April is the Eggiest Month, says Griselda Heppel
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| Giant egg in centre of a roundabout. San Antonio, Ibiza. |
Now eggs are not something San Antonio is particularly known for. Fish, yes. Sailing boats. A bristling of unattractive high rise concrete hotels and apartments that sprung up in the 1960s, transforming what had been a modest fishing village with a beautiful natural harbour into a popular package holiday spot at the, er, cheaper end of the range.
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| Bristling with hotels: San Antonio Ibiza Skyline By A.Savin - Own work, FAL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=141078063 |
Which itself led to all those deliciously shocking Ibiza-uncovered-style
documentaries following hapless lobster-pink young people from bar to bar until
they collapse, sozzled, on the beach at 8 am.
So back to the egg. What inspired the municipal
authorities, after brightening up the seafront with a series of delightful
fountains, to commission this unusual sculpture? I doubt more than a handful of
the thousands of tourists driving round it every year has any idea… unless
they were given the same reading book as I was in my German primary school
(erm, rather a long time ago now, so that reduces the number even more).
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| Stately Spanish Galleon sailing through the Eggthmus (with apologies to John Masefield's Cargoes). |
Look carefully at the egg and you’ll notice a wrought-iron ship sailing through it. A Spanish galleon to be precise. And that’s the clue. This isn’t just any old giant egg in the middle of a roundabout. This is Columbus’s egg. A small plaque planted in the grass of the children’s playground next to the roundabout records the sculpture going up in 1993, to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America*.
No further explanation is given. Presumably
every Spanish school child – and many in other European countries, like Germany – is taught the story of
Columbus’s egg. Maybe it’s just us English who aren’t. Anyway, to put you out of your misery, here
it is:
On 15th March, 1493, Christopher Columbus arrived back in Spain from his American voyage, to great acclaim. At a dinner given in his honour in Barcelona by Cardinal Mendoza, a number of high-ranking guests, jealous of Columbus’s success, played down his achievement. After all, what was so great about it? The Genoese upstart just sailed a long way away until he found land. Any of them could have done that. Not exactly earth-shattering.
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| Clever... but not what Columbus meant. Photo by Omran Jamal: https://www.pexels.com/photo/ egg-on-gray-stainless-steel- forks-17609/ |
So there you have it. Apocryphal no doubt, but
I love how the story blends Columbus’s determination and imagination with our
all too human tendency to denigrate the achievements of others, just because
they gained them and we didn’t.
I also love the sheer literalness of San Antonio’s commemoration. My first thought, reading the plaque, was that they’d made a mistake; the statue should have been erected in 1992 to make it the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s 1492 arrival in America.
But no. This is Columbus’s egg, remember? It celebrates the splendid occasion a year later when he had the last word at Cardinal Mendoza’s dinner.
Respect.
Happy Easter!
*as the first European
Comments
A Happy Easter to you too1