Christopher Columbus has stood on his column at the foot of Las Ramblas in Barcelona since 1888, his right arm outstretched towards the New World, although in fact it points to Constantine, Algeria.
And there he’s likely to stay after the mayor, Ada Colau, rejected calls to pull down the city’s most iconic statue. In so doing, Colau is keeping faith with the idea that it’s better for the city to face up to it past than to deny it.
Columbus’ links with the city are tenuous at best, but what isn’t in doubt is Barcelona’s long and lucrative association with slavery. Much of the city’s finest architecture, including some of Antoni Gaudí’s masterpieces, was financed by so-called indianos, Spaniards, many of them Catalans, who made their fortunes out of slavery in the Caribbean.
Perhaps more offensive than Columbus are the many statues and memorials to those who owed their wealth to slavery. To its credit, the city inaugurated a slavery tour to educate visitors and residents about a part of its history many would prefer to forget.
“This is what Americans call public history, that is, taking serious historical research and finding a way to present it to the general public,” says Oriol López-Badell, a historian at the European Observatory on Memories at the University of Barcelona, who helped establish the tour. “It’s also a way of giving recognition to the people who were the victims of slavery.”
López says that around a quarter of those who take the tour are African-Americans. “They are often surprised to hear this story, but always grateful for the fact that we are facing up to this uncomfortable part of our history,” he said.
The tour begins at the statue of Joan Güell, father of Gaudí’s patron, Eusebi. Güell made his fortune in Cuba and there are some, including Oriol Junqueras, leader of the Catalan Republican Left party, who claim he was directly involved in the slave trade. Others are more circumspect.
“We know very little about what Güell actually did in Cuba,” says Martín Rodrigo, professor of history at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, who has written several books about the links between Barcelona and slavery.
“There is no evidence that he was a slaver as such but he was definitely a slave owner. What we do know is that he was president of an association whose raison d’être was to defend slavery in the Caribbean. It was founded in 1871, when every European country had abolished slavery in their colonies. The only European country where people were still publicly defending slavery was Spain and Güell’s association was the most influential.”
Both Güells are memorialised in the city by a statue, a popular park, a palace, a church, two streets and a square.
Rodrigo explained that when the sugar cane business took off in Cuba there was already a large Catalan colony in Havana and other towns. Many returned to Barcelona and their wealth contributed to the construction of the city’s elegant Eixample district.
“The money from slavery, alongside other capital, went to finance real estate and various industries and helped Barcelona become the first industrialised and wealthiest region in Spain,” he says.
Among the Catalans who made their fortune were Facundo Bacardí, from Sitges, who was the first to distil white rum from sugar cane. Another was Jaime Partagás, whose name lives on as a famous brand of Cuban cigars.
Barcelona was never an important slave port and although few of the Catalans were actual slave traders, Rodrigo points out that it was impossible to make your fortune in Cuba without benefiting from slavery, which was the basis of the economy.
The tour ends at the statue of the slave trader Antonio López, Marquis of Comillas, whose daughter married Eusebi Güell. However, the statue is no longer there as it was removed by popular demand in 2018.
Although the statue has gone, the square still bears his name, and the plinth remains, a blunt reminder of a dark chapter in the city’s history.