Call to topple Christopher Columbus statue from its Barcelona perch

[nextormento]

The Guardian

A group of anti-capitalist councillors in Barcelona are hoping to topple the statue of Christopher Columbus that has stood at the foot of La Rambla for more than a century, arguing that the city should not be celebrating the explorer’s colonial legacy.

The 197ft (60-metre) high memorial, topped with a bronze statue of the Genoan pointing out to sea, has been part of Barcelona’s skyline since 1888. Its base pays homage to Columbus’s colleagues and his patrons, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

In proposals to be submitted to the city council on Friday, the three CUP Capgirem councillors call for the statue to be taken down along with “all the decorations at the base of the column that glorify the conquest of America and its ‘museumification’ through historical interpretation”.

Far more fitting, they say, would be a memorial reflecting “American resistance to imperialism, oppression and indigenous and African-American segregation”.

The image of Columbus is not the only monument on their hitlist: the councillors also want the statue of the merchant and slave trader Antonio López y López, Marquis of Comillas, removed from its plinth outside the post office building. In its place, the trio propose a monument to commemorate the victims of the slave trade.

Their suggestions, however, go well beyond statuary. As well as removing Spanish flags from municipal buildings in Barcelona, they would also like to see 12 October – the national holiday on which Spain celebrates Columbus’s landfall in the Americas – turned into an ordinary working day.

They say the date not only marks “an intolerable act of colonialism and imperialism”, but also “the genocide of the indigenous American population by colonist-conquistadors, and an act of aggressive Spanish nationalism against all the peoples that it oppresses and has oppressed”.

Last is a demand for the council to ban fascist events in the city.

The notion of celebrating 12 October is increasingly distasteful to some in Spain, especially those on the left.

Last year, Barcelona’s mayor, Ada Colau, said the country should not be marking “a genocide” with an €800,000 (£700,000) military parade, while José María González, the Podemos-backed mayor of the southern city of Cádiz, tweeted: “We never discovered America; we massacred and suppressed a continent and its cultures in the name of God.”

For a bit of background, the CUP party is holding 3 seats (7.3%) at the Barcelona city council.

This is their manifesto:
The CUP is an assembly political organization of national scope, which is the Catalan Countries, and which works for an independent country, socialist, ecologically sustainable, territoriality balanced, and detached from forms of patriarchal domination.

The Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP) is structured as a useful space for all those persons and collectives with transformative will, fighting for the freedom of our people, with the intention of being a place of confluence fo civic and popular movements, in the struggle for national and social liberation of the Catalan Countries.

This, their ideology (wiki)
Catalan independence, Socialism, Anti-capitalism, Environmentalism, Municipalism, Marxism, Libertarian socialism, Direct democracy, Euroscepticism, Pancatalanism, Communism.

[GennGreymane]

I can see why, but its a nice statue.

[The One Percent]

Just add a plaque at the bottom explaining what he really was.

[Elegiac]

Just add a plaque at the bottom explaining what he really was.

An incompetent dickhead?

[Jacpierre]

Columbus was a massive piece of trash, and a pure idiot. I really don't understand why we celebrate him. It is pure myth that anyone thought the earth was flat. They had known since the Greeks started sailing that the earth was round. It's just actual smart people knew the earth was as big as it is, and Columbus foolishly thought it was smaller. If the America's weren't here, he would have starved to death.

[Darkrulerxxx]

Like it or not, he is an important figure in history, and a figure such as that should not be taken down in the name of suppression and political correctness.

[Dsonsion]

Why remove his statue? He's a very important figure for Spain and for the countries of the Americas. It certainly required determination to make the trip he did, even more so considering the conditions of seafaring in those times.

[Jacpierre]

Like it or not, he is an important figure in history, and a figure such as that should not be taken down in the name of suppression and political correctness.

He was an awful human being, who wasn't smart, and is only famous because he got lucky.

Now, there are a lot of famous people who are that way by chance, but he certainly does not deserve to be memorialized.

[Elegiac]

Why remove his statue? He's a very important figure for Spain and for the countries of the Americas. It certainly required determination to make the trip he did, and considering the conditions of seafaring in those times.

It also required an extreme degree of ignorance to not pack sufficient supplies for the journey he intended to take and sufficient asshattery to behave the way he did towards the natives.

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Like it or not, he is an important figure in history, and a figure such as that should not be taken down in the name of suppression and political correctness.

He's not even Spanish, for god's sake.

[GennGreymane]

Like it or not, he is an important figure in history, and a figure such as that should not be taken down in the name of suppression and political correctness.

Its not like he is being struck from the history books. I would agree with you if that were the case.

[PC2]

The Columbus statue is fine. Feel free to make additional statues, as opposed to expunging things that hurt your feelings.

[Azadina]

Columbus was a massive piece of trash, and a pure idiot. I really don't understand why we celebrate him. It is pure myth that anyone thought the earth was flat. They had known since the Greeks started sailing that the earth was round. It's just actual smart people knew the earth was as big as it is, and Columbus foolishly thought it was smaller. If the America's weren't here, he would have starved to death.

You do realize that people exist even today who think the earth is flat? You've never heard the term "flat earthers" before?

[ArguesWithStrangers]

News at Eight, Self-hating leftist deuchbags virtue signal to gain unearned moral superiority.

[GennGreymane]

You do realize that people exist even today who think the earth is flat? You've never heard the term "flat earthers" before?

He is referring to the myth that everyone before Columbus believed the world was flat.

[Elegiac]

He is referring to the myth that everyone before Columbus believed the world was flat.

What's doubly damning is that we also knew pretty much exactly what the circumference of the earth was, and he -still- decided to undersupply his ships.

[Jacpierre]

You do realize that people exist even today who think the earth is flat? You've never heard the term "flat earthers" before?

You do realize that is a figurative phrase, not a literal one right?

[Azadina]

He is referring to the myth that everyone before Columbus believed the world was flat.

Well, he did say "anyone", Implying that no one believed it.

[GennGreymane]

Well, he did say "anyone", Implying that no one believed it.

lol fair enough, but I will not debate wording choice.

[Azadina]

lol fair enough, but I will not debate wording choice.

At times it's important. One word changed can mean something else entirely.

Anyway, about the statue. It's a nice looking statue, and I see no reason to destroy it.

[ArguesWithStrangers]

Its not like he is being struck from the history books. I would agree with you if that were the case.

It's more a problem of the cultural self-hatred currently in vogue in the west that cannot acknowledge the numerous accomplishments of our civilization but focuses on things like slavery and colonialism as though they were unique to us in the time period. All the anti-colonialists love to bemoan the injustices of empires of white men while ignoring that brown and black people the world over practiced the same injustices at the same time. Furthermore, they also ignore that it was white, Christian, westerners who ended the practice of slavery in their dominions at the height of their power, which is nearly unfathomable. We also caused it's practice to diminish in the places we did not control because the leaders of those lands wanted to trade with us, and we had conditions about that kind of thing.

Say what you want about Columbus, he was a product of his time. His discovery of the Americas accidental or otherwise, caused a monumental shift in the history of the world. He is worth remembering.