Auctioneer Christie's announced the cancellation of a London sale of 85 artworks by Catalan artist Joán Miró that were going to be part of an auction scheduled this past February 4, 2014. The works in question, property of the Portuguese Government since 2008, were going to be auctioned in London but became the center of controversial communiqués between the Government and the Dirección General de Patrimonio Portugués (General Directorate of Heritage of Portugal), on the one hand, and between the Government and the opposition, on the other. As result of those exchanges Christie's, without taking sides, stressed that under the circumstances it would be impossible to guarantee one hundred percent the sale of the work, a reason that weighed heavily in their decision to cancel the event. Interested in having the artwork return to Portugal, the Dirección General de Patrimonio Portugués declared its unconformity through a communiqué. In it, they affirmed that the works are part of the national patrimony and the visual arts of Portugal and, thus, cannot be treated like commercial goods. Another sore point that touches the fibers of the Directorate is the secretive manner with which the Portuguese Government handled their paperwork and transportation outside of the country. The entity claims that they only learned about of the auction through a newspaper that announced the event. The 85 works expand through the entire artistic career of the Catalan artist and were previously owned by collector Kazumasa Katsuta, who sold them to the Banco Português de Negócios (BPN) for 34 million euros in 2006. The collection was never presented to the public; nonetheless, some were exhibited for the first time at the MoMA in New York.