No. 32 - Its Gran Canaria Magazine

8
GET TO KNOW GRAN CANARIA I CONOCE GRAN CANARIA EDICIÓN 32
The Mexican hat of Néstor and Columbus
By Míchel Jorge Millares
The Columbus Museum in Las Palmas de Gran
Canaria celebrates the Day of the Dead and All
Saints' Day with the installation of a decorative
structure by the Mexican artist Betsabeé Romero,
who has transformed the historic city centre
building with a colourful design in homage
to missing migrants. These are the anonymous
dead who fail to complete the most dramatic
journey on the planet, thousands of whom are
swept away into the ocean every year.
The Columbus Museum is the American history
centre that commemorates Christopher Columbus'
stop off on the island on his first Atlantic
crossing. This is why, for more than a decade, it
has been celebrating the Day of the Dead, together
with other activities that make up the
annual calendar and which are linked to different
cultural aspects of Latin America. This year,
Romero takes up the Mexican tradition with this
installation, which she connects with the European
tradition, to commemorate All Saints' Day and
to celebrate life, in a proposal that pays tribute to
lost migrants due to a phenomenon that especially
affects border regions such as Mexico and
the Canary Islands.
Her creation, entitled "Stairway to Heaven. Migrating
and being migrated through History", was
unveiled this month and will occupy the two main
façades of the building (those of the Plaza del Pilar
Nuevo and the Plaza de los Álamos), as well as
the main courtyard (University), and the El Pozo
courtyard, where the Altar of the Dead is located.
Precisely, in this setting of the building, I was able
to glimpse one of the elements of the façade in
the small square, crowned by a coat of arms made
in stone, whose initial design was by artist Santiago
Santana, under the supervision of the folklorist
and antiquarian Néstor Álamo. The latter had a
very sarcastic character, and was responsible for
famous descriptions of the island society in general,
as well as of the travellers who arrived on the
island, very much in keeping with the typical humour
of the islanders.
It may have been his sense of humour that determined
the final result of the above-mentioned
coat of arms. I don't know whether it was deliberately
intended, as a nod to the most genuine
attire of mariachi music, or as an example of
his more mocking personality, as the top of the
shield is a figure in the shape of a hat, just where
the helmet or the figure of a plant or an animal
is usually located, in the spot where the element
technically known as a 'burlete' or draft excluder
is located.
A coat of arms has all its parts and pieces perfectly
delimited and with their meanings, both in terms
of shapes, colours, positioning and orientation.
For this reason, the fields of coats of arms usually
feature the helmet, lambrequin, strip, crown
and crest. For this reason, experts are particularly
struck by the top of this coat of arms, as its shape
is reminiscent of the wide brim of a Mexican hat
topped with four ribbons without the adornments
or trimmings.
Another possibility is that it is a model of a cardinal's
coat of arms, which features a hood with the
tassels arranged on both sides, although in this
case there are not 15 as established by the canons,
and neither does it include the cardinal's crosier
(a kind of staff).
Be that as it may, these two covers of the Columbus
Museum, created in 1961, are a fundamental
part of a vision that has remained for posterity, for
a group of buildings that was reconstructed and
'decorated' to illustrate the presence of the illustrious
sailor and his caravels in Gran Canaria, on
his first voyage, the 'Discovery Voyage', as well as
on the last and most ruinous of his voyages.