lyre and the Nazi swastika. The perfect finishing touch.

During the Spanish Civil War, the painting was moved from Madrid to Valencia. From there it traveled to Barcelona until it finally arrived in Geneva, from where it returned to the Spanish capital after the war ended, under the orders of the Francoist authorities. In 1941, as evidenced by the letter acquired by De la Mano, Franco finally bought it for 1.5 million pesetas, not the million pesetas previously believed.

The dictator had his artistic treasure, but he decided to wait. The course of World War II changed, Spain declared its neutrality, and ultimately he did not give the painting to Hitler.

In 1944, the painting returned to the Prado Museum. Its owner was Franco, but this fact disappears from official records. And it is at this point that the story of the Marchioness’s portrait becomes entangled. Some theories suggest that the painting hung in the Palace of El Pardo, Franco’s residence, until February 19, 1947, when it passed into the hands of its next owner, Félix Fernández-Valdés. The financial record confirms that the Basque collector also paid one and a half million pesetas for the canvas, according to a receipt from the Banco de Vizcaya in Madrid included in the publication “Masterpieces from the Valdés Collection,” published by the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum between 2020 and 2021.

The painting remained in the Valdés collection until 1981 or 1982, when it is estimated that his heirs sold it — several studies suggest for around 600 million pesetas (around $4.3 million) — and the new owners illegally removed it from Spain. The Marchioness reappeared in 1983 at the Getty Foundation in Los Angeles. The painting was for sale for $12 million, about $39 million today.

Representatives from the Ministry of Culture, then led by Javier Solana, and the lawyer Ramón Uría traveled to the west coast of the United States. In her memoirs, the writer Mercedes Cabrera recounts, over nearly 20 pages, a thrilling road trip through various world capitals in pursuit of the painting. Art dealers and collectors with few scruples and a great deal of money feature; and even the lawyer of Queen Elizabeth II, key to achieving the legal milestone that allowed the work to return to the Prado Museum in 1986.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of this registration, and the art gallery is preparing an initiative to commemorate its return. “It served to recover a fundamental work and boost the country’s self-esteem, winning a case in international courts,” said Miguel Falomir, the museum’s director, in a 2018 interview with EL PAÍS.

In less than two months, the DELAMANO Old Masters gallery solved another chapter of this story, but in their obsession with further investigation, they showed their findings to experts at the Prado Museum. It was at the museum where curators asked the gallery owners if the copy they had purchased in the south of France was the one owned by Imelda Marcos, the extravagant wife of the late dictator of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos. The experts’ expressions of surprise were evident. They had just been given a new clue. “I haven’t found Imelda’s work, but after further inquiries, she owned a painting of the Marchioness with the same dimensions as the copy I bought,” the gallery owner said, pointing the way to a new discovery.

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