The series Restoration (2017-2018) is the result of a commission from the Banco de España to document the restoration and cleaning work on the façade of its headquarters building in 2017 and 2018. In October 2015 part of the cornice of the Banco de España building fell onto Calle Alcalá. This led to scaffolding being erected around the whole exterior on Calle Alcalá, Paseo del Prado and Calle Madrazo, with safety netting under the cornices while a technical study of the stonework on the façade was carried out. The study detected actual cracks and signs of incipient cracking elsewhere in the marble brackets at the base of the cornice on Calle Alcalá.

The series comprises 96 photos in six groups of 16. The first group comprises photos of the street, of the exterior walls of the Bank on Paseo del Prado and Calle Alcalá covered by scaffolding and fencing, pictures of passers-by and portraits of security personnel. The second group comprises pictures of the top of the scaffolding at the level of the cornice, including the characteristic golden sphere and the clock atop the corner where Calle Alcalá meets Paseo del Prado. The third group shows details of the stonework on the cornice during the repairs, with extreme close-ups that reveal the fragility of the stone. The fourth group is made up of pictures of workers on the scaffolding, with the focus on the reinforcing and restoration of the cornice, plus the subsequent dismantling of the scaffolding. The fifth group comprises pictures of the sculptures of mythological figures on the façade before and after cleaning. The sixth and last group shows the interior of the Bank. The scaffolding can be seen through the windows. Employees at the Curator Division and the Historical Archives appear in some of the photos. The last picture was taken in the Bank's underground gold vault. It shows a silver eight reales coin bearing the face of Charles III and dated 1788. These thought-provoking photos invite viewers to reflect on the Bank as an institution and on its history. The scaffolding and structural reinforcements are depicted by the artist as 'prosthetics for the building, to alleviate its weakness in its convalescent state'. On realising that the building dates from the 1880s Ribalta, who sees cameras as 'history machines' or, to use a well-worn phrase, as 'time machines', cannot help linking the history of the building with the history of photography, the commencement of the Kodak era (the company was founded in 1888) and the period following the Restoration of the Bourbon royal family in Spain (1874-1931). He thus sees the Bank's headquarters as a documentary record of and monument to the restoration of the monarchy, thus giving the concept of 'restoration' acquires a double meaning.

Reading between the lines, this series can also be seen as showing the link between or equivalence of photography and money. As the artist himself stated, 'Around 1850, Oliver Wendell Holmes drew a priceless, visionary analogy between photographic records and money. The rise and proliferation of photographic archives opened up the possibility of a universal system for the exchanging of images, in which photos could be seen as similar to bank notes. Fox Talbot in Photogenic Drawing (1839) introduced an idea inherent in the origins of photography: that in photography nature represents itself. In an unexpected twist, Wendell Holmes expanded that idea, seeing photography as a 'great Bank of Nature' (The Stereoscope and the Stereograph, 1859). If photography is a tool for reification, then photo archives are a bank (so is this not a formulation avant la lettre of Guattari's idea of 'Integrated World Capitalism'?). Wendell Holmes' reformulation of Fox Talbot's idea can be summed up as follows: 'in photography, capitalism represents itself'.

Yolanda Romero Gómez