On reflection, yesterday’s piece was probably a bit of a disservice, an observation made at the fag-end of the season when the weather is not at its best. But also one of the things about Barcares and that whole stretch of coast to Manresa, Mal Pas, Bonaire and then up to La Victoria is that it exists at the opposite end of the spectrum to what most people experience of Alcúdia - which is The Mile. Chalk and cheese.
In a way, you wish more visitors would go to this part of Alcúdia. I can quite understand a sense of “calm enchantment” that, for sure, one would never feel along The Mile. Having stopped off at Barcares yesterday, I then drove up to the hermitage at La Victoria, one of those hairy drives on a narrow hillside road, but not in the real-hairy category of the road to Formentor or, more so, to Soller. And when you get to La Victoria, it’s all peace and total tranquility, mountain goats appearing out of the woods and munching away, the view across the bay to Pollensa one of the finest views the island has to offer.
Anyway, here is a touch of the enchantment and also a scene from the hermitage.
Columbus. Tomorrow, 12 October, is the anniversary of his “discovery” of America. “Euro Weekly” runs an unattributed piece on Columbus this week, noting the anti-Columbus protests aimed at his misdeeds. I take an interest in this because of his iconic status in Spanish history and also because of the ongoing claim that he was from Mallorca (for which there is little more than wishful thinking).
I have had cause to correct the history of Columbus in the past, and the EW article gives similar cause. The implication of the article is that Columbus first landed at Hispaniola or La Española; itself a common claim. He did not. On 12 October 1492, Columbus landed at an island in the Bahamas he was to call San Salvador. He then went to Cuba before La Española. According to the article, Columbus discovered the Dominican Republic, travelling on his way from the island of Hispaniola, today called Haiti. This gives a wholly wrong impression. The island of Hispaniola (La Española) comprised both modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic; they are not separate islands.
The article goes on by implying that Columbus, on his first trip, discovered a “little patch of land that later came to be called America”. He did not. It was on his third voyage in 1498 that he found the mainland (it was Venezuela); and it was only then that he realised that there was a large mainland. On his fourth voyage, he found central America of the modern-day Honduras and Panama. The article continues by saying that at the end of his return journey (by which one assumes the article to mean his second voyage), the Spanish left with 1600 prisoners. They did not. Columbus did order the seizure of 1600 or so Indians in response to a “rebellion”, but only 550 were sent back to Spain (Castile).
I’m sorry if this sounds a tad picky, but it galls me when such inaccuracies are presented as fact.
Where the article is a bit surer is in looking at Columbus’s role in the treatment of the indigenous Taino Indians, which is the basis for much of the anti-Columbus protest. But it is too simplistic to suggest that he was responsible for “wiping out a people”.
Columbus may have been a great discoverer, but he was a lousy administrator who wielded too much power in a generally incompetent fashion. The brutality of which he, and also his brother Bartolomeo, are accused, was partly a result of a failure (or unwillingness) to distinguish between peaceable Tainos and the cannibal Caribes, who were judged fair game even by supporters of the Indians such as Las Casas; it was also a result of some Tainos not being prepared to commit submissively to Christianity; it was also a result of being unable to control the various factions and other adventurers who came to the Caribbean in Columbus’s wake; it was also a result of greed in seeking gold and slaves (a crime committed by many others); it was also a result of the period in history.
The Taino population did decline dramatically, but this is only partly explained by extermination. Many were deported as slaves; many died of various causes, not least the diseases that the Europeans brought with them; many (well women) were taken by Spanish men, and the resultant cross-bred offspring added significantly to the fall in the pure population.
Tomorrow is the day to celebrate Columbus. Good or bad, let’s at least judge him on the whole story and let’s at least try and get the facts straight.
(As before, I would acknowledge Hugh Thomas “Rivers Of Gold” as source for some of this.)
QUIZ
Yesterday - Meat Loaf “Bat Out Of Hell”. Today’s title. Well, bit of a long-shot this I guess, but it’s the title of one heck of an album by which jazz pianist who also once performed a great track called “Spain”.
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