The Columbus Industry

Christopher Columbus, Cristóbal Colón, Cristofol Colom, Cristoforo Colombo - take your pick. There is a Columbus industry in Spain, one dedicated to proving that the discoverer of the Americas did not come from Genoa. There is also a lot riding on Columbus not being Italian. So synonymous is he with Spain that the "Día de la Hispanidad" coincides with the day on which he made landfall at what he called San Salvador on 12 October, 1492. In the variants of his name, he is celebrated by streets, such as Cristofol Colom in Alcúdia old town; in Porto Colom he has been claimed as one of their own. DNA tests on those with the Colom or Colón surname have sought to prove his Spanishness or maybe his Catalan or even Majorcan origins.

The traditional historical view of Columbus is that he came from Genoa, but there has long been sufficient mystery as to his background that his birthplace has been the subject of fierce and patriotic debate, and no more so than in Spain where the patronage of the Catholic Kings resulted in his discovery of the New World and heralded Spain's Golden Age. National pride, akin to Spain winning the Euros, would flow from it actually being proven that C.C. was a Spaniard all along, or you might think it would were it not for his tarnished image or that he was in fact Catalan.

Nevertheless, Genoa is usually accepted as being his place of birth, and the Genoese were merchant traders and familiar to the Spanish court of the late fifteenth century. In itself, it would have been no surprise had he, from Genoa, been hanging around in the general area of Isabel and Ferdinand. But the Columbus mystery remains and has largely centred on how he spoke and on how he wrote. The only real agreement is that his language has been hard to pinpoint. One argument is that he learnt a corrupted form of Castilian while in Lisbon some years before his first voyage. (His wife, indisputably, was Portuguese.) That he appeared never to write in Italian may have been due to the fact that his Genoese dialect, if this was indeed his "native" tongue, was a spoken and not a written language.

In seeking to resolve the Columbus mystery, a new book by Estelle Irizarry, emeritus professor of Spanish literature at the University of Georgetown in Washington, argues that Columbus was in fact of Catalan origin and that he spoke Catalan before he could speak Castilian. In "The DNA Of The Writings Of Columbus", Irizarry places Columbus as having come from Catalan-speaking Aragon, itself of symbolic importance to Majorcans as this was the kingdom of the "conquistador", Jaume I.

Intriguingly, Irizarry has identified characteristics of linguistic use which point to Columbus possibly having been descended from the Jewish-Spanish race persecuted from the fourteenth century. The language of the Sephardic Jews in Spain was Ladino, a mix of primarily Hebrew and Spanish. Though Irizarry has identified use of Ladino by Columbus, she implies that there was also a variant - Ladino-Catalan - and that this usage indicates a Catalan origin. Sephardic Jews were to be found across Spain, but they were certainly prominent in Aragon and Catalonia, and even in Palma.

Claims of Jewish or Catalan lineage or birth are nothing new in the Columbus mystery. But if Irizarry has indeed managed, via a study of linguistics, to unravel the mystery and to establish a Catalan origin, how well would this all sit with Columbus and the Día de la Hispanidad? Not very well where more radical Catalan voices might be concerned, one would imagine. The Columbus industry, moreover, has scarred the reputation of the discoverer, which might make those who would claim "ownership" of him pause and consider him in terms of current-day political correctness. Not only was he a lousy administrator, he has been blamed for the wiping-out of the indigenous Taino indians. The Tainos may have bequeathed us certain words - hammock, hurricane, barbecue, for example - but they survived as a separate race for only a short period once Columbus had colonised La Española.

Yet for all this, how does it square with the fact that Columbus did have Genoese connections? With the fact this brothers came from Genoa to join him on voyages? Or with the generally held view that his father, Domenico, is meant to have originated from the village of Moconesi near to Genoa? Or that he himself once clearly stated that he was born in Genoa, despite his frequently being attributed with having said that he came from nothing?

Columbus, it is said, sought to hide his origins because they were humble. His father, if indeed Domenico was his father, was a mere weaver. It might be construed that he was ambiguous as to his background because of a possible Jewishness, even if it was not unknown for "conversos" from the Jewish faith to rise to positions of importance at the time of his voyages. But it is not inconceivable that he acquired what was a polyglot tongue. His time in Lisbon may be more significant than previously thought, as Portugal, prior to expelling Jews at the very end of the fifteenth century, had become something of a refuge for Sephardic Jews leaving Spain in the years before the final expulsion order of 1492. If it is true that Columbus acquired his Castilian in Lisbon, then might it be that this was influenced by Ladino? Columbus was clearly exposed to the Jewish community in Lisbon. In his will, he referred to the Jew who guarded the gate to the Jewish quarter. This all said, it is the Catalan element in Professor Irizarry's findings that is the wild card.

The Columbus mystery and the Columbus industry will continue. There's too much riding on them for his origins to be finally and irrefutably laid to rest.

Back to list