Annual report 2025

Selected works from the Bank’s art collection are on permanent display at the art gallery in Grupo Santander City, where visitors can admire over two hundred canvases by El Greco, Zurbarán, Sorolla, Picasso, Miró, Barceló and other masters. Highlights include the recently restored panels that Sert made to decorate the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York and the set of paintings that survey Gutiérrez Solana’s artistic career.

The leading contemporary sculptors (Chillida, Alfaro, Chirino, Solano, etc.) are also represented here.

In addition, the gallery contains other areas devoted to exhibiting drawings, tapestries, pottery, antique furniture, and a collection of coins and banknotes that ranges from drachms struck by Greek colonies in the second century BC to the peseta. In 2025, the gallery overhauled the exhibition design of the space housing the numismatic collection and introduced new interactive audiovisual features that provide additional information about the items in the display cases.

This exhibition presented a selection of works by past winners of the Award for Artistic Production, a distinction that Fundación Banco Santander offered from 2013 to 2023 in partnership with Open Studio. The show’s aim was to examine the evolution of their work and the Spanish social, political and art world over the last decade.

From 23 January to 23 March 2025, visitors were able to view the latest creations of the ten prize winners: Belén Rodríguez, Olmo Cuña, Elvira Amor, Pablo Capitán del Río, Jesús Madriñán, Mario Santamaría, Javier Rodríguez Lozano, Mònica Planes, Irati Inoriza and Andrea Aguilera.

In addition to images of the works on display, the exhibition catalogue contained the conversations that the curator, Beatriz Alonso, had with these ten artists about their creative proposals. 

Centro de Arte Complutense, Madrid

The Foundation organized from 8 May 2025 to 25 October 2026 a Sorolla exhibition featuring five of his works owned by the Hispanic Society of America alongside those in the Bank’s own art collection.

The loans from the American institution included portraits of the painter’s father-in-law Antonio García Peris, Ira Nelson Morris and Juan Ramón Jiménez which, combined with the three in the Banco Santander Collection, offered a rare opportunity to admire the Valencian painter’s talent as a portraitist.

The show was rounded out with pieces by some of Sorolla’s contemporaries—Nonell, Casas, Rusiñol, Gimeno—that can regularly be seen at the Santander Art Gallery to offer a panoramic overview of Spanish painting from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century.

Santander Art Gallery Boadilla del Monte, Madrid

The Foundation sponsored the first exhibition dedicated to Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg, wife of Alfonso XIII.

The show was divided into eight thematic sections that explored her official role as queen consort, her family life and the lesser-known aspects of her personality. From 3 December 2025 to 5 April 2026, visitors were able to admire portraits and sculptures by Sorolla, László and Benlliure alongside objects that belonged to Victoria Eugenie or people close to her, or pertained to her historical context (letters, photographs, books, jewellery, clothing, etc.). The exhibition even recreated some of her private apartments in the southeast wing of the Royal Palace of Madrid, including her study and bedroom.

To accompany the show, Patrimonio Nacional produced a publication about the queen with a foreword by her great-grandson, King Felipe VI.

Galería de las Colecciones Reales, Madrid

The Foundation sponsors two editions each year of La Obra Invitada [The Guest Work], an exhibition programme that allows the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao to temporarily host pieces from other museums or institutions.

From 29 October 2024 to 2 February 2025, the museum displayed forty selected manuscripts from the Arriola-Lerchundi Library, dated to between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries, alongside works from its own collection related to their content.

From 13 February to 30 September 2025, the programme featured fourteen paintings, six drawings and thirty-four collotypes from the series Histoire naturelle by Max Ernst, a key representative of Surrealism, belonging to the private collection of English gallerist Aram Mouradian. 

Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao

Fundación Banco Santander is a sponsor of the Estampa fair and two activities within its Colecciona programme, which aims to stimulate the Spanish art market: the Colecciona seminar and “De la mano de un coleccionista” [A Collector’s Guide].

At the Colecciona seminar, prominent figures in the culture industry analyse the idiosyncrasies of Spain's contemporary art market. The 2025 edition, held from 22 March to 21 June, focused on exploring the relationship that collectors have with architecture, urban planning, cultural management and artistic creation.

“De la mano de un coleccionista” is an activity that takes place during the Estampa fair, where members of the 9915 Association take participants on guided tours of their favourite galleries and artists. The three tours scheduled from 9 to 11 October were led by Zaida Santos, Susana Rego and Sofía Arias, and Sandra Alzamora. 

The Foundation supports this programme, which offers free advice to contemporary art buyers at ARCOmadrid.

Provided by the consulting firm Arte Global, the service is offered to fair goers who are interested in getting into art collecting. Their experts suggest galleries, artists and works that suit the tastes and budgets of first-time collectors and advise them on every aspect of the process of acquiring an artwork.

This service may be in-person or digital, as participants can also have expert recommendations sent to their phones. 

Fundación Banco Santander sponsors the Francisco Calvo Serraller lecture series, organized by the Foundation of Friends of the Prado Museum. Under the title “Ilusión y persuasión. El arte del Barroco”, the guest lecturers at the 2025 edition attempted to unlock the secrets of the Baroque, a complex cultural movement that flourished in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and Latin America.

Fundación Banco Santander is an institutional partner of this association, which supports private collectors of contemporary art. In addition to defending their interests, it encourages instruction for new collectors and the creation of tools to facilitate the regulation and appreciation of art collecting in Spain. 

The Foundation works with this independent association of professionals whose goal is to defend the interests of the art community as a whole. Since it was created in 2004, the IAC has launched various initiatives to ensure the implementation of best practices in the network of contemporary art institutions and improve its social image. 

The foundation is a corporate friend of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. It supports the museum by helping to preserve and promote its collection and carry out its annual programme of activities. 

The Foundation has joined the community of friends of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía to support contemporary art and make it available to the people.

The Foundation is a corporate benefactor of this cultural institution founded in the eighteenth century, whose mission is to foster artistic creativity and to promote and study the arts and cultural heritage.

In 2025, the Foundation supported the third edition of Praxis, the arts and humanities studies programme offered by this arts organization. Participants seek to transform social and cultural reality by finding new ways to think and act.