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Colonial reckoning : reexamining the slave past in Catalonia
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1570-7253
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Tomas MACSOTAY and Nausikaä EL-MECKY (eds), Toppling things as memorial contestation : spectacle and affect of monument removal, Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2025, Thamyris/intersecting: place, sex and race ; 35, pp. 188-211
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LLORENS DECESARIS, Gerard, ENRÍQUEZ ÀLVARO, Adrià, Colonial reckoning : reexamining the slave past in Catalonia, in Tomas MACSOTAY and Nausikaä EL-MECKY (eds), Toppling things as memorial contestation : spectacle and affect of monument removal, Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2025, Thamyris/intersecting: place, sex and race ; 35, pp. 188-211 - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/77714
Abstract
Colonial vestiges dominate the landscape of Vilanova i la Geltrú, a small city near Barcelona. From the eighteenth century onwards, Vilanova had very close links to the “ever-faithful isle” of Cuba to the extent that, during the nineteenth century, it was known as L’Havana Xica (Little Havana). These ties are nota- bly visible in the town’s central square, where a monument dedicated to Josep Tomàs Ventosa i Soler, an important merchant and politician in colonial Cuba, overlooks a porticoed plaza. In October 2016, this statue was desecrated by political activists critical of Spain’s violent, colonial past. While the Spanish colonial past has left a substantial legacy in Catalonia, it is only recently that the role of slavery in its creation has come to the fore. This chapter presents the case study of the Mediterranean city of Vilanova i la Geltrú to help explain how this past is intertwined with other concerns that form part of the current political discourse, such as that about national identities.
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Published online: 07 January 2025