How a mustachioed Barcelona artist foiled an elaborate plot to spirit Catalonia's priceless Romanesque paintings away from their homeland. In the summer of 1919, Joan Vallhonrat made his way by train, stagecoach and mule from Barcelona to the village of Mur in mountainous western Catalonia, just below the Spanish Pyrenees. An artist, Vallhonrat had accepted a commission from the Institute of Catalan Studies to travel to the remote Romanesque churches of Catalonia and paint scaled-down reproductions of the frescoes that had adorned their walls for centuries. When he entered the church of Santa Maria de Mur, however, he found a strange group of men gingerly chipping away the plaster behind the frescoes to tear them down, cart them away and ship them to America...