AT A TIME in place and memory the history of chance heard its calling and came to rest on the rather obstinate shoulders of a certain Christopher Columbus. And the rest is history, so they say.
But before they say too much, let’s make one thing clear, Columbus did not discover ‘America’. He simply had enough grit, determination and dogged self-belief to take the place by force and make it his own. The result was the eventual domination of the Americas by the Spanish Conquistadores, the slavery and slaughter of hundreds of thousands of indigenous folk and the arrival of syphilis in Europe.
Poetic justice you might say, leading to the death of millions of Europeans while giving Ivan the Terrible a god-awful headache, which only made his mood worse – and he was not famous in Russia for being nice. This natural order of retribution continued through to the 1930s, leaving Al Capone “confused and disorientated” during his stint in Alcatraz. By the Sixties, penicillin had made the disease less intrusive, though it did dampen the sexual revolution a bit.
And all this because that obdurate Genoan refused to listen to the views of his contemporaries in the twilight of the 15th century. They said: the world is probably round and very large. He said: it may be round, but it ain’t large. If he’d left it at that, Columbus would have been venerated for his prescient conviction that the planet was shrinking. “It’s a small world, after all.”
But, not only was he adamant that the Earth’s circumference was equal to a waistline on the cover of a Condé Nast publication, he was also convinced that he could sail straight across the Atlantic Ocean, uninterrupted by land mass, to reach Asia (the Indies).
Hence, on arrival, that collection of islands known today as the Caribbean was assumed to be the East Indies. Not wanting to spoil the party, no one pressed the matter with Christopher. However, when his mistake was finally uncovered, the Spanish renamed the islands the West Indies. But that’s as perverse as me being called an East Jamaican or West Korean, which brings us to the large ‘Monument a Colom’ in Barcelona.
Built in the late 19th century at the site where Columbus returned after his first voyage to the Americas, the 60m tall monument is a stone’s throw from Spain’s north east coastline. A bronze statue of the man himself stands on top of the Corinthian column as a reminder to the world that Columbus answered to the Spanish Queen and King.
The statue is supposed to depict Columbus pointing west with his right hand to the New World (or in his case, East Indies). To confuse matters, given the correlation between site and sea, he’s actually pointing east to his home town of Genoa, though some Catalan historians will have you believe he’s Barcelona born and bred.
Between his third and fourth voyage to the Americas, Columbus did some jail time, following reports of tyrannical rule and atrocities committed in the new colonies. This was less concern for the well-being of the natives and more to do with the lucrative clauses in the explorer’s contract with Spanish royalty. Clever Chris had negotiated a 10 per cent cut in all commerce related to the New World and an automatic right to rule as Governor in lands “discovered”.
He died of a heart attack in 1506 at the age of 55. His remains were moved between Spain, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, creating some confusion as to their final resting place. The Cathedral of Seville in Spain and the Dominican city of Santo Domingo both lay claim to his bones. You could say he’s got one foot in both worlds.
Until the day he died, Columbus was convinced he had landed in East Asia. It is perhaps a little ironic that today, so many Indians are drawn to Barcelona for work, using his towering monument as the nucleus of their commercial space from where they sell goods and services all the way from Asia.
North west of the Columbus statue lies the hectic La Rambla, where hundreds of Punjabis gather at night, selling samozes and beer to drunken tourists. During the day, they cross north east of the monument, walking up and down the Barceloneta beach offering cold drinks and henna tattoos. While spread out on the sand, not a minute goes by without hearing the ubiquitous pitch: “Cerveza, beeer, cola.”
One young man from the Punjab arrived from England where he was making £45 a day at a Nottingham butcher. Spain offered much lower profit margins, not surprising given the one euro beers for sale, but opened the door to a legal permit after three years.
Asked if he would make his money and then return to India, the youth shook his head violently. But surely his mother would be pressing him to get married and start a family soon?
“I do like European now,” he said smiling, “No need for wife, have girlfriend.”
Columbus may not have landed in the Indies as he thought, but 500 years on and the European ways of his forebears were having their effect on the Asian continent. As for the Americas, marks of the Spanish conquests were everywhere to see. The bars and restaurants of Barca were full of South American waiters taking orders from American tourists, that is, pre-Columbus folk serving New World in an Old World setting. That was some year, 1492.
