The Columbus Improbability: Felanitx

Want to give your town's tourism a bit of a boost? Easy. All you do is ally yourself to some old weird beard who helped to eradicate a distant tribe of loin-cloth-wearing and peace-loving foreigners: Christopher Columbus, the Kenny Rogers of the fifteenth century, all white chin furniture and islands of the gulf stream.

The mayor of Felanitx wants to make Columbus an "illustrious son" of the town and to attract all-year American tourists in search of their roots at a new theme park with Taino indians (not that they'd be real ones), labouring in building a governor's residence and dying of smallpox. But let's overlook Columbus's genocidist credentials. He wasn't in truth much good at wiping out a race - there are more efficient ways than the ones he and his successors deployed - much as he wasn't much good at discovering America.

It may come as a surprise to learn that Columbus didn't discover Manhattan or Disney World. What he did stumble across, while thinking he was on the way to China, were some islands, one of which is today carved down the centre on maps, the right bit of which is the Allinclusivan Republic, sometimes known as "Dominican" to a bar-owning fraternity of Mallorca intent on wreaking winter-home-from-home, all-inclusive revenge on this part of the Caribbean in retaliation to that of the non-Saint Miguel-buying all-inclusive hoi polloi of the resorts.

Of course, any schoolboy could tell you that it was Columbus who discovered America, although this is increasingly unlikely given the nature of history teaching, which is probably as well given that it isn't strictly true. But the same schoolboy might just also be able to tell you that Columbus came from Genoa in Italy. Which is true, at least it is generally thought to be. Not, however, that some would agree, such as the mayor of Felanitx.

There is a Mallorcan historian called Gabriel Verd Martorell. For years now he has been banging on about Columbus being a felanitxer. The town does have form when it comes to the great Columbus claim; its resort, Porto Colom, claims Columbus for itself. Porto Colom equals Port Columbus. What Martorell reckons is that an Aragonese noble, Charles, exiled to Mallorca by his father, shacked up with a Margarita Colón (Colón, Colom, it's all the same) and out popped Chris - in 1460, nine years after what is normally taken as the year of his birth in Genoa.

Charles was the brother of Fernando, also of Aragon, who married Isabel of Castile and thus - through their union as Catholic Kings - created the modern Spain. It was Fernando and Isabel who, after some years of being pestered, finally gave in to Columbus's desire to go and find China in the opposite direction from that to which it was normally approached.

The mystery of Martorell's theory is that no one at the time, back in the royal court of the late fifteenth century, seemed to cotton on to the fact that Columbus was indeed Fernando's nephew. At least this is what most, in fact all history books would have us believe. Until, that is, Sr. Martorell came along to imply that Fernando knew all along but obviously wasn't telling, and that it was Columbus's nobility that allowed the king and queen to grant him the most unusual title of viceroy - which they did -when he set off for wherever it was he was going to.

Of course, Martorell might be right, though a professor at the university in Palma considers his version of the Columbus story to be highly improbable. But Mayor Tauler of Felanitx believes him and can see a decent tourist opportunity when it presents itself. The only problem might be convincing all those tourists, especially the American ones, who might otherwise be Genoa-bound.

Columbus is the most famous Spaniard who wasn't actually Spanish. It's for this reason that there is such an industry which wants to find proof that he was as well as an offshoot industry which would like to confer Catalan status on the discoverer as a way of cocking a snook at Spanish pretensions. Politically and touristically there is much riding on the Columbus engima. Over to you, Felanitx.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.