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Spain locates Christopher Columbus’ first tomb

Researchers said Thursday they have located the first tomb of Christopher Columbus, the 15th century navigator who began European incursions into the Americas, in the central Spanish city of Valladolid.

Published: 8 April 2022 08:51 CEST
Spain locates Christopher Columbus' first tomb
The Christopher Colombus monument in Barcelona. Historians and archeologists have since recreated in 3D the dimensions the chapel in Valladolid that first housed the remains of Columbus. (Photo by Josep LAGO / AFP)

It has long been known that Columbus was buried in Valladolid after his death there in 1506 but the exact location of his tomb was not known until now.

Three years later his remains were taken to his family mausoleum in the southern city of Seville, and were moved several more times over the following centuries before returning to Seville in 1898.

Using DNA samples from bone slivers taken from the Seville tomb, a forensics team led by the University of Granada confirmed in 2005 that the remains kept there did in fact belong to Columbus.

Researchers have now determined that he was first buried in the San Francisco convent in Valladolid which no longer exists, Spain’s Naval Museum, which helped coordinate the study, said in statement.

The site is currently a commercial zone near the spacious Plaza Mayor, a broad, pedestrianised expanse surrounded by arcaded buildings painted red.

Columbus’ first resting place is close to Valladolid’s Plaza Mayor, researchers say. Photo: Fernando Santander/Unsplash

This conclusion follows “a detailed historical investigation, confirmed by ground-penetrating radars,” the statement added.

Researchers took samples of elements from the Seville burial sport — lead, brick, golden threads — and found they matched with the location of the spot in Valladolid which was excavated, it added.

Historians and archeologists have since recreated in 3D the dimensions the chapel in Valladolid that housed the remains of Columbus.

In 1544 his remains were moved from Seville to Santo Domingo, which is the capital of the Dominican Republic, in accordance with the instructions he had left behind.

A tourist takes a picture of the tomb of Christopher Columbus in Seville’s cathedral. His tomb is held aloft by four allegorical figures representing the four kingdoms of Spain during Columbus’ life, Castille, Aragón, Navarra and León. (Photo by BORIS HORVAT / AFP)

In 1795 his bones were moved to Havana before being shipped back across the Atlantic and returned to Seville in 1898.

The Dominican Republic claims Columbus is buried at an ornate lighthouse in Santo Domingo.

The teams behind the 2005 DNA study said that while they are convinced the bones in Seville are from Columbus, the tomb in Santo Domingo might also hold part of his remains.

Columbus, long hailed by school textbooks as the so-called discoverer of “The New World,” is considered by many to have spurred years of genocide against indigenous groups in the Americas.

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DISCOVER SPAIN

The towns in Spain where it was illegal to die

When cemeteries were filling up in towns around southern Spain a few years ago, some mayors turned to extreme measures to keep their towns alive.

Published: 21 February 2024 17:41 CET
The towns in Spain where it was illegal to die

Ah, the Spaniards. To outsiders they can sometimes appear like chain-smoking, meat loving hedonists for whom a caña or glass of tinto is never out of the question. And yet, they outlive the majority of the world.

In fact, a 2021 study by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation predicted that Spain would surpass Japan to boast the world’s longest life expectancy by 2040. According to Spain’s main stats body (INE), by 2050 Spaniards will be nearing a life expectancy of 90.

It’s hard to fully understand why Spaniards live so long, but scientists generally seem to have come to the consensus that it’s something to do with the combination of their Mediterranean diet (and weather too, no doubt), a good healthcare system, plenty of walking, a close-knit society, and a helpful serving of hedonism — in moderation, of course.

Genetics, a love of sport as well as the lack of serious social issues (in recent decades, anyway) and involvement in wars also likely played a role in making Spaniards live longer. Additionally, over the past decades Spain also managed to drastically reduce the number of deaths due to cardiovascular diseases.

Imagine if they cut down on drinking and smoking — Spaniards could no doubt live even longer. However there were, in the not so distant past, some towns in Spain that took life expectancy to another level and actually made it illegal to die.

READ ALSO: In which parts of Spain do people live longest?

Yes, you read that right: there were towns in Spain where it was made illegal to die.

In 1999 in the Andalusian province of Granada, the mayor of Lanjarón, José Rubio, issued an order banning his 3,870 residents from dying.

The reason? There was no room for anyone else in the cemetery. As you might imagine, this strange decree got a lot of attention, and even made the pages of the New York Times as the news went around the world. However, just a week later, a neighbour broke the rules and died.

The offender was a 91-year-old man (and rather awkwardly, a friend of the mayor) so they were forced to bury him in the already overflowing Lanjarón cemetery. Fortunately, there were no repercussions for the dead man or his family, nor for the rest of the locals who eventually ‘broke’ the ban on dying.

Then a few years later, in July 2002, Manuel Blas Gómez, the mayor in Darro (also in Granada) pulled a similar trick made a public order: “Prohibido morirse” (“It is forbidden to die”). He had only been mayor for a few months, and he took the decision to veto death in this town of 1,500 locals.

The bizarre order was made for similar reasons as in Lanjarón, namely that the town’s cemetery had no more usable land and although local government had found a plot of land to build a new one, the municipal coffers did not have the money needed for the construction works.

But it’s not only in Spain where dying has been outlawed. Both Cugnaux and Sarpourenx in France and Biritiba Mirim in Brazil have done the same in the past for the same reason — because their local cemeteries were full.

READ ALSO: Did you know…? There’s a town in Italy where it’s illegal to die

Since 2012 it’s been illegal to die in the Italian town of Falciano del Massico in Campania, about 30 miles north of Naples.

Mayor Giulio Cesare Fava banned the village’s residents from going “beyond the boundaries of earthly life, and… into the afterlife” after the town’s cemetery reached full capacity.

Again, as in Spain residents were ordered not to die at least until Falciano’s administrators had time to construct a new cemetery that could house their earthly remains.

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