He Sees a Painting on the Street, Takes It "for the Frame," and Discovers It Is a Priceless Work

Andrés Hurtado, a 57-year-old resident of Puebla de Soto in Spain's Murcia region, became the protagonist of an unusual story after picking up a painting he found leaning against a flowerpot during a walk through central Seville. According to his account to Radio Sevilla, he decided to take it solely because he liked the frame, without imagining it was a work by the renowned painter Joaquín Sorolla.

The man had traveled to Seville with a group of friends and was walking back to his hotel when he saw a group of foreign young people leave the painting next to a flowerpot. "I picked it up because I liked the frame," he recounted. He then took the painting up to his room and bought a bag to transport it back to Murcia.

Once home, he began to examine the painting more closely and noticed it bore Sorolla's signature. Intrigued, he used an artificial intelligence app to find out which work it was. "It tells me I have a painting of incalculable value. I was completely freaking out," he recalled in statements collected by El Correo de Andalucía.

Convinced it could be an important piece, Andrés called an auction house in Madrid, where, he said, they told him the canvas could be worth "a fortune" if put up for auction. Shortly after, while watching the news on television, he discovered that the National Police were searching for that very painting, which had disappeared days earlier in Seville.

The painting belonged to a family that had temporarily left it on the sidewalk while loading luggage into their car to leave for vacation. When they returned to retrieve it, it was gone. The owners filed a report, put up posters in the area offering a reward, and launched a search supported by security cameras.

Upon realizing it was the same painting, Andrés contacted the National Police and also called the owners using the phone number on the posters. "If the painting has an owner, it is not mine — that is clear," he stated. Investigators went to collect the work to return it to the family.

Experts cited by Spanish media estimate the canvas could reach a value close to 50,000 euros, although for its owners, its primary importance is sentimental. The case, which began with an apparently abandoned object on the street and ended with the discovery of a work of great artistic value, became one of the most commented stories in Spain in recent days.