Two years ago, the release of a documentary in Spain set off a fiery debate in the region of Catalonia that is still simmering.
The film, “Negrers: La Catalunya esclavista,” or “Slavers: Catalonia and the Slave Trade,” exposed Catalonia’s involvement in the slave trade in the 19th century, and how the fortunes of many wealthy families were built on enslaved trafficking and labor.
While the film was well received by some, it was met by a fierce backlash from many Catalans, who objected to the notion that the region ought to make amends for the injustices of the past.
The film is part of an emerging and vocal movement in Spain to confront the legacies of the country’s involvement in the Atlantic slave trade and enslaved labor. A new collection of essays and interviews, “Cultural Legacies of Slavery in Modern Spain” (SUNY Press), shines a light on the impacts, influences, and consequences of that difficult past in three realms: the archive, cultural memory sites, and the arts.
Edited by Aurélie Vialette, an associate professor in Yale’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese, in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Akiko Tsuchiya, professor of Spanish at Washington University in St. Louis, the book is especially timely, as artists, academics and activists are pressing for the country to reckon with its past slavery practices. It includes the voices of cultural critics, historians, a filmmaker, a choreographer, activists, and even a flamenco dancer.
The book will be published in Spanish. Vialette and Tsuchiya are also creating a companion website.
Aurélie Vialett and Akiko Tsuchiya
They recently sat down with Yale News to talk about why Spain was late to this discussion, the discovery of sanitized historical archives, and the need to reckon with problematic public spaces. The conversation has been condensed and edited.
How was this project conceived?
Aurélie Vialette: Akiko and I decided to focus on the legacies of slavery in Spain because we saw a real need to talk about it. We wanted to bring to light the impact that the Spanish nation’s colonial past and especially its participation in the slave trade continues to have on present-day society, not just economically and politically, because that has been studied, but also the cultural impact. The impact of the legacies of slavery on different kinds of cultural representations and institutions. We thought that was a gap we needed to fill.
Franco was all about the Spanish Empire and the goodness that it did throughout the world… It was hard for Spaniards to distance themselves from this official discourse.
Spain came to this discussion a little later than the U.S. Are the conversations around the legacy of Spain’s involvement in the slave trade as fraught as they have been in this country?
Vialette: Yes. One of the reasons why it came so late is that Spain went through a dictatorship of almost 40 years under Francisco Franco. After Franco died in 1975, one urgent matter in Spain — politically, socially, and culturally — was to deal with the trauma of the dictatorship. It took all the space. Historical memory was all about the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship and did not include the question of Spain as a colonial space and the slave trade. Franco was all about the Spanish Empire and the goodness that it did throughout the world, the civilization that it brought to the Americas and Asia. It was hard for Spaniards to distance themselves from this official discourse.
Akiko Tsuchiya: In 2007, Spain passed a law of historical memory under a socialist government. It provided the momentum for questioning received historical narratives and collective memory. It recognized the rights of those who suffered persecution during the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship. There was a mandate to remove all public symbols and monuments that commemorated the fascist dictatorship. And then they passed another version of the law, in 2022, which was supposed to be an improved version, but it didn’t include the victims of colonial Francoism, like victims in the African colonies. This colonial memory was completely left out. So activists started to say, well, what about the statues of those who were slave traders or who benefited from enslaved labor? That question started to be asked in the public sphere.
“A Brief Overview of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade,’ Slave Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
In the first part of the book, Aurélie, you dig into the business archive of Antonio López y López. Why is he an important figure?
Vialette: He was one of the most important slave traders of the 19th century, which allowed him to create a tobacco company, the Compañía Geńeral de Tabacos de Filipinas. He went to Barcelona to establish himself and marry into an important Catalan family. He brought so much capital, as others did, that the Barcelona we know today is a beautiful city, full of art and wonderful architecture. Basically, an important part of this splendor had been financed by money from the slave trade or enslaved labor on plantations in the Caribbean.
In Barcelona there was a plaza named after him with his statute — Akiko talks about its history in her chapter. It was dismantled in 2018, and that was really the beginning of this entire discussion on what we should do with the legacies of the slave trade in Barcelona. And people did not agree. The discussions were the ones we see here and throughout the world — should we keep the monuments where they are because they teach us history or should we remove them because they explicitly praise enslavers?
You try to read between the lines in the business archive for this tobacco company in the Philippines because there is no mention of the slave trade or slave labor. You call it “a cosmetic of the archive.” What do you mean?
Vialette: There’s no trace of slavery in this archive, which seemed a little odd to me. So I dug deeper and saw how in the 19th century, slave traders protected themselves because they knew it was not a good thing to use enslaved people for labor. Slavery was effaced from the 19th-century archives. Some people still say that there is no proof that López was a slave trader. Well, there is a lot of proof — Martin Rodrigo, who is a contributor in this volume, has done historical research about it — but it was effaced. You have to read between the lines. For example, when there’s a shipment from Cuba, where you had enslaved people, to the Philippines for the tobacco field, and in the shipment, there are line items with no items listed — but they’re paid for in gold. That’s what I mean by “cosmetic” of the archive. It’s a sanitizing of the archive.
You interviewed a flamenco dancer for the book: Yinka Esi Graves, who is of Ghanaian and British descent. How is she confronting the legacies of slavery through her art?
Vialette: We had so much fun interviewing her. She says something in the interview that is absolutely beautiful and moving. She lives in Seville, which was an important port in the slave trade, and said that each time she crossed a bridge there she would feel a connection to the water on an emotional and physical level. She was feeling this call, a connection to the people who died in the water, those people from Africa who were transported to Spain and then to the Americas.
What she’s trying to do with her dance is to bring to the surface the African rhythm in flamenco, which is there, but Spanish society doesn’t accept it as such because flamenco is a signature art and dance of the Spanish nations. She doesn’t make it explicit and she doesn’t explain it. She just dances and builds choreographies.
In another interview with an historian, you talk about the impact of the Black Lives Matter movement in Spain.
Tsuchiya: That was a foundational moment for a global reckoning with the legacies of slavery. And it was happening at the same time as Spain was coming to a reckoning with the legacies of colonialism and slavery. People were becoming more aware of these issues and the long-term impact that slavery has had on communities of African descent, for example. There are Pan-African organizations there, but a lot of times they feel like they’re not being listened to. There are also immigrant advocacy organizations. One of them fought to get the plaza of Antonio López y López renamed for a Guinean immigrant, Idrissa Diallo,who was denied medical attention and died in an internment center.
[S]lave traders protected themselves because they knew it was not a good thing to use enslaved people for labor. Slavery was effaced from the 19th-century archives.
Are there other parallels you can draw between the movement in Spain and the movement in the U.S.?
Vialette: In New Haven, researchers are trying to show this history. And it’s not that it’s been silenced — the documents are there. There’s just not been an interest in it. Why? Because it’s very uncomfortable. It’s the same in Spain. Another parallel is the question of what do we do with our cities when we are surrounded by a public space that is very problematic?
Tsuchiya: And there is a parallel with regard to education. In Spain, only in very isolated cases have there been any attempts or initiatives to include colonialism and slavery as part of the curriculum in the primary and secondary schools. There’s a complete gap. And in this country now, in states like Texas and Florida, teachers are no longer able to teach the history of slavery. They’re completely erasing history. Our aim to counter this historical amnesia makes this book all the more important.
