Seville Cathedral
I’ve always enjoyed admiring the architecture of churches, temples, and shrines around the world. When I learned that The Cathedral of Saint Mary of the See, aka Seville Cathedral, one of the largest churches in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was in Sevilla, Spain, very near Royal Alcazár, we immediately wanted to visit.
The world’s largest gothic cathedral, this former mosque was unmissable along Sevilla’s skyline. The interior was one of the most splendid I’ve seen, even more gorgeous than the various churches in Italy we visited. I can certainly see how pious people and non-believers alike would be awestruck seeing this, especially centuries ago when it was first built in the early 16th century.
Visiting such beautiful churches, particularly Spanish Catholic churches, is very bittersweet. On the one hand, I’d never wish to disparage anyone’s personal beliefs. The architecture and artistry are stunning, and I recognize how incredibly important Catholicism is to more than a billion believers worldwide. Still, the cruel, vicious history of Spanish conquistadors and colonizers can’t be ignored.
Notorious slaver and murderer Christopher Columbus is buried within Seville Cathedral (below), which I wasn’t aware of until we were there and read a sign. Visiting this church was spur of the moment, and being suddenly confronted with one of the most evil human beings to have ever lived shocked me into silent fury. I live in North America and always have. It’s mind-boggling to consider how vastly and irrevocably history was altered because Christopher Columbus, backed by the Spanish Catholic church, decided to colonize, exploit, and enslave the Americas. What was lost because of him and his financier’s actions can never be overstated.
It can never be undone.
As I stood before his massive gilded tomb that honors him as a hero, I thought of my great-great-grandmother, an Indigenous woman forced into a Catholic residential school. She was beaten so severely so often for refusing to give up her native language, nature worship, and dances that she never walked properly again. My family, like so many others, was shamed into silence for their connection to Native Americans, so much so that we don’t even know for sure which tribe she belonged to (though it was likely Odawa or Blackfoot).
I don’t even know where she’s buried.
I watched people flip off his final resting place, or pretend to spit at it while taking a selfie, and it made me wonder how many others felt as I did. How much culture, language, and artistry was forever destroyed because of that man and what he represents? How many others will never know where they came from, never speak their native language, or sing traditional songs that should’ve been kept alive? What would North America look like today if he hadn’t “sailed the ocean blue in 1492”? It’d likely have a different name if “explorers” hadn’t tried to erase the indigenous people’s way of life.
As we strolled through this gorgeous, historic church, I wondered where all this art and gold came from, much as I always do when I visit one. How much of it is only property of the church because it was stolen or given under duress? How much of it was dragged against its will across an ocean, kicking and screaming and begging for mercy like the slaves Columbus brought back to Europe?
How many people had their land, their freedom, their culture, their families, stories, and history stolen because Columbus and the other colonizers set into motion staggering cultural genocide? I can’t even wrap my head around that. It makes me physically ill to even try.
As much as I know that modern-day Spanish Catholics aren’t responsible for the destruction of North America, it’s impossible to separate everything that was drilled into my memory during middle school history classes about what those colonizers did from places like this. Slavery and sexual assaults of the worst kind were weaponized against Indigenous people and children. Blankets contaminated with smallpox were given to unsuspecting, shivering, and trusting natives. Beatings and murder and so many other things that I want to omit from my upbeat, joyful travel blog, but ignoring history doesn’t change the heinous truth.
If Columbus, backed by the Spanish Catholic Church, hadn’t initiated the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the systemic eradication of Native American Indigenous people, two of the worst crimes against humanity ever committed, how different would the world be? How much anguish, abuse, and degradation might our ancestors have been spared? It’s heartbreaking in the most literal sense to even consider the beautifully infinite possibilities stolen from not just the victims but the rest of the world. Such unfathomable cultural theft doesn’t even have a name in English, Spanish, German, or any other language I know.
Maybe my family would never have left Scotland and other parts of Europe to settle in North America, intermarrying with the native population because of shared beliefs and shared experiences of exploitation and abuse at the hands of colonizers. Maybe I wouldn’t be writing this blog at a desk in the forested mountains of New England, thinking about my grocery list in Spanish. We’ll never know what future was stolen from all of us.
So, if you visit Sevilla, I won’t tell you not to visit this church because it is an important historical landmark. I will ask you to educate yourself. Learn about the atrocities Christopher Columbus and his Spanish crews gleefully committed against indigenous populations he described in his own journals and letters as kind, trusting, and unexpectedly welcoming. They wanted to establish friendly relations and share their goods and knowledge. He responded by exploiting, murdering, and enslaving them.
If, after you learn about the unfathomable cruelty he unleashed upon the Americas and the Caribbean, you understandably can’t stomach visiting a place that doesn’t acknowledge the truth, consider instead donating the cost of admission (about $15 USD per person) to a charity that helps uplift native voices, support education efforts or helps preserve what’s left of indigenous culture. If you’re American, write your politicians and pressuring them to rename Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day. Here’s the template I used.
Every single corner of this church was overshadowed by Christopher Columbus’ malice and staggering brutality. It was to such a degree that I can’t remember anything about it aside from how infuriating it was to look up at the remains of the man who ravaged an entire hemisphere when countless of his victims were forced into unmarked graves. Had I known what was inside, I never would’ve gone in. I certainly wouldn’t have given them my money.
Columbus will forever be reviled as a serial murderer, but we can use our voices to ensure nothing like this ever happens again to anyone and that the truth of our history is not swept under the proverbial rug.
If you want to advance the rights of Native Americans and Indigenous communities (First Nation people in Canada), learn about whose land you currently live on, how North American governments continue to violate Indigenous land treaties, and issues facing native communities like food scarcity, disproportionate incarceration, and discrimination, and then vote for positive change. Write letters and hold our government officials accountable when they try to violate tribal treaties. Protest. Donate to charities to help fund the education of our Indigenous brothers and sisters.
This charity is my favorite. “The future of my nation begins with my education.”
Don’t stand silently by while history continues to repeat itself.
