‘Ecce Homo’: The miraculous disaster that made a small Spanish town famous

Sometimes — though almost never — disasters in the art world end in miracles. In 2012, a small church in the Spanish town of Borja became the scene of one such miracle. Many remember the Ecce Homo painting that decorates one of its walls not for the original 19th-century brushstrokes, but for the “disastrous” restoration carried out by a woman — then just over 80 years old — who acted spontaneously and “without asking anyone’s permission,” though “with good intentions.” The work of Cecilia Giménez, who passed away this Monday at the age of 94, was not only catastrophic, blurry, and unrecognizable, but also became an object of ridicule. Yet the botched restoration transformed the work, attributed to Elías García Martínez and of little artistic value, into a worldwide phenomenon. Suddenly, the Ecce Homo and Borja were on everyone’s radar.

After Cecilia Giménez attempted to restore the fresco — about 50 centimeters high by 40 wide — the history of the small Spanish town took an unexpected turn. What seemed like a disaster — or even a crime against cultural heritage — became a major historical event in Borja, a town of just over 5,000 inhabitants in the province of Zaragoza. Giménez’s work has been featured in documentaries, wine labels, T-shirts, and even an opera. Media outlets around the world, including The New York Times, Le Monde, The Telegraph, and the BBC, covered that miraculous disaster.

Its impact was such that, from that moment on, the expression "ecce homo" has been used to refer to other failed restorations that followed — not all carried out by well-meaning locals, but also by professionals.

In Spain, long before Cecilia Giménez in Borja, other amateur painters ventured to retouch the walls of religious temples. One example is a local woman from Sariñena who, over a century ago, dared to paint her own drawings alongside the valuable paintings of Fray Manuel Bayeu. This took place at the Charterhouse of Nuestra Señora de las Fuentes, in Los Monegros. Although it cannot be considered a proper restoration — since her interventions did not affect the original frescoes — her childlike sketches caused considerable astonishment when they came to light.

Last summer, outrage also swept through the city of Seville following a restoration of the Virgin of La Macarena. The restoration, commissioned by the brotherhood and carried out by an expert, immediately upset the faithful and drew criticism from much of the city, who did not recognize the final result. In just one week, the face of the Virgin, which had made La Macarena an iconic symbol of the city, looked entirely different.

In 2011, the restoration of the walled complex in Almería sparked strong controversy due to the contrast between the original 11th-century stone and the steel sheets used in the intervention. The result immediately sparked backlash and ignited a debate about the limits of heritage restoration. The Andalusian Ministry of Culture, responsible for the work, defended it at the time as a provisional solution and the only way to prevent the wall from collapsing. However, various groups — including the UNESCO Center of Andalusia — protested the outcome and reminded authorities that the law itself, issued by the Ministry of Culture, prohibited the use of materials that did not exist at the time of the original construction.

Between 1992 and 1994, the Roman theater of Sagunto in the Spanish region of Valencia, built in the 1st century, underwent a restoration so ambitious that it bordered on total reconstruction. The architects in charge practically built a new theater, disregarding the fact that it was an archaeological ruin. Controversy erupted as soon as the work was completed, and complaints followed quickly. The stage was completely new, the seating was unrecognizable, and the use of modern materials made the site appear more like a replica than a historical remnant.

Another case involved the priest of the San Cosme Chapel in the city of A Coruña, who one day decided to tackle the moths and leaks threatening the wooden roof of this Romanesque church in the Galicia region. He resorted to a solution as practical as it was controversial: used oil and kerosene. The problem was that the chestnut wood planks of the roof were considered a heritage asset, and the treatment left them completely blackened. The priest apologized, claiming that, given his limited budget, he had not been able to find a more suitable method. However, neither the local residents nor the Galician regional government were particularly convinced by his explanations.

The restoration of the Roman mausoleum in Abla is another example: the ancient funerary monument came to be mistaken for a public urinal, according to a cultural blog dedicated to analyzing the management of the region’s historical heritage. The reasons cited were, once again, the improper use of materials and the construction of a new enclosure that hid the original 2nd-century structure, completely altering the perception of the monument.

In 2015, the dolmen of San Cristóbal de Cea in Ourense ended up incorporated into a picnic area after workers transformed it into a concrete table and two benches. This funerary monument, over 6,000 years old, was listed in the Catalog of Cultural Assets of the Galician regional government. The intervention was discovered by an environmental group, which reported the incident to the Environmental and Urban Planning Prosecutor’s Office. According to the group, “these actions have caused irreparable damage to the burial mound of what was a prehistoric cemetery of Cea’s earliest inhabitants, which was an example of the first monumental funerary architecture in history.”

Ultimately, these cases show that not all restorations go as planned. Sometimes centuries of history are erased, other times controversies arise, and on very rare occasions — like that disaster in Borja — a mistake can become a worldwide phenomenon.

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