Am­bas­sador of Spain to T&T Javier Car­ba­josa said it would be a cause of great sad­ness to him and his gov­ern­ment if the stat­ue of ex­plor­er Christo­pher Colum­bus is re­moved from Port-of-Spain.

He said Spain has al­ways been “ex­treme­ly proud of the bonds of friend­ship and cul­tur­al in­ter­ac­tion be­tween our coun­tries.”

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Am­bas­sador Car­ba­josa said he had been fol­low­ing with great con­cern the de­bate on the is­sue.

“The im­age of the Ad­mi­ral’s de­faced stat­ue is par­tic­u­lar­ly un­set­tling,” he said.

The am­bas­sador said his first re­ac­tion to the cam­paign, which is be­ing ag­gres­sive­ly pur­sued lo­cal­ly by the Cross Rhodes Free­dom Project, was amaze­ment.

“Re­al­ly?!! At a time in which COVID-19 is still among us and the con­se­quences on the econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go seem un­cer­tain. Re­al­ly? Is this an ur­gent prob­lem for Trinidad and To­ba­go now?” he asked.

While he did not weigh in on in­to the pros and cons of Colum­bus’ ar­rival in the Amer­i­c­as, Car­ba­josa ex­pressed con­cern that T&T’s in­dige­nous move­ment had “launched an of­fen­sive of this kind” build­ing on the mo­men­tum gen­er­at­ed by protests in the US.

He said: “His­to­ry can­not be rewrit­ten to the taste of the con­sumer. It is what it is, with its lights and shad­ows, and it is part of our lega­cy. We should ac­cept it and learn from it. My point is that try­ing to rewrite his­to­ry and pre­tend that things nev­er ex­ist­ed is, in my opin­ion, a fu­tile and hyp­o­crit­i­cal and dan­ger­ous en­deav­our.”

The am­bas­sador added: “If the City of Port-of-Spain be­gins with the re­moval of Ad­mi­ral Colum­bus’ stat­ue, what will be the next step? I guess that one will have to re­name the cap­i­tal city (a part of the Span­ish lega­cy, as well as oth­er cities like San Fer­nan­do, San­gre Grande, Mara­cas, Las Cuevas, San­ta Cruz, Rio Claro, Ce­dros, Ica­cos etc), and of course the very name of the is­land “Trinidad”, cho­sen as a re­flec­tion of the pi­ous char­ac­ter of the Ad­mi­ral (the Holy Trin­i­ty).”

Tak­en to its ex­treme, Car­ba­josa con­tend­ed, all sig­nage through­out the coun­try in Span­ish and Eng­lish would have to be re­moved and re­placed since they rep­re­sent the ves­tiges of “an op­press­ing force”.

“I think it would be wise to think twice about the con­se­quences of our ac­tions,” he said.