Santo Domingo – The urn containing the alleged remains of Christopher Columbus was exhibited to the public here on Thursday at a ceremony commemorating the Day of the Hispanic World.
The event, which was attended by Dominican officials and foreign diplomats, was held at the Faro a Colon (Columbus Memorial Lighthouse), a huge mausoleum in the form of a cross erected in 1992 to honor the explorer.
After the playing of the Dominican national anthem, one of the priests from the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Santo Domingo, the Rev. Rafael Bello Peguero, inserted the silver key in the lock of the leaden urn said to contain the great navigator’s remains.
The act concluded a series of events held at the Faro a Colon starting last week to celebrate the 514th anniversary of the discovery of the Americas, “the most significant act humanity has ever recorded,” as lighthouse administrator Andy Mieses put it.
In his brief speech at the event, Mieses did not mention the controvery that has resurged regarding the precise spot where the true remains of Columbus are interred.
Spain’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Almudena Mazarrasa, who attended the event, also refused to mention the controversy – although a Spanish genetics team recently said its testing had confirmed that a set of remains being kept in the city of Seville are the explorer’s – saying that the arguments about the exact location of Columbus’s resting place “is not important.”
“What is important is that we all think about what that day meant and what it is going to mean in the future for the relations of the Americas and Europe, and very particularly with Spain,” said Mazarrasa in remarks to journalists.
Most historians agree that Columbus died on May 20, 1506, in Valladolid, Spain, and, according to his express wish, some years later his remains were brought back to the New World and he was buried in the Santo Domingo Cathedral.
But on Aug. 31, Jose Antonio Llorente, the director of the genetic identification laboratory at Spain’s University of Granada, said that a set of remains being kept in Seville “are those of Christopher Columbus.”
That determination has not been recognized by the Dominican government, and assorted officials of the Caribbean country have insisted that the great navigator’s true remains – which, 500 years after his death, consist of just several human bones – rest in the Dominican Republic.
“Historical evidence has confirmed that the true remains of Christopher Columbus are those in the leaden box that was found on Sept. 10, 1877, beneath the floor of the Cathedral of Santo Domingo,” Mieses told EFE. The box was later transferred to the urn that currently rests in the Faro a Colon.
He said that Columbus’s remains “have never left this island” since the admiral’s daughter-in-law, Vicereine Maria de Toledo, brought them here from Spain in 1541.
The team of Spanish investigators who have been trying for several years to determine if the remains in Seville are those of Columbus, want to analyze those preserved in Santo Domingo, but Dominican authorities so far have refused to grant permission.
