Published on
It’s emerged Europol’s warning about the rise in museum thefts reached Spain’s Villena Museum (MUVI) a day after thieves broke into the institution and made off with much of the Treasure of Villena, one of the most important Bronze Age gold hoards in Europe.
On 24 August, three days before the heist, Europol, the European Union’s official law enforcement agency, published a report warning that attacks on European museums were changing and highlighting criminals’ growing interest in gold, other precious metals and gemstones.
The theft took place in the early hours of 27 August. The museum’s alarm went off at 5:16, after the intruders had entered the building and stolen much of the Treasure. However, the communication containing Europol’s warning did not reach MUVI until 28 August, between 14:00 and 14:05, according to the emails.
Who did what and when?
The sequence of events has sparked a political row over when the warning was received and passed on. The Valencian regional government maintains that it could not have relayed it earlier because the Ministry of Culture did not forward it until after the theft.
Sources at the Department of Education, Culture and Universities said the ministry sent the alert to the autonomous communities on Friday 28 August at13:18 and asked them to distribute it among their museums. The Generalitat’s museums service forwarded it to MUVI less than an hour later.
The conservative Popular Party’s parliamentary spokesperson in Les Corts, Nando Pastor, defended the actions of the Valencian government and insisted that “the Generalitat could not have passed on information it simply had not received”.
The mayor of Villena, Fulgencio Cerdán, regretted that the warning had not arrived earlier. “I’m sure we could have done more,” he said in comments reported by ‘La Vanguardia’.
The Europol report warned that museum thefts were becoming “more aggressive, with a shift towards violent and forceful methods” and noted that precious metals are particularly attractive to criminals because they can be melted down, making it harder to trace stolen items.
Europol also pointed to “visibility, accessibility and the perception that museum security measures are less stringent than those of jewellery shops” as factors that make these targets attractive to criminal networks.
The investigation into the theft of the Treasure of Villena remains open as authorities seek to locate the stolen pieces and identify those responsible.