It is time to review, and Barcelona has to face an uncomfortable question: Was slavery a key industry to explain the economic boom of Catalonia and Barcelona at the end of the 19th century? Are modernism, the Universal Exhibition, Gaudí’s buildings or the Eixample a product of the slave trade? The question is tough but the answer, probably affirmative, at least in part, is even tougher.
So says, at least, the documentary “Negrers, la Catalunya esclavista” that TV3 rebroadcast a few days ago, which reviews the intense relationship that Catalonia had with slavery during the nineteenth century, acting as a carrier to bring tens of thousands of Africans to America to exploit them as slaves.
The Indianos are an iconic figure in the Catalan imaginary: the person who left without money to do the Americas to return rich after a few years. What was not usually told in this epic is that perhaps a good part of the money made by these Indians came, at the time, from the slave trade.
Urban planning with a controversial Inception
As explained in the documentary, families such as the Vidal Quadras, Conill, Xifré, Goytisiolo and Lopez families made at least part of their fortunes trading with people. His money translated into power with shares in some of the main companies and banks in the city, such as Banc Hispanocolonial, Sociedad Catalana para el Alumbrado por Gas, origin of Naturgy, or Banc de Barcelona.
But that power and money were also reflected in the city. Palaces, squares, monuments, buildings… In a country that was one of the last to abolish slavery -it did not do so completely until 1886-, cities like Barcelona hide in its streets the recent history of this practice and explain it in a low voice, through a trail of buildings that show us how influential these families were, to the point of modeling, in part, the urbanism of the city.
The Ateneu Barcelonés building, the Palau Moja in Portaferrissa, the statue to Columbus….Today we walk through some, not all, of the signs of the slave traders in Barcelona, trying to make memory and reveal a sad time in the history of the city that now begins to be revealed.
Idrissa Diallo square, former Antonio Lopez square
This space is perhaps one of the most popular in terms of the city’s black history. Antonio López, Marquis of Comillas, was a well-known slave owner, so powerful that he even had a square and a statue named after him at the end of a Via Laietana whose construction, in 1902, was one of the great works of connection between the Eixample and the port of Barcelona in the early twentieth century.
The city had a square dedicated to Lopez until 2021, when popular protests got the space renamed to remember Idrisa Diallo (Guinea, 1991 – Barcelona, 2012). Diallo arrived in Spain by jumping the Melilla fence, where he was arrested and transferred to the Center for the Internment of Foreigners (CIE) in Barcelona. Two weeks later he died in the hospital to which he was transferred from the CIE due to respiratory failure.
Palace of Marqués de Comillas (Palau Moja)
The large palace on the corner of Portaferrissa Street and Las Ramblas is one of the signs of the power that the Marquis of Comillas had thanks to the slave trade, which some studies reveal that he exercised both legally, when the practice was allowed, and illegally, when it was prohibited.
The Palau Moja was only one of the acquisitions of the Marquis, who also had a mansion in Paseo de Gracia. López died on January 16, 1883 at the Palau Moja. As explained in this article from El Español, only one day earlier,Pope Leo XIII signed a bull forgiving her for all the sins she might have committed during her lifetime.
Ateneu Barcelonés
In the building of what is now the Ateneu Barcelonés, an emblem of Catalan literature and culture, resided the slaveholder Jaume Torrents Serramalera, who controlled his fleet from there. Serramalera never became part of the Ateneu, nor of the previous entities that formed it, he only lived in what is now the building and died long before.
Statue to Joan Güell
Although there is no documentary evidence of direct involvement in the human trafficking business, in the same documentary “Negrers. La Catalunya esclavista” explains that many experts agree that it can be proved, at least, that the Güell family (yes, the ones in the Park or the Palau) financed expeditions that were intended for that purpose.
The documentary questions the role of one of the most prominent figures of the Catalan economic boom and one of the names we hear the most these days thanks to the intense architectural legacy left by the buildings and parks promoted by this family.
Columbus Monument
A few years ago, a controversial proposal by the CUP called for the demolition of the statue of Columbus in the port of Barcelona as a symbol of colonialism. The proposal raised a stir and did not prosper, but the look on the monument has changed, and today the decolonial demonstrations of Columbus Day usually pass by the monument to point it out.
In addition to being one of the great symbols of the Universal Exposition of 1888, an episode just after the most prolific period of the slave trade, the monument includes bas-reliefs between the coats of arms of Puerto Rico and Cuba that reproduce a scene of the first captives, and at the base of the monument there are two sculptures of Indians kneeling at the feet of a friar and a captain.
A route through the city that has many points of interest
López, a friend of Güell -of whom he would end up being Güell’s father-in-law- founded Tabacos de Filipinas, whose headquarters were built on the Rambla and today is the Hotel 1898, just across the street from Palau Moja, which today is the headquarters of the General Directorate of Archives, Libraries, Museums and Heritage . He also founded the Banco Hispano de Crédito, for which he built one of the first buildings on Via Laietana, today the BCN Hotel Colonial. All these buildings dot the route, which has many points.
The Llotja de Mar (where the anti-abolitionist Lliga Nacional was founded) or the monument to General Prim (who was governor of Puerto Rico and repressed the slave revolts)...Barcelona is dotted with remains that tell us of a more or less hidden past in the city that is now beginning to come to light. It all depends on how you look at it, Barcelona has many faces, and it is always good to know them all to be fully aware of the city where we live.