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However, Santiago Rusiñol did not turn his Sitgetan temple into an ivory tower, but officiated it, in the name of art and beauty, for an increasingly broader public. Through the famous modernist “fiestas” or festivals, each aimed at updating different artistic languages –the first in 1892, was dedicated to painting, the second, in 1893, to Symbolist theater and music, the third to literature, the fourth, in 1897, to Catalan lyrical theater and the fifth, in 1899, to theater once again-, Rusiñol and his friends set out to actively contribute to the process of re-Catalanizing Catalonia, the only means that, according to them, guaranteed the “regeneration” of a society, the Catalan society, that was invariably tied – politically speaking of course – to a Spain that lost its last colonies during the Cuban war, between 1894 and 1898. And so, the demand to modernize Catalan culture became inseparable from the creation of a culture of Catalan autonomy which, if at first was approached mainly in an ideological way, would soon acquire important political dimensions. This process, manifested and developed during the 19th century, is the cultural, political and ideological movement known as Modernism in Catalonia and of which Santiago Rusiñol is considered the undisputed leader. Dating back to Cuban War years, during which time the artist maintained his closest relationship with Sitges, is the project to dedicate a statue to the Baroque painter nicknamed El Greco by popular demand; The Ministry of War’s refusal to supply the bronze needed to make the statue would be the catalyst for the radicalization of the artist’s discourse for Catalan autonomy: a country that, in the name of war, refuses bronze for a statue dedicated to an artist didn’t deserve to survive. The stone statue of El Greco, made by sculptor Josep Reynés, was unveiled on Sitges’ seaside promenade on August 29th, 1898.
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Rusiņol, Sitges i el modernisme 
