In 2004 and 2005, the newspaper El Mundo published two online interviews with questions from readers for Juan Luis Arsuaga and Bermúdez de Castro, both co-directors of the Atapuerca research project.141 Despite the fact that in both cases a question was devoted to the Orce controversy, there was no more significant attention to the Orce Man and no more headlines. The Atapuerca researchers both stated that the famous Orce remains were not human but animal.
Bermúdez highlighted the value of the Orce area sites despite the controversy and Arsuaga assumed that hominid remains would be found someday in Orce. These interviews show a clear decline in interest in the Orce Man issue, yet the fact that the questions on Orce were posed by the general public also shows that the Orce Man still captured the attention of those with palaeoanthropological interests.
In 2005, Gibert got significant backing from Catalan institutions when he was awarded the Narcís Monturiol Medal for scientific achievement.142 Gibert’s scientific isolation throughout the country, including in his own institution (the Institut de Paleontologia de Sabadell), and his political isolation in Andalusia were not reproduced by the Catalan government. One of the reasons for this could be the ideological closeness between Gibert and the government in Catalonia since 2003 when a left-wing coalition of three parties, the ‘Tripartit’, came to power.
In Jaunuary 2007, Gibert and his son Lluís held a press conference in Granada to present the recent research carried out by the team. The announcement of the press conference referred to the cranial fragment VM-0 and its title was ‘The Orce Man: New findings, dating of the sites and the surroundings’.143 The press conference received great media attention at the Andalusian level and to some extent at the national level.144 After once again explaining the story of the controversy, Gibert, and later the press, highlighted two new events that apparently finally put an end to the controversy.
The first was an article published by Domènec Campillo and some of his collaborators in which they presented the cranium of an ancient Roman girl found in Tarragona that had exactly the same cranial crest that triggered the controversy back in the 1980s.145 This could be proof that the Orce Man was definitively a man. The second was a letter by Emiliano Aguirre, first director of the Atapuerca site research and now retired, who admitted that this finding was definitive proof that
141 Redacción, El Mundo 2004 and Redacción, El Mundo 2005.
142 Utrera, El Ideal de Granada 2005.
143 ‘El Hombre de Orce: Nuevos hallazgos, datación de los yacimientos y su entorno’ AJG-ICP: Triptic Press Conference, 15 January 2007.
144 For instance: EFE, El País 2007; Romero, Granada Hoy 2007; Cambril, La Opinión de Granada 2007; Rodríguez, La Opinión de Granada 2007; Ladrón de Guevara, El Ideal de Granada 2007; Sáiz-Pardo, El Ideal de Granada 2007;
Gómez, J. E. El Ideal de Granada 2007.
145 Campillo et al. 2006.
Gibert had been right since the beginning. Most of the newspapers presented this new evidence as confirming his theory and claimed that now the Junta must act in consequence and allow Gibert to work in Venta Micena.146 Gibert himself stated that now ‘the controversy over this issue [the cranial fragment] is over’ and that ‘the truth has prevailed’.147
That summer, Gibert again was not granted an excavation permit and the penalty imposed on him was still being appealed in the Supreme Court of Andalusia.148 By the end of September 2007, while excavating in Cueva Victoria, he felt sick and went back to Barcelona sooner than expected. A week later, on 7 October, Gibert died of lymphatic cancer.149 As we have seen, his ashes were spread in Venta Micena.150 Several obituaries were dedicated to him in numerous newspapers. Even Salvador Moyà-Solà signed the El País obituary, where he stated that despite the scientific confrontation between them, Gibert showed great enthusiasm, vocation, and optimism throughout his career. According to Moyà-Solà, Gibert was crucial to the recovery of momentum that the Institut de Paleontologia experienced with the Orce findings and after Crusafont’s death.151
Fig. 4.9: Flyer for the January 2007 press conference. Note the still significant position of VM-0 24 years after its discovery. Obtained thanks to Lluís Gibert Beotas.
After Gibert’s death, the whole controversy around the Orce remains changed. He was the primary and most famous defender of the so-called Orce Man, the famous cranial fragment that from then on was more or less forgotten, despite some popular articles signed by some of Gibert’s
146 For instance: Cambril, La Opinión de Granada 2007.
147 ‘La controversia sobre este tema se ha acabado’, ‘La verdad se ha impuesto’, Ladrón de Guevara, El Ideal de Granada 2007.
148 Cappa, Granada Hoy 2007.
149 Sanz, ABC 2007; Moyà-Solà, El País 2007; Planas, La Vanguardia 2007; Europa Press VilaWeb 2007; EFE, El Mundo 2007.
150 Several palaeoanthropologists, like Gibert, have spread their ashes in ‘their’ sites or want to do it in the future.
Hochadel 2013b, 191.
151 Moyà-Solà, El País 2007.
collaborators such as Domènec Campillo.152 His son Lluís tried to continue his work in the Orce area and presented excavation projects for Venta Micena that so far have been refused.153 In any case, Lluís’s scientific work focuses more on geology and dating methods than on the hominid presence in Orce.154 In short, with Josep Gibert i Clos’s death, not only a palaeontologist’s life came to an end but also a very long-lasting controversy, which, as we shall see in the next chapter, experienced a brief resurrection in 2013.
Fig. 4.10: Lluís Gibert spreading his father’s ashes in Venta Micena. Source: Navarro 2010.
152 Campillo 2010, see also Cardeñosa 2007.
153 See chapter 5, section 5.2.
154 Personal Communication with Lluís Gibert 2014.