A five-meter guillotine now stands in the small Galician village of Trasanquelos, A Coruña, drawing attention to a place better known for its maize fields than for avant-garde art. Catalan artist Carlos Pazos created the installation, which has become a focus for curiosity and conversation in this rural community of 70 inhabitants.
Made of galvanized iron and inscribed with the words “DRA” and “MATIZAR,” the guillotine is a symbolic artwork, not a functioning execution device. Joan Jové’s industrial workshop in Lleida made it; the workshop was previously known for crafting stage props. Pazos describes art as something that should be “decisive and irreversible” and uses the guillotine as a metaphor for the uncompromising nature of artistic expression. Its rails are blocked to prevent use, though the artist has said restoring its function would be simple. That contrast between its physical form and its role as sculpture gives the work its provocative edge.
The installation is the latest chapter in Trasanquelos’s decade-long change. Since establishing their foundation’s headquarters in the village, Pazos and his wife, Montse Cuchillo, a professor of Administrative Law, have developed the site as a base for contemporary art. Their creative space, known as El Meteorito, is a zinc-clad, 100-square-meter structure designed by architect Luis Enguita and built by local craftsmen from Betanzos. The foundation preserves Pazos’s work and hosts exhibitions and performances, with the aim of making contemporary art accessible beyond major urban institutions.
Locals have met the couple’s presence with curiosity and cautious acceptance. Cuchillo has contrasted Spain’s cultural setting with France’s more charged historical association with the guillotine. That history includes the execution of Germaine Godefroy in Angers on 21 April 1949, described in French reporting as the last execution of a woman by guillotine in France. Hamida Djandoubi was the last person executed by guillotine in the country, at Marseille’s Baumettes prison, on 10 September 1977. France abolished capital punishment in 1981. In Trasanquelos, visitors often ask whether the installation works. Its blocked rails make clear that it is an artwork, not an operating device.
The foundation’s exhibition, Artedicio(nes), runs until September 3 and features work by four artist-book publishers: Camomille of Brussels and Tinta Invisible of Barcelona, alongside La Más Bella of Madrid and Alauda Negra of Sarria, Lugo. The program also includes a screening of Territorio Evrugui, an audiovisual work by the late artist Evru about his lifelong relationship with books. Manuel Borja Villel, former director of the Museo Reina Sofía, chairs the advisory board and has previously curated a retrospective on Pazos.
Pazos’s connection to Galicia is not based on family ties, although he has a Galician great-grandfather. Instead, it stems from a Santiago-based gallerist with links to Trasanquelos. The artist plans to consolidate his legacy in the village, eventually relocating around 100 works now stored in Barcelona and Colliure, France. The foundation’s other base, Portátil in Argentona, Barcelona, remains active, showing works in mobile “carromatos” designed to travel like a circus caravan.
By establishing an art foundation in Trasanquelos, Pazos challenges the traditional divide between urban and rural cultural life. Galicia’s strong regional identity and history of emigration shape the setting for projects that bring cultural activity to smaller communities. The foundation’s exhibitions and events draw visitors to the village and offer new ways to engage with contemporary art. Recognizable yet deliberately unusable, the guillotine makes that ambition visible and opens a conversation about how an object’s meaning can shift across time and place.
