These are how the Catalan slave traders got rich

Spain was the last European country to outlaw slavery in Cuba, then a colony, in 1886. And not only that. It also played a prominent role in the sinister and lucrative history of human trafficking, a practice that lasted from the 15th to the 19th centuries and placed it fourth among the world's slave-owning powers, behind only Portugal, England and France. And yet, unlike other countries that have long been revisiting their colonial past, slavery remains one of the darkest and most silenced chapters in our history. Proof of this is that, although in recent years there has been an abundance of academic research and many historians are trying to fill this gap, until now it had been addressed in an exhibition that gives names and surnames to the slave traders, in this case Catalans, which explains where they lived and where their wealth came from, how they kidnapped human beings in Africa and then took them as slaves to America, and how once there they used them as labor for sugar mills, the estates where cane was ground and processed to produce sugar and spirits.

The exhibition is a declaration of intent from its very title, La Infamia. La participaci6n catalana en la slavery colonial (The Infamy. Catalan Participation in Colonial Slavery ), and according to Enric Garcia Domingo, director of the Museu Marítim, where it will be on display until 5 October, it will generate debate and make some families uncomfortable, “but the aim is not self-flagellation or asking for forgiveness, but rather to explain a history that we have not wanted to talk about for generations, it has been kept secret and it is still taboo.”

"The goal is not self-flagellation or asking for forgiveness, but to explain a story that has been kept secret and still remains taboo," says Enric Garcia.

“It was a thorn in our side for a long time, but sometimes it is not enough to want to do things” and, in any case, she notes, it comes at a time when “there are attempts to whitewash and change history, hiding and trying to justify the darkest parts. Those phrases that we hear so often that 'well, it was normal, at that time people lived with slavery and had slaves'. Well, no. The time when museums had to be neutral is over. We take sides, yes. Against slavery, against the exploitation of people and against racism.”

The rise of the slave trade by Catalan merchants (also Basque, Cantabrian and Andalusian) occurred in the 19th century, after the United Kingdom made this practice illegal in 1807 (a year later the United States would do so). “Until then it had been the British who had monopolised the trade, but as soon as they banned it, a loophole opened up, a commercial opportunity and then it was basically the Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese sailors who entered the business and continued in it, illegally, for forty years,” explains Antoni Tortajada, author of the script for the show, who had the scientific advice of Martín Rodrigo, professor at the Pompeu Fabra University and author of Negreros y esclavos. Barcelona y la envidia atlántica (siglos XVI-XIX). The main destination was Cuba, an island to which 600,000 slaves arrived from Spain alone.

Josep Carbó, from Sant Feliu de Guíxol; Agustí Cunill Sala, from Lloret; Esteve Gatell Roig, from Torredembarra; Josep i Pere Mas Roig, from Vilassar de Mar or Jaume Tintó Miralles, from Barcelona were some of the captains who clandestinely piloted sailing ships loaded with slaves, trying to avoid the British fleet that pursued them with steamboats, as shown by some of the ex-votos that form part of the museum's collections.

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On the walls we can also read the names of some of the shipowners who organised expeditions (Josep Canela Raventós, Isidre Inglada, Salvador Samà, Jaume Tintó Miralles, Jaume Torrents Serramalera, Jaume Vilardebó or Antonio López, a slave trader who amassed a fortune trafficking slaves with Cuba and to whom Ada Colau, fulfilling her electoral promise, removed the statue that paid tribute to him). On an interactive map, we can also see the houses in which they lived. López, for example, had his residence in the Palau Moja and Tomàs Ribalta acquired the Palau Marc, both today headquarters of the Culture department of the Generalitat. There is the new Barcelona born with money laundered from the trade in people.

The exhibition, whose museographic project is designed by Ignasi Cristià, delves into this shameful past through maps, engravings and photographs, such as those of the House of Slaves, on the island of Goreé, in Senegal, from where tens of thousands of natives set out for America with no return in gloomy warehouses. “As the slave traders were persecuted by the English, they had to go as quickly as possible and so they created this kind of concentration camp, where they were packed together, ready to be loaded and leave quickly,” says Mireia Mayolas, head of the education, activities and exhibitions area of ​​the museum. At least a dozen of these centres run by Catalans have been documented along the entire African coast. After the journey, work awaited them in the sugar mills, the name given to the estates where sugar cane was worked with slave labour from Africa and China.

Beyond the historical facts, the exhibition points out their consequences: “racism”, this tendency “to show black people as intellectually limited or ridiculed”, in which commercial products such as Conguitos or Cola Cao participated, as well as cultural magazines such as En Patufet . Finally, the Guinean-born filmmaker Sally Fenauy appeals in a video, Una història de reconciliació , to shared responsibility. “The people who participated in this story were human, who lived in their time, we are human who live in our time and in a certain sense it is up to us to do our part to change this story”, she reflects.