Who Owns the Palace? From the King to the Nation

Who really owns Spain’s palaces, monasteries and royal sites? The question sounds simple, but the answer has shifted over the centuries and sat at the heart of some of the most decisive moments in Spanish history.

Karina Marotta and Eduardo Serantes of Patrimonio Nacional approach it from two complementary angles: history and law. Drawing on concrete cases from the Royal Collections and Royal Sites, they’ll explain how this heritage stopped belonging to the king personally and came to belong to the nation, and why the distinction between Crown property and the monarch’s private assets proved decisive at every major moment of rupture.

They’ll also discuss Patrimonio Nacional’s role as a backbone of the country’s image, given its dual mission of supporting the Head of State and managing the cultural and natural heritage in its care, and how the Royal Collections Gallery, opened in 2023, has updated the very idea of heritage to include natural and intangible heritage placed at the service of society.

A journey through the history of Patrimonio Nacional that ends not with a closed answer, but with the debates still open today.

Additional information

Limited places are available and will be assigned by registration only.

Karina Marotta – Technical Adviser, Patrimonio Nacional. Art History graduate (Complutense University of Madrid). Joined the Ministry of Culture’s Museum Curators corps in 1998; head of collections at the Army Museum, then at the Prado from 2003 to 2021, first as Head of Exhibitions and later as General Coordinator of Conservation. Since November 2021 she has served as technical adviser to the President of Patrimonio Nacional.

Eduardo Serantes – Adviser and Head of the Management Support Unit, Patrimonio Nacional. Degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (Carlos III, Pompeu Fabra and Autónoma de Madrid), master’s in Advanced Public Law Studies and current PhD candidate at Carlos III. Career civil servant in the State’s Senior Civil Administrators corps since 2021; joined Patrimonio Nacional in 2022. Author of the legal monograph Dos Estudios sobre el Patrimonio Nacional (Dykinson, 2025).