On the occasion of the recent trial and court ruling on the
case of the findings at the archaeological site of Iruña-Veleia, reports have
been published in the media that seriously distort the reality of the events.
This distortion of reality has crossed borders, with the false news that a
geologist had pleaded guilty, acknowledging that "the whole thing was
nothing but a joke" (!), being reported in two British newspapers with wide
readership. It is worrisome that in the Iruña-Veleia case some media are
failing to fulfill their mission of truthfully informing citizens.
With regard to the sentence, it is important to highlight
that it acknowledges the lack of proofs against the main individual accused,
Eliseo Gil, the former director of the excavation, with the ruling being
entirely based on clues, and that the court case remains unresolved,
since Gil has appealed his conviction, requesting his acquittal.
But, apart from the events in the judicial sphere, the
Iruña-Veleia case has a scientific side, which a large part of the public is
unaware of. And the fact is that what has been presented in some media outlets as
a "crude forgery", is actually the subject of a lively and still unresolved
controversy among experts from various scientific disciplines, who hold
conflicting views on the authenticity of the findings. And the reality of this
controversy has been made clear in the judge’s ruling, where it is stated that
there are "opposing opinions that will have to be assessed in the field of
archaeological, linguistic, epigraphic, etc., sciences." and that
"there are conflicting opinions about their authenticity among the
different experts who have been able to analyze the pieces." The
recognition by a judicial body of the scientific controversy surrounding the Iruña-Veleia
findings disproves the myth of the “scientific unanimity” favorable to their falsehood, which was created in November 2008 by the Department of Culture of the Provincial Council
of Álava (DFA) and which lasts until today, fed by some media that ignore the
facts. And the reality is that numerous authors in various fields (archaeology,
epigraphy, linguistics, history, geology, Egyptology) have publicly expressed,
through reports, scientific articles, books and conference presentations, their
opinions and arguments favorable to the authenticity of the Iruña-Veleia
findings. And this controversy is not affected by the court ruling. First,
because the court case remains unresolved, and, second, because scientific
issues must be resolved in scientific forums, such as scientific journals and
conferences, not in courts of law. And this is what the sentence refers to when
it expressly asserts that the opposing opinions "will have to be assessed
in the fields of the archaeological, linguistic, epigraphic, etc., sciences."
We do not want to hide the fact that the sentence is based
on the analyses carried out by an expert from the Institute of Cultural
Heritage of Spain (IPCE) on 36 pieces from Iruña-Veleia (out of the more than
400 found at the site), which he interpreted as indicative of recent execution
or