The idea of América at the Club Palósfilo[1]
La idea de América en el Club Palósfilo
Ph.d. history.
Lecturer in history of America. Department of history.
Faculty of geography
and history.
University of
Santiago de Compostela. Spain.
Ph.d. history. Lecturer in history of America.
Department of history,geography and anthropology.
Faculty of
Humanities.
University of
Huelva. Spain.
Email: macías@uhu.es.
Resumen
El Club Palósfilo, que surgió a comienzos del siglo XX
en la localidad onubense de Palos de la Frontera, ejemplifica el rumbo que
durante las primeras décadas del siglo XX irían tomando algunas asociaciones
españolas nacidas al calor del regeneracionismo hispanoamericanista. Mediante
la exaltación de valores locales y a través de la forja de diferentes tipos de
redes, pretendió realizar su particular contribución a la idea simbólica de
América. Para ello, concibió proyectos que, a pesar de su escaso grado de
éxito, fueron interpretados por sus integrantes como el precedente de otros
que, reformulados, llegarían a ver la luz en el tránsito a las tesis de la
hispanidad más conservadora de la década de los veinte.
Palabras clave:
Club Palósfilo, hispanoamericanismo; redes; memoria; discurso
Founded in the early 20th
century in Palos de la Frontera (Huelva), the Club Palósfilo exemplifies the path taken by many Spanish
associations during the first decades of the 20th century, created in the heat
of Hispano–American regenerationism. By exalting local values and forging
diverse networks, it attempted to make its contribution to the symbolic idea of
America. With this aim, it began projects that, despite their relative lack of
success, were interpreted by its members as a precedent for others which, after
being reformulated, would come to fruition in the 1920s in the context of a
transition towards more conservative theories of Hispanism.
Keywords: Club Palósfilo; Hispano–Americanism; networks;
memory; discourse
Tipología: Artículo de investigación
Recibido: 18/02/2018
Evaluado: 04/03/2018
Aceptado: 12/04/2018
Disponible en línea: 30/08/2018
Traducido: 6/10/2018
Como
citar este artículo: Cagiao-Vila, P. y
Márquez-Macías, R. (2018). La idea de América en el Club Palósfilo. Jangwa Pana, 17 (3), XX-XX. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.21676/16574923.2488
Introduction
The Club Palósfilo, as its name indicates,
arose from a local initiative in Palos de la Frontera in Huelva. Practically
ignored by the academic community that from different perspectives has
investigated the Americanist associationism that emerged in Spain between the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries[2], despite its modesty with
respect to other entities, it represents a type of initiative from civil
society that is a useful example of the course that some of the variants of
peninsular Americanism would take. Taking into account its human and
ideological components bifurcated initially between Andalusia and America, and
later extended in other directions, the Club
Palósfilo attempted to make its contribution to the strengthening of
relations with the other side of the Atlantic. For this, it conceived projects
that, beyond their degree of success, constituted opportunities to generate
dynamics of action that exceeded the geographical framework of their place of
origin through the forging of different types of networks that, nevertheless,
tended towards the same objectives. On the one hand: those of a local character
that, apart from aspiring towards the development and modernization of their
own areas, also intended, through the exaltation of the “homeland”, to contribute
their values to the Fatherland with a capital ‘F’. On the other: those woven by
descendants of Spaniards who in their day had emigrated to America and who with
a return to their roots sought the reinforcement of their identity split
between Spain and the countries of that continent.
Our research, in
the framework of a wider piece, is based on primary sources, mostly
unpublished, from different Spanish repositories. Besides, the press,
especially that of local origin, which here acquires a unique value for
translating the environments and the feelings of the elites in which Club Palósfilo was conceived,
constitutes another of the documentary pillars on which this paper is
sustained.
The precedents
In another
previous contribution (Márquez and Cagiao, 2015) we already had the opportunity
to point out that precisely because of its geographical location, the origins
of the Club Palósfilo have their
roots in the festivities of the IV Centennial celebrated in Huelva in which the
town of Palos reached an unusual level of centrality. The idea promoted by the
historian Cesáreo Fernández Duro is that Martin Alonso Pinzón, a native of
Palos, was honored in the same terms as Columbus and that some of the events
that took place in its local territory allowed the Villa to experience in 1892
a brief but intense stellar moment. However, despite the conviction that those
commemorative acts would set a promising precedent for future economic
development, only nostalgic memories and a commemorative plaque on the wall of
the parish church remained. In fact, only two years after the celebrations, his
situation had reached such a point that, ironically, the press commented that
soon the descendants of the Pinzones, Yáñez and Bermúdez Quintero would be seen
with the same clothes and the same personal effects as their ancestors found in
the rooms of Guanahaní “(Gelí, 18/20
August 1894). A little later, at the beginning of the century, the Baedecker guide described the Villa as
“aujord'hui insignificant”, which undoubtedly revealed a bleak panorama. Far
away were the days of the IV Centenary in which it had been believed that the
historical value on which Palos counted due to its relationship with the
discovery of America would last over time and serve as an incentive for its progress.
Moreover, it would still be several years before, through the creation of the Club Palósfilo, the descendants of the
modest mayor of 1892 claimed to be the heirs of his aspirations to definitively
“make history”.
However, the
impulse for his actions originated abroad and came by the hand of the
Argentine, a son of Spaniards, Enrique Martínez Ituño, who must be considered
the real mentor of this peculiar Americanist association. As a consul of the
southern country accredited in Málaga, Martínez Ituño had received from the
Minister of Foreign Affairs in Argentina, the lawyer and intellectual
Estanislao Zeballos, the order to move to Palos in the summer of 1907 to
oversee a series of paintings that evoked the Columbian places to be sent to
Buenos Aires (El Heraldo Militar,
March 25, 1913). The request of Zeballos, in line with his always ambiguous
ideological evolution that at that led him to favor the return to Spanish
roots, was executed by the Argentine consul who, accompanied by the landscape
painter José Gartner, was able to observe the Villa’s state of decline. There,
he also learned about the activities carried out by the Sociedad Colombina (Márquez, 1988, 2011 and 2014, Núñez, 2014,
Segovia, 1992) since it was founded in 1880, limited to a pilgrimage to La Rábida on 3 August and which, after
the impasse suffered by this entity after the events of the war in Cuba, had
recently been recovered.
Martínez Ituño
designed a project that, if successful, in addition to contributing to the
promotion of Palos, also pursued the goal of intensifying relations with
America, an objective to which, because of his position, he had something to
contribute. He moved first in his own sphere by using his chain of contacts
made up of his colleagues from the consular corps accredited in Málaga, with
whom he also coincided in his nautical interests. That is how the idea of
holding a regatta organized by the Real
Club Mediterráneo of this city arose, which, emulating the first trip of
Columbus, on August 3, 1908, would leave from the port of Palos to the Canary
Islands. Palos’ town councilor transferred the initiative to the American
governments and nautical clubs and, from different entities, began to receive
adhesions from several countries.
The city council
of Havana immediately picked up the proposal and agreed to appoint three
councilors to take care of the matter, and although there were some dissensions
with the government of the nation, Cuba seemed willing to participate (El Progreso, March 12, 1908). On the
other hand, the nautical clubs of Rio de Janeiro also communicated their
intention to attend. The same was reported from Caracas by the journalist
Emilio Franklin on behalf of the nautical club he had just founded in the port
of La Guaira (La Provincia, May 22, 1908).
A couple of months previously, and as a correspondent for several Venezuelan
newspapers, Franklin had visited Palos and met with its mayor to discuss the
meeting on August 3. Quite possibly the interview was facilitated by the
friendship of his father–in–law, Francisco Antonio Rísquez Alfonso
– eminent Venezuelan doctor who arrived in Spain in 1901 to occupy the
consulate of his country in Madrid – with the Argentine consul in Málaga,
Enrique Martínez Ituño, who he would have known during the time in which the
former was dedicated to the foundation of the Anti–tuberculosis League of this city.
For different
reasons and despite the enthusiasm raised, the race was not held. However, that
August 3, 1908, at a meeting convened by the mayor of Palos, a memorandum was
drawn up of the 416th anniversary of the departure of the discovering fleet to
America, in which special mention was made to the Pinzones, which was signed by
the authorities of Palos, who were mostly related to he who had been the mayor
of the town in 1892, Juan Manuel Prieto. Also among the signatories was the
priest Manuel García Viejo, whose performance in the IV Centenary as a member
of the Huelva local executive had given much to talk about. In fact, he was
behind one of the many ideas that ultimately did not come to fruition. It was
the coronation of the Virgin of La Rábida
that, taken in procession in the stern of the replica of the Santa Maria, would be followed by the
bishops of Spain and America and a whole paraphernalia of royal marches,
religious hymns, and ‘God saves’. “This kind of aquatic pilgrimage”, as he
called it (Recuerdo del IV Centenario, October 12, 1892, p.22), was one of the
many occurrences of Manuel García Viejo that would only be the prolegomenon of
even more outlandish ones which would be raised later when he retired in Palos
and integrated the future Club Palósfilo,
whose origin was precisely in this meeting of August 3, 1908. Some of the
American consuls who had a more significant relationship with Enrique Martínez
Ituño also attended the meeting. Among others, Ricardo Gómez Carrillo who,
although he had been consul general of Guatemala in Barcelona since 1907, spent
long periods in that Andalusian city, and Isaac Arias Argáez, who had served
there as consul of Colombia since 1894. The “Chato Arias”, as he was nicknamed Rubén Darío, who met him when
they both embarked together in the Panamanian port of Colón to travel to Spain
as delegates of their respective countries at the events of the IV Centenary,
was already, since his collaboration in the Colombian Guide (Jorreto–Paniagua y
Martínez–Sanz, 1892) a fervent enthusiast of the promotion of relations between
Spain and America. This “delightful, witty Bogotano,
good teller of anecdotes and pasillo
singer”, as defined by the Nicaraguan poet in his autobiographical work (Darío,
2007, p.102), a doctor by profession, had a great friendship with his Argentine
counterpart in Málaga, with whom he would collaborate for many years. The
signature of Martínez Ituño, of course, also appeared in the Act of August 3, whose writing no doubt
was inspired, based, for its conclusion, on an adaptation of the last verse of
the refrain of the Argentine anthem: “to the people of Palos, Salud!”[3].
This meeting and
Acta, which evoked places and characters of historical significance in a local
key while appealing directly to the assembled countries, would be the seed of
the Club Palósfilo ideology. On the
other hand, in that August of 1908, another event occurred that contributed to
increasing the existing Americanist environment. Addressed in another previous
work (Cagiao and Márquez, 2012, pp. 379–382), the visit made to Palos by
Argentine journalist Ernesto Mario Barreda, among other consequences, resulted
in a broad article about his trip that would appear in the Porteño weekly Caras y Caretas where he alluded to
Palos as “the Jerusalem of the Americans”. This qualification also began with
this call: “I beg you to keep quiet for a moment because I am going to talk
about the port of Palos...!”, inspired, without doubt, by the poem by Campoamor
dedicated to Columbus and published several times on the occasion of the IV
Centenary. Barreda’s composition would be recited years later by children in
the schools of Palos every August 3. He also mentioned the Argentinean to his
countryman, the Consul Martinez Ituño, who he would never meet (Barreda, 1908),
with whom years later he would maintain an assiduous epistolary relationship
that would make Barreda a very active palósfilo
militant in Buenos Aires.
The places of memory
The initiatives
mentioned above served as a precedent for what would be the main project of the
Club Palósfilo emerging even before
its formal constitution that would not take place until March 15, 1909
coinciding, at the express wish of Enrique Martínez Ituño, with the
inauguration of the house – Villa
Argentina – which he built in Palos. It was now a question of tracing
an avenue from the Villa to La Rábida
that would be called Calle de las
Naciones y Colonias Americanas and would be flanked by pavilions built by
the different countries where their products and industries would be exhibited.
Its mayor officially presented it on October 12, 1908, but the idea sprang,
once again, from the Argentine Consul in Málaga Enrique Martínez Ituño[4].
Soon there were
some reactions against the project of the Calle de las Naciones, both from the
formal Americanism existing in Huelva – the Sociedad Colombina Onubense – which felt its traditional
role in these struggles, as well as from Madrid – the Unión Ibero-Americana – that for some time had nurtured a
similar idea (Aguilera, 1904). However, Manuel de Burgos y Mazo, Conservative
deputy for Huelva who greatly influenced Palos’ administration and who had also
signed the Act of August 3, moved to
the Courts where he delivered an enthusiastic plea for the initiative. Using a
grandiloquent oratory aimed at awakening patriotic feelings and affirming that
“the doors of glory have not been closed for the Hispanic race, nor ended its
influence in the course of the destinies of humanity”, he requested that the
Minister of State transmit exhort American governments to attend “with that
affection we all owe to our mother country and to those who were once our
children and who today must be beloved brothers [...] to march together in the
course of destinies that in History, Providence must still reserve for the
Hispanic race “(Diario de Huelva,
1908).
Among the first
adhesions that during the following months were received in Palos from the
American countries were those of Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Chile, the
Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Uruguay. The role of the accredited consuls in
Spain, particularly those who operated in Málaga or had direct contact with
Martínez Ituño, was decisive so that in some cases it was the presidents of the
republics themselves who directly took up the issue at hand. Porfirio Diaz,
Manuel Estrada Cabrera and Rafael Reyes, for example, established a direct
correspondence with the mayor of the town. In Argentina, the former Minister of
Foreign Affairs, Estanislao Zeballos, who had urged Enrique Martínez Ituño to
visit the Columbian places and provoked his enthusiasm for Palos, publicized
the project of the Calle de las Naciones,
daring even to compare it with the ostentatious Siegesallee in Berlin that had finished being built in 1901
(Zeballos, 1909). In this way the urban planning of the municipality of Palos
was associated with the initiative and to enhanced it. Later, this sketch,
along with a sketch of one of the paintings that Gartner would paint on
commission from Zeballos – not coincidentally titled Las Carabelas Santa María, Pinta y Niña – would become the
images that would permanently illustrate, as symbols of identity and of the
alleged union of the “Old and New” worlds, the Club Palosfilo documents.
It would not take
long for the Calle de las Naciones
project to see some competitors emerge. This subject, the object of a detailed
analysis on our part in another article mentioned previously (Cagiao and
Márquez, 2012), concerned the sending of a representative of the Sociedad Colombina Onubense to Buenos
Aires with the mission of spreading the importance of the historical places of
Huelva in the celebrations of the Argentine centennial of 1910. There it
alluded to the project of the American pavilions presenting it as an original
idea of this association. The most substantial variation of the original palósfila idea of the Calle de las Naciones that intended to
raise pavilions “along” the highway that united the town of Palos with the
monastery, resided in the fact that the Huelva organization located the
American constructions “around La Rábida”.
The issue of the location, which was not at all a minor issue, would regain
some prominence in the Assembly of Americanist Societies and Corporations that
was held in Huelva in 1912. And so again controversy would break out. Club Palósfilo defended the original
project of the pavilions “along” the road from Palos to La Rábida, as had been designed in 1908, while the Colombina would insist, as exhibited in
Buenos Aires, that they should be erected “around” the convent. As if that were
not enough, a businessman from the Villa, also a member of the Sociedad Colombina Onubense, who would
go much further by proposing that the pavilions be situated “making a square,
allowing the Monastery to preside over the ensemble of American Nations” (La Rábida, 1912, p.27). This proposal,
which underlined the role of Spain in an American framework, contributed to
increasing confusion in the face of such variations on the same subject.
However, despite the heated debate that arose around the issue, nothing
concrete was reached.
The fundamental
question that underlay the discrepancies between one and the other about the
potential location of the American pavilions must be interpreted in a double
sense. On the one hand, in the key of local struggle, and on the other, even more
critical, of the vindication of the historical importance of the places
indicated. So if for some the emblematic convent, symbolizing Spain,
constituted the fundamental element of the origin of America, for others the
important thing was to highlight not only the role of Palos but also that of
the American nations. Furthermore, the question of location was combined with
that of the cult of historical figures, forming a kind of civic religion. And
if an association made August 3, date of the departure of Columbus, the great
day of the Columbian festivities with a pilgrimage to La Rábida included, the other opted for March 15, date of the
return of La Pinta and La Niña, as the main commemorative
event with a “Pinzonian” note, worthy of being celebrated in the Villa. In
short, different choices of places of memory, but in both cases decidedly
focused in the same direction: the establishment of myths about the place, the
event, and the heroes through an interested re–reading of history that in all
cases emphasized an interpretation of America with a purely Spanish matrix.
The ritual of Club Palósfilo
The speech of colombinos and palósfilos, coincident in several aspects with that of the
Americanism of the state assembly of that moment, was sometimes quite similar.
In 1910, for example, during the festivities of August 3, the references to the
Argentine centenary were continuous and the oratory very similar. In the case
of the acts of the Sociedad Colombina,
the intervention of its president in La
Rábida was dedicated to the “alma inmortal de la Raza” with allusions to
Rodó, Altamira and Blasco Ibáñez, considered at that time to be true paradigms
of the Hispano–American twinning[5]. He also pointed to the
historic convent as “the Jerusalem of the American peoples” glossing the
expression used in his day by Ernesto Mario Barreda, although, in that case,
referring to the town of Palos. On his part, the deputy secretary of the Union Iberoamericana de Madrid, who
attended the event as a special guest, said in his dissertation that it had
been in La Rábida where “the
discovery and unity of the homeland by the Catholic Monarchs arose and
determined the expansion of our Race. “ This assertion was equivalent, as D.
Marcilhacy (2010, p.476) correctly points out, to linking the founding myths to
the American epic as an essential and revealing historical continuity of the
most exalted nationalism.
On its part, in
the much more modest palósfila
celebration that took place in the Villa, the unveiling of a tombstone was
carried out, which, in vindication of local prominence, read: “To the Pinzones,
co–discoverers with Columbus of the New World” (Vida Marítima, October 10, 1910). There were also speeches by the
parish priest García Viejo and the Argentine consul Martínez Ituño who, in his
speech, raising his own status to that of a “representative of the
grandchildren of Spain”, alluded to his countryman Belisario Roldán who a short
time before had delivered a successful conference in Madrid in favor of the
consolidation of relations between Spain and Argentina (Cagiao, 2011, pp.
27–29). The memory of Roldán's fiery words served Martínez Ituño to close his
speech, which he ended by proclaiming: “Let's say as did Pinzón: Avante, avante, avante” (La Justicia, 15 august 1910).
Under this motto,
turned into a real symbol for the palósfilos,
the Club was devoted to the task of securing old projects and lighting new ones
with authentic fanaticism. In all its documents, preceded by the section
EXHIBITION OF PALOS (sic.), as a sign that every palósfilo action gravitated in the same direction, were the verses
of J. Fernández Bremón so popular during the IV Centenary (“Génova si te envaneces/con la gloria de Colón/ considera sin pasión,
lo poco que lo mereces/ Su patria no puede ser/la que en la vida le
abandona/Colón, no nació en Saona/ nació en Palos de Moguer”) that, after
having accompanied the propaganda of the frustrated regattas, had become part
of the rhetorical battery that would characterize the Club in the key of “local
nationalism”. The same applied every time in a palósfilo act the Anthem to the Pinzones, composed by the priest
Manuel García Viejo, was sung as happened in the celebrated meeting on October
12, 1911, the date on which, furthermore, the children of the Villa schools
recited for the first time the poem “In the port of Palos, facing the sea”, the
work of the Argentine Ernesto Mario Barreda. On that same occasion a speech was
read extolling the figure of Rodrigo de Triana to which, without a solution of
continuity, exaltation was added to the Indians of Guanahaní. The address ended
in a rather more practical sense, demanding for the Villa “Means of communication
of modern life and the dredging of the blind port of Palos” (Vida Marítima, November 10, 1911),
another claim on which Club Palósfilo
would repeatedly insist.
All this would
constitute its ninth Memorandum,
which also included the latest accessions received from Eleodoro Lobos,
Argentine agriculture minister in the cabinet of Roque Sáenz Peña, who also
conveyed his congratulations; from Benito Villanueva, president of the Jockey Club of Buenos Aires; from Enrique Deschamps, consul general of the
Dominican Republic in Barcelona; from journalist and academic Daniel Arias
Argáez of Bogotá, brother of the Colombian consul in Málaga, for which reason
the document, like other later documents, would be reproduced in the Boletín de Historia y antigüedades de Bogotá
(1911, p.716–717). All these were added to those previously sent by other
personalities such as the Argentine writer of Spanish descent, Rafael Padilla
Arias, whose commitment to the initiatives promoted by his compatriot Martínez
Ituño could not be higher after having criticized a short time before the
Americans that, living on the peninsula, did nothing “to strengthen the bonds
of the land that saw their birth with the blessed and generous Spain” (Padilla,
1908, p.8). Also, the directors of several American and Spanish newspapers, to
which the Guatemalan consul in Barcelona Ricardo Gómez Carrillo had been
linked, who had transmitted the club's ideas to the president of his country,
Manuel Estrada Cabrera, had expressed support for the initiatives of the Club.
This complex
ritual used by the Club Palósfilo in
which literary compositions, historical figures and communications of adhesion
from Spain and America were mixed would be repeated systematically throughout
the following years, without a doubt with the intention of emphasizing the
variety of ties that its members were capable of multiplying. In the same
sense, Enrique Martínez Ituño acted when, unselfishly, he gave his residence in
Palos, Villa Argentina, for the final
installation of the Club. Barely a year after its inauguration, the mansion of
the Argentine consul began to become a must see for all those who shared their
ideas.
One of its most
frequent visitors would be the winemaker from Palos de Moguer Eustaquio
Jiménez, whose presence we emphasize not only because he was the brother of the
later Nobel Prize winner, but also because he was the nephew of Francisco
Jiménez, founding partner of the Sociedad
Colombina Onubense. We cannot say whether Eustaquio Jiménez received the
influence of his uncle in his passion for Columbian affairs or if, only, like
so many people from the area, as the poet of Moguer himself pointed out, he
became imbued with that spirit throughout his life (Jiménez, 2009, p 355–356).
Perhaps his enthusiasm in these conflicts, already manifested when signing the Act of August 3, had mainly to do with
questions of his business. The latter had led him to convince his brother Juan
Ramón to use all his influences in order to obtain in America representation
for his commercial firm or, better still, a consular charge of some country of
that continent. With the first idea, and on the recommendation of the poet,
Eustaquio Jiménez had addressed in June 1908 the writer from Cadiz, Eduardo de
Ory, recently appointed consul of Colombia in Zaragoza (Archivo Histórico Nacional de España, Sección Ministerio de Asuntos
Exteriores, PP. 1245/19886), to “requesting your attention, indicate to me
people or houses of all respectability in Colombia and Cuba that can dedicate
themselves to the sale of my wines and liquors” (Jiménez, 2006, p.194).
Regarding the
final consular position, Eustaquio had also written to the Uruguayan writer
José Enrique Rodó requesting his support to be appointed the representative of
Uruguay in Huelva, whose consulate was then vacant. As an argument, he added
that while some projects of a palósfilo
type were underway, such as “regattas and an Exhibition of those Republics to
strengthen our relations with them, it would be very convenient for that
important Government to have its consulate” (Fogelquist, 1950, p. 333). Again
Juan Ramón repeatedly insisted on this request (Jiménez, 2006, p.203). So he
would do the same with Rubén Darío, with whom the poet of Moguer maintained a
very close friendship, also requesting his influence for an eventual
appointment as consul of Nicaragua in Huelva[6]. It would be in 1913, perhaps
because of another of Juan Ramón's recommendations that in that year he had
also addressed the Mexican diplomat Francisco A. de Icaza (Jiménez, 2006, p 377)
because of his brother; when Eustaquio managed to be named consul of Colombia
in Huelva. It seems to us, however, that the intercessions of Juan Ramón in his
favor were more linked to the filial affection than to sharing any of “the
absurd enlargements of the cult of Columbus, a danger unknown to anyone who has
not lived in this region”, as the poet of Moguer himself once said in an
explicit reference to the Club Palósfilo
(Jiménez, 2008, p 1193).
The palósfilo language
Gradually, the
association was making decisions that would be decisive in its subsequent
ideological evolution, as can be detected in one of its documents before the
celebration of October 12, 1911. Something that would surpass purely semantic
issues when it opted for baptizing America as a Columbian Continent without abandoning the denominations of the West Indies and the New World that C.
Serrano had been using (1999, p.296) has perfectly defined the debates arising
around the name of America as a question of linguistic nationalism “that, like
the Guadiana, is reborn when least expected”. Furthermore, apart from on other
occasions, it had already constituted one of the points to be addressed by the
Venezuelan Julio Febres Cordero during the IX Congress of Americanists that
took place in La Rábida during the IV
Centenary, a mirror into which the palósfilos
so often gazed. In vindicating the change of name that “in all fairness
corresponds to the misnamed America of today” for other designations which it
recognized “will seem strange and archaic, and even platonic”, the intention
was “to remedy a forgetfulness and historical usurpation” that according to the
Club flagrantly violated a key element of Spain's own identity. That conviction
would become so obsessive that, in 1912, they addressed the Rio de la Plata
delegates at the XVIII International Congress of Americanists in London with
the intention of making the name of the Columbian
Continent effective before the scientific community “by passing a circular
to the governments, educational centers, press, navigation companies, etc. ...,
begging them to accept such designation [...] in their communications and
announcements” (Memorandum 14. Club Palósfilo).
What is certain is
that the palósfilos were adopting language
that was ever more prone towards the epic and that anticipated its later, more
obstinate discursive positions. Already in 1911, when the Club made its debut
on the state scene in the Americanist assembly in Barcelona, convened by the
brand new House of America, its representative finished his speech saying: “We
feel running through our veins the same blood, and we are children of this
chivalrous Spain, which, even in exchange for lagging behind in the progress of
its century, gave, generously, the blood that still beats on American soil” (El Heraldo Militar, February 14, 1912).
Such grandiloquent words permeated by a victim complex paradoxically
impregnated with glory, on the other hand, typical of the most classic Spanish
nationalism, undoubtedly inspired the following Memorandum published on February 1, 1912, which although it bore
the pompous title of La Caballería
Andante en el Descubrimiento de Indias, evoking a classic genre of
Castilian literature, recounted with more restraint than expected the arrival
of Columbus in America.
However, it would
be in the subsequent Memorandum,
which was also reproduced in the Boletín
de Historia y Antigüedades (1913) in Bogota, where, under the title Honoring Spain. The Praiseworthy Work of the
Club Palósfilo, which also included some padding by the parish priest
García Viejo, the language would acquire almost messianic tones when affirming
in relation to its militants that: “History presents us risen from the dead,
extraordinary men, beings of immeasurable intellective height, which they have
decisively contributed to the impulsive and accelerating movement of universal
progress” (Memorandum 13. Club Palósfilo,
March 1, 1912). With these words, the Memorandum
emphasized the importance of the projects proposed until then, to which would
soon be added that which the Club would commit itself to with renewed
enthusiasm at the beginning of July 1912, immediately after the Assembly of
Huelva and the harsh discussion that took place regarding the Calle de las Naciones. Now it intended
to found a Central Nautical School destined for Spanish students or “of the
republics that today compose the Colombian Continent”, which would be directed
by a Spanish vice admiral and frigate captains of the “nations of the Indies”,
as explained in the entity’s Memorandum
17. In addition to the insistence on the nomenclature, it was added that
the academic classes would start on October 12 and conclude on August 3 when
practice for the Palos–Canarias regattas would begin, an old project that the Palósfilo obstinately persisted in
recovering.
Nevertheless, in
1912 there were no races. So to commemorate 420 years since the Columbian
departure, the Club had to limit itself once again to a mass followed by a
civic procession enlivened by the Himno a
los Pinzones, composed by García Viejo, sung by the children of Palos. That 3rd of August
was remembered in a text of the Club preceded by verses of the ineffable parish
priest dedicated to the Villa (“Si
ingrata la patria/ la llega a olvidar/ de América tu sitio /potente tendrás/ y
tu nombre augusto /siempre aclamará /de los altos Andes /en la inmensidad”).
That verse alluded to the abandonment into which “the Pinzon homeland” had
fallen, and whose salvation, like that of the Spanish soul, could only come
from the other side of the Atlantic. Moreover, after pointing out the proposed
dredging of the port, to which the Club was now committed, all the previous palósfilas initiatives were listed,
which would be added later to replace the name Palos de la Frontera with that
of Palos de Moguer – “As it was called in the times of Columbus” (La Correspondencia de España, March 18,
1913) – in a new allusion to the glorious epochs of the nation. The
writing ended with the emphatic Pinzonian
motto previously alluded (avante, avante,
avante...!) that the Club had coined as an element of identification.
This was
undoubtedly the favorite expression of Martínez Ituño – who recognized
himself as “a regular reader of all the works that have fallen into my hands
about the intrepid navigators”[7] – and which best
translated the tenacity which the palósfilos
liked to show off. However, these were not the only readings that fed the
Club's discourse. In another act held in Málaga on March 15, 1913, which would
lead to a new Memorandum entitled Pro Palos, the Argentine consul made use
again of the scholarly eclecticism of which he was so fond. Thus, also
demonstrating that as an educated person he was up to date with the most recent
literature, he first reproduced the lyrical composition “El Tiempo Habla” by the poet Juan J. Llovet, interspersing with it
his digressions about the Villa interlarded with the historical references of
the texts of Amador de Los Ríos (Semanario
Pintoresco Español, 18 August 1849) that he had been using since 1908.
Also, without interruption, he put the icing on the cake with to words to the Himno a Los Pinzones that the palósfilos systematically resorted to
regardless of the occasion (Memorandum 20,
1913)[8].
In another of his
texts that began with a fragment of the poem Marina by Rubén Darío – recognized as a palósfilo in 1914 (La
Provincia, June 5, 1920), he later glossed the prayer sung when the ships
were launched. Eugenio de Salazar had included that prayer in the sixteenth
century in one of his works[9]. Afterwards,
Martínez Ituño quoted the verses of Campoamor and Ernesto Mario Barreda
dedicated to Palos (El Heraldo Militar,
August 12, 1913). On the occasion of October 12 of that year, in another
contribution by his authorship, introduced by an allusion to the cry of Rodrigo
de Triana, it was the turn of his admired Cesáreo Fernández Duro and the
distich that he was popularly remembered for (“España halló por Colón / Nuevo Mundo con Pinzón”). It ended with
the verses of F. Escudero and Peroso (“Dichoso
siglo/Siglo de gigantes/que abrió COLÓN/y cerró CERVANTES”)[10] that synthesize a
more than frequent association in the bases of the most topical Spanish
nationalism of that time. With such a literary battery, in which Castilian
tradition, Andalusian and American lyricism were combined, and the connotations
contained therein, the Argentine re–alluded to the existing ingratitude towards
the port of Palos as the cradle of America. Complaints that, in fact, were
exposed through a statement that the Club
Pálosfilo sent to the Real Academia
de la Historia asking it “to publish information that does justice to that
historic town” (Real Academia de la
Historia, File 6, “Antigüedades:
Huelva. (CAHU / 9/7957, 17 (1 and 3)) Of another tenor, less intellectual
but no less rhetorical, would be the public manifestations of other distinguished
palósfilos. Thus, when the Venezuelan
doctor residing in Málaga, Jesús R. Rísquez, communicated his adhesion to the
Club, evoking the expression that his father, Francisco A. Rísquez
– consul general of Venezuela in Madrid, Spain – had used for his
support of the project of the Calle de
las Naciones (“Villa de Palos, Madre
y Nodriza de un mundo”), would add vehemently that “Tu hora no ha sonado aún. Ten fe! (La Provincia, May 2, 1914).
The palósfila expansion
The growth of
supporters to the Club, which we have not described in exhaustive detail, would
lead to the immediate creation of subsidiaries in different parts of the
Spanish geography and even outside its borders. As early as 1913, one of his
most fervent militants, addressing the Argentine consul as a “patriot friend”,
said that “many palósfilos, new
apostles [...] must come out to remember the glorious dates of August 3, 12
October and March 15” (La Provincia,
April 2, 1913). Certainly, it was not very misguided because on March 15 of that
same year, under the leadership of the Catalan jurist Baltasar Puig de Bacardi,
who had represented the Club in the Assembly of Barcelona, the palósfilos of the City of Counts met in
order to create a subsidiary (Vida
Marítima, 20 August 1913). Martínez Ituño congratulated him in a letter
addressed to Puig de Bacardi, in which he announced that, following the Catalan
initiative, the Málaga–born palósfilos
had also decided to convene every August 3, October 12 and March 15. And not
without sarcasm, and in clear allusion to the Sociedad Colombina Onubense, he added that with this they would
imitate “the Rabbi–Philae who, very noble and generously, also work for that
Convent of lasting remembrance”[11].
That the palósfilos of Málaga had been taking
their initiatives to reinforce the Club's projects was a fact. In their ranks
there was for example the wealthy Italo–Chilean resident in Málaga Ricardo
Daneri, who had made his fortune in Valparaiso where, through his Chilean
friendships in the world of politics, he tried to promote the Andean country's
participation in the project of the Calle
de las Naciones (La Provincia,
April 16, 1913). In 1914, on the occasion of the commemoration of October 12,
the palósfilos of Málaga, whose alma mater was the Valladolid doctor
returned from Argentina, Anselmo Ruíz Gutiérrez, held a banquet to proceed also
in its formal constitution. After the session, preceded by a band singing the Buenos Aires March, they moved to the
home of the doctor mentioned above, Villa
Colón, which would operate for the Málaga–based palósfilos as Villa Argentina
for the Huelva members. The first Memorandum
of the new Club Palósfilo of Málaga
– born to “promote and enhance the history of Spain concerning the
discovery of America” (Reglamento del
Club Palósfico Malagueño, 1914) prepared in imitation of those of the
pioneer entity, basically reproduced the speeches given on the 12th. The one by
Anselmo Ruiz, although it also included references to the Pinzones – he was a palósfilo
after all – was mainly about Columbus, who he came to equate with
Saint John the Baptist “as a forerunner
of Christ in the New World and an outstanding Apostle of Christianity” (La Unión Mercantil, October 13, 1914).
On the other hand, Martínez Ituño introduced religious references in a
different tone, stating that “just as the Hebrews have the Easter of the
“Cabaña” in which they live eight days a year remembering the feats of their
ancestors, the palósfilos also intend
to have our cabañas between Palos and La
Rábida, where we want to spend the glorious dates of the discovery [...] to
duly honor the History of Spain”, as was reproduced in the pages of El Diario Malagueño. To this idea, a
little later, in a letter addressed to the president of the special commission
of the general meeting of the Instituto
Iberoamericano de Derecho Comparado de Madrid, he would add his desire that
the longed–for Calle de las Naciones de
las Indias Occidentales, would be the “social seat where the “cordial
intelligence” between the Motherland and the nations that form today the
continent discovered by the Spaniards in 1492 would be constituted” (La Provincia, November 7, 1914).
Another important
novelty in 1914 was that represented by another adhesion that, although there
was nothing unusual in the surname surname, stood out because it came from a
woman, who would be the first but not the last. Well instructed by her father,
Gloria Martínez Ituño, who took the two surnames of the consul of Málaga, at
only thirteen years old, made public her sympathy towards the ideals of the
Club (La Provincia, June 25, 1914).
However, even more surprising, due to its origin and what it would later mean
in the trajectory of the association, would be that of the Asturian teacher in La Escuela Normal de La Habana, Paulina
Ciaño, who from Cuba had moved to the United States in November 1914. A fervent
devotee of Columbus, which a year later would lead her to write a booklet about
his figure (Columbus and his time), a
few days after her arrival she contacted the American society called the Knights of Columbus that at a certain
point had made arrangements to buy the convent of La Rábida. Ciaño herself, knowing that such action would be
impossible, and knowledgeable about the project of the Calle de las Naciones – whose existence she probably knew
through her compatriot and relative Nicolás Rivero, director of the
conservative Diario de la Marina de La Habana – would have advised them to
build a typical building in the Columbian places. She would inform Club Palósfilo of all this from New
York.
So it would be in
relation to this communication from Paulina Ciaño that in July 1915 one of the
great novelties for the association would take place. The anticipated
commemoration of the 423rd anniversary of the departure of the discovering
flotilla in Villa Argentina gave rise
to Memorandum 36, the novelty of which can be seen in the heading that
accompanied it (El Popular, Diario
Republicano, July 15, 1915). Under the heading Hijas de Isabel, its content narrated the act in which,
undoubtedly, the protagonists were women. Not only because it was an Argentine
who recited the eternal poems of her countryman Ernesto Mario Barreda, but also
because she had the assistance, on behalf of her recently deceased uncle,
Ricardo T. Acres, Palósfilo treasurer
in Málaga and member of the Knights of
Columbus, of Victoria Bado Acres, who belonged to the genuine Daughters of
Isabella that had been founded in the United States in 1897 as a branch of the
Knights. The Memorandum mentioned
above included a proposal for a similar formation in Spain, presided over
honorably by the queen, which, coinciding with the palósfilos postulates, would dedicate itself to supporting the
former’s aspirations. The ideological tinge of this feminine entity was evident
in an editorial comment that appeared a little later that left no doubt about
its conservative and ultra–Catholic nature:
The spiritual daughters of
Isabella the Catholic choose the name of that queen because they see in her the
heroine who in Granada made Christianity triumph, overthrowing the Mohammedan
hordes [...] and, for that reason they are now trying to initiate a movement of
opinion, contributing to the tremendous Spanish–American alliance (Vida Marítima, September 10, 1915).
The signatories
included, among others, Victoria Bado for the Daughters of Isabella from the
United States, the Argentinean Benita Campos, director of the magazine Güemes
de Salta; Gloria Martínez Ituño, and, of course, also Paulina Ciaño who
continued to advocate promoting the North American presence on the projected Calle de las Naciones through a pavilion
that eventually, according to her own statements, could even be decorated by
Sorolla himself, just as he was doing for the Hispanic Society of America in New York. In the extensive interview
she gave to the New York Tribune the
following month, she became the representative of the Palosfilo in the United States and, in fact, a little later,
another member of the Club would affirm that Ciaño and her countrywoman Eva Canel
were at that time giving “conferences with cinematographic projections in the
main capitals of the Columbian Continent, in favor of the palósfilos ideals”. Of course, what was true was that both were
followers of the thesis that at that time defended the Spanish origin
– and more particularly Galician – of Christopher Columbus, a theory
that, developed by the historian Celso García de la Riega, had penetrated
particularly among the Spanish collectives of America, especially those of the
Rio de la Plata and Cuba[12].
Since that summer
of 1915, Villa Argentina, just as “an
oasis in the middle of the desert”, according to the palósfilo saying, would also serve as a base for the new Hijas de
Isabel. Also, in that framework the most important act of that year would be
carried out on October 12. Under the presidency of the mayor and the staff of
the Club, Memorandum 41 was read,
authored by Martínez Ituño, whose singularity was that of “meeting the palósfilos and Las Hijas de Isabel” to
communicate “to the world that Race Day has been created”. Independently of the
inaugural date of its commemoration in other countries and even in Spain itself
under that denomination, discussed by different authors, the Argentine poet
Ernesto Mario Barreda would come to affirm in an article published in La Nación de Buenos Aires in 1935,
glossed over less than by the most ultramontane champion of Spanishness,
Zacarías de Vizcarra, who was precisely the palósfilo antecedent of 1915 who
settled in Argentina so that on October 12, 1917, it was declared a national
holiday after the official sanction of the Decree of 4 October previous,
attending to a request of the Asociación Patriótica Española. So, to all this he
would add that, although this denomination was contested at different times and
in different places, “the neighbors of Palos preferred to call it Día de la Raza ... They would know why”
(Barreda, 1947).
Moreover,
undoubtedly they knew it because that act, considered by the palósfilos to be a real milestone in its
history, would end with the intervention of a new actor, Gastón Mittenhoff, who
would take some of the palósfilos postulates
to their logical extreme. This mercantile professor, a native of the Huelva
town of Alosno, but resident in Seville, had made his public debut a year
before with an article titled “Palos
Inmortal” written with a grand style full of religious connotations that
would be just the appetizer of his subsequent statements. From the end of 1915,
he would greatly encourage the activity of the Club by introducing ideological
components in full consonance with those expressed by the ultra–Catholic Hijas de Isabel. This tuning would be
demonstrated during a Hispanic–American evening at the Ateneo de Sevilla, when Mittenhoff, before representatives of the palósfilos clubs of Palos, Málaga, and
Granada, previewed some chapters of his book Palos ante el mundo civilizado, that then was in press, in which he
did not disguise increasingly conservative ideals based on the sacrosanct
concepts of “race and tradition” as consubstantial elements of the union of
Spain and America (Mittenhoff, 1916). This act would become the prelude to the
formal constitution of another branch, the Club
Palósfilo Sevillano, led by the vehement alosnero. On its part, in 1916,
the subsidiaries of the Hijas de Isabel, whose members were closely linked by
ties of kinship with the most distinguished palósfilos,
had spread throughout the Andalusian geography and even outside it and Spain.
The truth is that
the new female arm of the Club would be even more active, and more rhetorical,
if that were possible, than their male colleagues. Never forgetting that the
roots of the movement were in the Casa Argentina founded by Martínez
Ituño, to which the Hijas de Isabel, whose later career, such as that of the Club Palósfilo, will occupy other pages,
defined as a “guardian of the Hispanic traditions and mecca where the
fraternity between the American nations and Spain takes place”, anticipating
the most old–fashioned style of the new Hispanism that would come to the fore
in the twenties and in which the use of America as a symbolic ingredient would
constitute to an even greater extent a fundamental and even necessary element
of Spanish nationalism.
Conclusions
When asked to what
extent and in what way the Club Palósfilo
contributed to recreate the idea of America, the first thing that must be
pointed out is that practically none of its projects came to be translated into
reality. Of course, the name of America was not changed, the proposed Nautical
School was not created and, still to this day, the port of Palos has not been
dredged. Neither the maritime regattas that would emulate a stage of the first
Columbian voyage nor the spectacular scenography, in any of its variants, that
were planned around the disputed Calle de
las Naciones managed to see the
light during the life of the Club. However, for its members, something remained
of all this. Because as its mentor, Enrique Martínez Ituño, said in 1913,
between disappointed and optimistic, “in the years that we have been working,
we have not achieved great success in our projects [...] but the glory is not
in the successes but in the initiatives” (La Provincia, February 17, 1913). And
perhaps he was not wrong, because when in 1926 the successful Plus Ultra flight
set out from Palos, the palósfilos may
well have been reminded of their frustrated regattas. The statement of commander Ramón
Franco himself when he said that “hemos
querido rendir a Palos este homenaje porque queremos que las energías de Colón
nos acompañen [...]. Cuando aterricemos en la Argentina, puesto el pensamiento
en Palos, diremos: ¡Ya hemos vencido!” (El Defensor de Córdoba,
January 22, 1926), was also accompanied by the scenography in which the members
of the Club participated when watching the hydroplane flying the interlaced
flags of Spain and Argentina with an old chrome at the bottom that reproduced
the arrival of Columbus at the Castilian court after his first trip. So, again
the idea of America, with all its symbolic force, was presented according to
the palósfila liturgy. On the other
hand, and in this case with certain signs of reality, as stated in the document
of Las Hijas de Isabel entitled “Palos – Nuevo
Mundo – Sevilla” and reiterated by the mayor himself in 1923, one
could also ask to what extent, in the Ibero–American Exposition of Seville
that, after many avatars, took place in 1929, there did not underlie, for the
members of the Club, the palósfila
intellectual authorship that had anticipated the idea as early as 1908 with
their proposal of the Calle de las
Naciones[13]. Both events took place, besides, during
the primorriverista dictatorship, a
moment in which the reformist Hispano–Americanism that had characterized the
first decades of the century gave way to the theses of Hispanidad dominated by the most conservative right, whose ranks
would definitively become part of the Club
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Militar, Madrid, España. p. 2.
Martínez–Ituño, E. (12 de agosto
de 1913). Recordando a Colón. El Heraldo
Militar, Madrid, España. p. 2.
Martínez–Ituño, E. (7
de noviembre de 1914). Los palósfilos.
La Provincia, Huelva, España. p. 1
Moreno, V. (2 de abril de 1913). Los palósfilos.
La Provincia, Huelva, España p. 1.
Recuerdo del IV
Centenario. (1892). El 12 de Octubre, Huelva, España. p. 22.
Reglamento del Club Palósfilo Malagueño. (1914), Málaga, Escuela Tip.
Salesiana San Bartolomé.
Rízquez, J. (2 de
mayo de 1914). Los palósfilos. Una
carta. La Provincia, Huelva, España.
p. 3.
La Correspondecia de España. 18 marzo 1913
[1] Este trabajo ha
sido realizado en el marco del Proyecto HAR2014-59250 Donde la política no
alcanza: el reto de diplomáticos, cónsules y agentes culturales en la
renovación de las relaciones entre España e Iberoamérica, 1880-1939, financiado por el Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España).
[2] Although D.
Marcilhacy (2010) mentions it in some way in his excellent research on Race, he
does not give it much attention when dealing with the different formulations
that were elaborated around that concept at the time. On the other hand, we
believe that when M. Rodríguez (2004) takes on one of the ramifications of the
Club, he does not know the context in which its appearance occurred, as well as
the circumstances of its evolution. Something similar happens in certain
contributions from Andalusian Palósfilo historiography, which has provided only
occasional and somewhat inaccurate allusions (Gómez and Gozálvez, 1983, p.
210).
[3] The original
printed form of the said act is in the Archivo Narciso Díaz de Escovar de
Málaga.
[4] In an article on
the subject published at that time, he highlighted the suggestion of El Diario
Español de Buenos Aires, brought before the Congress of his country by the
controversial Argentine deputy Manuel Carlés. Such suggestion was that on
October 12 it would be declared a public holiday with the purpose of
“commemorating the most immaculate glorious memory of the triumph of the
Spanish race in the centuries of human existence”. In El Popular. Diario
Republicano, Málaga, October 25, 1908.
[5] Ariel by Rodó represented one of the discursive props
of the currents that invoked the spiritual reconciliation of Spain with America
in full coincidence with Spanish regenerationism on its Spanish–American side,
one of whose main exponents would be Rafael Altamira, who had recently made a
long journey across the American continent to extend this preaching. For his
part, Blasco Ibáñez had been invited to Argentina to attend a series of
conferences organized in Buenos Aires on the eve of the Centennial, receiving
multiple tributes, but also criticism from other Spanish intellectuals (Cagiao,
2015).
[6] Letter from Rubén
Darío to Eustaquio Jiménez dated in Madrid on December 3, 1908. Biblioteca
Cervantes Virtual. http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/nd/ark:/59851/bmc3x9p5
[7] We know that it was
not a gratuitous assertion. A copy
of the book by Cesáreo Fernández Duro, Colón
y Pinzón. Informe relativo a los pormenores del descubrimiento del nuevo mundo
presentado a la Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid 1883), was part of the
library that Martínez Ituño owned in his home in Palos. His signature
attests to this on the cover and the different seals scattered throughout its
interior, both that of “Villa Argentina. Palos de Moguer” as that of “Consulado
Argentino. Málaga”. The mention in the text of “Diego Prieto, mayor of this
town of Palos” appears underlined and beside it, written, “ancestor of the
current Prieto de Palos”, as we know, was part of the main staff of Club
Palósfilo. Also, the famous phrase “Adelante,
adelante”, attributed to the sailor from Palos, is underlined.
[8] Memorandum 20. Club Palósfilo. Biblioteca América de la Universidad de
Santiago de Compostela. We believe that the date printed in this document is
erroneous since it contains the year of 1918 instead of 1913.
[9] Cartas De Eugenio de Salazar, vecino y
natural de Madrid, escritas a muy particulares amigos suyos, Madrid, Imp. De Rivadeneyra, 1866, pp.36–37.
Edited by the Sociedad de Bibliófilos Españoles.
[10] Escenas Contemporáneas. Revista política,
literaria y de ciencias, artes, comercio, agricultura y teatro, T.I, Madrid, 1863, p. 154.
[11] Precisely on this
place the colombinos venerated, a
little later the newspaper La Provincia would publish on its cover a lengthy
article by the Colombian diplomat Ignacio Gutiérrez Ponce reproducing another
from the Hispania magazine, a publication that had been published in London at
the hands of his countryman, the writer and also diplomat, Santiago Pérez de
Triana. The text by Gutiérrez Ponce entitled “Una Hora en La Rábida”, the
result of a trip to Spain in 1887, would be included in 1926 in his work
Reminicencias de la vida diplomática, London: The Whitefriars Press, Ltd.,
London and Tonbridge, pp. 97–102.
[12] Paulina Ciaño was
able to learn about this thesis through the writings of Canel herself –resident
intermittently in Havana, Buenos Aires and the United States– or of the
Galician publicist based in Cuba, Constantino Horta and Pardo, who in 1912 had
published a pamphlet entitled The True Birthplace of Christopher Columbus,
published in New York.
[13] In 1909 a palósfila commission headed by the
consul Martínez Ituño had requested that the city council of Seville support
the installation of the pavilions that Palos projected. Three months later “the
news was received that the rich city council of the abovementioned capital of
Seville had appropriated the project of our Exhibition by arranging for it to
be established in Tablada”. (Revista
La Rábida, November 31, 1923