The Infamy, Catalan Involvement in Colonial Slavery

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In recent years, historians from around the country have started to take an interest in their colonial past and their role in the slave trade, uncovering a hidden past that is much more significant than imagined. At the same time, interest in the subject has surged among the general public.

The Maritime Museum of Barcelona has joined this process, calling on contemporary Catalan society, now much more diverse and complex than in the colonial era, to engage in re-examining the past. And in doing so, it directly confronts the traces left by that infamous legacy on today’s society, in the form of racism and exploitation of the migrant population. 

The exhibition The Infamy explores Catalan participation in the transatlantic trade of captive people for slavery and the extent to which Catalan merchants, especially in Cuba and Puerto Rico, acquired slave labor. How much of that capital was repatriated to Catalonia and to what extent did profits from the slave trade contribute to the country’s development in the 19th century? This exhibition uncovers a little known and highly disconcerting episode in the history of Catalunya in a effort to raise awareness of the darkest episodes of history, and try to ensure they are never repeated. 

For more events check our online events calendar.