The president of the Catalan government, José Montilla, was also at the opening as were the Saudi ambassador in Spain Prince Saud bin Naif, and Barcelona Mayor Jordi Hereu.
Also attending were Ali Al-Ghabban, vice president of antiquities and museums at SCTA, and Hervé Barbaret, deputy head of the Louvre museum in Paris.
The traveling exhibition of pre-Islamic and Islamic artifacts was first showed at the Louvre during the summer and the world-famous Paris museum had been in part responsible for cataloguing, presenting and in some cases helping restore the artifacts. Prior to that, almost all of them had never been seen outside the Kingdom.
According to Al-Ghabban, large numbers of visitors turned up to see the exhibition immediately after the opening and were “astounded” at the quality of the objects on show.
He put this down to the exhibition having a particular resonance for Spaniards with whom Arabs have a common history. It sent an important message that the Arabs “who came in the 8th century were highly civilized, not nomads.” It was also an opportunity for Spaniards to learn more about Saudi Arabia.
The exhibition will remain in Barcelona until Feb. 6, 2011, during which time the museum expects some 115,000 people to see it. In the two and a half months it was open in Paris, it drew 100,000 visitors. After Barcelona, the exhibition is due to go to Germany and Russia next year and then the US.
