“It is absurd that you should be scandalized”

Several activists against the climate crisis have poured a black dye on Saturday in the historic Barcaccia fountain in Rome’s Spanish Steps and unfurled a banner demanding to stop investing in fossil fuels.

It is not the first time they have carried out protest actions like this. They have previously acted in museums around the world attacking paintings by Picasso, Monet or Van Gogh.

The action stained the water of the fountain black and took place this noon before the eyes of the thousands of tourists and residents who walked through this square, one of the monumental symbols of the Italian capital, and many of them reacted with booing.

The dye is a liquid composed of charcoal, according to local media.

The activists, two men and one woman, belong to the group ‘Ultima Generazione’ (Last Generation), which has vindicated the protest on its social networks, as this group has done in the past in other cities.

[Los Españoles tras el ‘Ejército’ de Activistas que Atacan las Obras de Picasso o Van Gogh: “¿El Arte o la Vida?”]

“It is absurd that you are scandalized by gestures like this when we are experiencing a drought emergency that puts agriculture, energy production… our own subsistence in crisis. And there are those responsible,” they wrote on their official Twitter account. .

The three have been arrested by agents of the Carabineros (militarized police), according to reports efe.

The Barcaccia fountain, a boat-shaped symbol at the foot of the Spanish Steps, was built between 1626 and 1629 in travertine marble by Pietro Bernini, father of the famous Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who is believed to have collaborated in the works.

The sculpture was ordered by Pope Urban VIII to distribute the water that came from the Vergine aqueduct throughout the city.

It is not the first time that these activists have attacked heritage with actions like these.

Soup was thrown at a Van Gogh painting from a temporary exhibition in Rome last November and they stained with paint the “The Finger” of Maurizio Cattelan in front of the Milan Stock Exchange or the equestrian sculpture of Vittorio Emanuele II in front of the Duomo or cathedral of that city.

[Picasso, Van Gogh, ahora Monet: museos de todo el mundo en alerta por el vandalismo ‘climático’]

On March 17, two other young people stained the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, the seat of the town hall, with orange paint and were arrested by the mayor himself, Dario Nardella.

On the other hand, two activists are also being tried in the Vatican Court for damaging the base of this sculpture of Laocoon with glue in a protest and could be sentenced to jail from one month to three years and a fine of about 3,000 euros.