Spanish Connection

Here's an article on a quick trip I made to Spain published in MariTimes 2006 Vol. 19 No.1

A long morning of headshots, rubber stamps and metal detectors at Seville's Archivo General de Indias (AGI) became instantly worthwhile with over 11 million virtual pages of historic records—with hundreds relating to Bermuda—suddenly at my fingertips. While the odd researcher in the large reading room could be seen examining original documents with glove-clad hands, most of us were glued to our assigned computer terminals. Thanks to a ten-year multi-million dollar digital reformatting project, with just a few clicks of the mouse I was exploring AGI's vast collections relating to Spanish exploration and administration of the Americas. A sophisticated combination of database and image-enhancing computer technologies permitted me intimate remote access to a variety of Bermuda material, without detrimentally handling the originals. Despite some headway, my time constraints and run of the mill Spanish precluded complete inventory, translation and reproduction of AGI's Bermuda corpus. Hopefully BMM will in due course identify a Spanish-speaking researcher to take advantage of today's technology and sweep the Bermuda records at AGI, as well as Seville's Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos and other Spanish collections, following up the efforts of BMM affiliated researchers such as Jonathan Bream and David Quinn.

AGI is only one part of the monumental complex that composes Seville's World Heritage site. It also includes the spectacular architecture, gardens and collections of the Royal Palace or 'Alcazar' and the city's cavernous cathedral, the largest gothic building in Europe. The latter contains the tomb of Christopher Columbus and stands next to the soaring Giralda minaret, just one example of the eclectic mix of Moorish and Christian history and tradition found throughout Seville and elsewhere in the Andalucia region.

Though the tangible heritage of the heart of Seville certainly impressed and added considerable value to my dirt-cheap London airfare, it was an excursion outside of the city that resonated most for my sister Laura (who joined me on a short break from her Spanish studies in Madrid) and myself as Bermudians. Our host on this unexpected adventure was underwater archaeologist Claudio Lozano Guerra-Librero, who has worked with BMM in the past, is a part-time professor of the University of Huelva and is currently investigating shipwrecks engaged in the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar off Spain's southwest coast in the Gulf of Cadiz. Claudio drove us southwest towards the sea and into the province of Huelva, famous for its strawberry fields and as the 'Cradle of Discovery' of the Americas by Europeans from the 15th century. Huelva, Moguer, Palos de la Frontera, and the Rábida Monastery are all places of significance to Columbus achieving the political, monetary, and navigational resources necessary for his celebrated 1492 voyage and the expeditions of other mariners. As we trailed through the surprisingly undeveloped and un-touristy countryside we found monuments to this maritime heritage dotted throughout, with the colossal 1929 'Monument to the Discoverer Faith' statue the notable exception to a constellation of modest commemorative markers.

Arriving at the small sleepy village of Palos de la Frontera we found an unassuming landscape of white-washed residential streets, churches with storks nesting in their belfries, and an apparently unremarkable surrounding wetland. Claudio soon opened our eyes to this once thriving port and home of generations of seafarers, where mariners such as Columbus prepared and then set out along the rivers Tinto and Odiel into the Atlantic. Diego de Bermúdez who sailed aboard the Pinta is listed on the monument at the edge of the town, adjacent to the salt marsh where the harbour once stood. While his relative and Bermuda's namesake Juan de Bermúdez goes unmentioned, Claudio highlighted for us the Church of San Jorge Martír and the surviving 'Fontanilla' where Bermúdez and other seafarers respectively prayed and collected water prior to setting sail. We were reminded that the accomplished transatlantic career of Bermúdez and his 1505 crossing in command of La Garza (which notably may have carried African slaves to the Caribbean on its westward journey) is but one facet of the rich maritime heritage of the Huelva area. We were nonetheless amazed to be standing in the exact spot where Bermuda's 'discoverer' set sail five hundred years ago. Our trip to southwest Spain was a satisfying personal instalment in the growing Bermudian interest in exploring who we are through our abundant historic and contemporary connections to the Atlantic diaspora.

Images to come:
1. Archivo General de los Indios, Seville, Spain
2. Reproduction of 1603 Bermuda map by Diego Ramirez from AGI's digital collection
3. Storks in the belfry of the Church of San Jorge Martír
4. The Fontanilla, or old well, where crews drew water for their voyages
5. Monumento a la Fe Descubridora (Monument to the Discoverer Faith), near Huelva