History

Confronting the Past Racism of Catalonia’s Slave Trade: What It Means for the Present

Exploring the Legacy and Reckoning with the Consequences of Catalonia’s Involvement in the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Photo by British Library on Unsplash

The Catalan government has admitted that its history of slave trade has influenced the present and that it must address “the previous racism” of that history.

Catalan businessmen and sailors continued to benefit from the transatlantic slave trade after the Brits outlawed it in 1807, according to a recent documentary named Negrers: La Catalunya Esclavista (Slavers: Catalonia and the Slave Trade).

The documentary aims to draw attention to the fact that Catalans were either directly or indirectly involved in the movement of 700,000 slaves from west Africa to the Caribbean between 1817 and 1867.

Spain quickly followed Britain in outlawing slavery, but it did little while the illegal traffic persisted, frequently on ships with Catalan crews. Two centuries later, an increasing number of politicians and historians are of the opinion that Spain, and Catalonia in particular, need to come to terms with their colonial history in order to go forward.

The Debt to be Paid

The documentary was hard-hitting and has brought the issue of Catalonia’s colonial and mercantile past to the forefront of public consciousness. It shows how much of the industrialisation of Catalonia and the 19th-century building boom in Barcelona were financed by the slave trade.

According to Gustau Nerín, an anthropologist specializing in Spain’s colonial history, the discussion has been building for a while. The sentiment was echoed by Beatriz Silva Gallardo, a Catalan socialist MP, who argues that Catalan nationalists can no longer attempt to claim the moral high ground by suggesting the region played a minimal role in Spain’s colonial and mercantile past.

The Call to Action

If Catalonia and Spain are to face up to this shameful chapter in their history, what would that entail? The immediate victims are long dead, and their descendants are in Cuba.