CATALAN,
THE LANGUAJE OF COLUMBUS
The above is also proved beyond doubt
by a lengthy marginal note written in Castilian by Columbus in one of the
books belonging to him, Eneas Silvio Picolomini’s Historia rerum ubique
gestarum, in which the great explorer explains his calculations
about the age of the world. Could it be that the Genovese Cristoforo Colombo
born in 1951 was not actually the Christopher Columbus? Nobody can deny
that the admiral knew something of the Italian language because in Pliny’s
History, written in Italian and kept in Sevilla’s Biblioteca Colombina,
we find the following annotation made by Columbus: “Del ambra es çierto
nascere in India soto tierra, he yo no ha fato caure in multi monti in la
isola de Feyti uel de Ofir uel de Cipango, a la cuale habio posto nome Spagnola
y he o trouato pieça grande como el capo, ma no tota chiara, saluo de chiara
y parda, y otra negra; y ve n’e asay”. In English this means: “ It is
true that amber is born underground in India and I ordered digging to be
carried out in many of the hills in the islands of Feyti (Haití), Ofir and
Cipango, which I had named Spagnola, and there I found a piece as big as
a man’s head, though it was not all pale in colour – part of it being pale
but the rest darker- and another piece that was black, and of which there
is a large amount”.
There are some words which are not
Italian: del, es cierto, tierra, pieça, como,
otra, and negra; and it is impossible to imagine that the
note could have been written by someone whose mother tongue was Italian.
Salvador de Madariaga (Vida del Muy Magnífico Señor Don Cristóbal Colón,
Buenos Aires, 1958, p 73) describes the note as “incredibly comical gibberish
in which the number of Italian or pseudo-Italian words are not even the
majority in a mishmash of Italian, Castilian and Portuguese”, and adds that
“it is so ridiculous, that, unless it is apocrytical, it could only have
been written in a moment of mental aberration”.
Among the numerous notes and marginal
annotations made by Columbus in his reading books, all of them in Castilian
and Latin, there is one other short note in Italian, in the Libro de
Profecías (Seville Biblioteca Colombiana): “ Doppo el pecato
delli primi parenti cadendo l’homo de male en pegio perdete la simigliança
de Dio et,como dice el psalmista, prese similitudine de bestia”. In
English this means: “After the sins of the very first mother and father,
man went from bad to worse, losing his resemblance to God and, as the salmist
tells us, taking on the appearance of a beast”. In this instance, el,
en, como and de are not Italian either. So the allegedly
“Genovese Columbus has left us only two notes written in “Italian”, nothing
in Potuguese nor, as far as we know, anything in the Genovese dialect. Apart
from a few writings in cypher, all the remaining correspondence, whether
written by him in person or by copyists, is in Castilian. And as if the
problem of why the Colonus ligur did not have Italian as his mother
tongue were not enough, let us see what Fray Bartolomé de las Casas has
to say:
-
“These are all his formal words, some of them in imperfect Castilian, as
if it were not the admiral’s mother tongue”.
-
“In this passage the admiral’s mentions many places and islands and the
names that he had given them, though he does not say when and in this and
in other matters which appear in the books of his travels, he seems to have
another mother tongue, because he does not fully grasp the full meaning
of some words in the Castilian language, nor the way of speaking it”.
-
These are his own words, and though not very polished in our language,
not to be despised because of that”.
-
These are all the admiral’s own words, with his humble style and improper
choice of words, as if he had not been
born in Castile”.
-
“These are his own words, though imperfect in regard to his use of the
Castilian language, which he did not know very well, but nonetheless unconsciously
worthy…”.
There is another important testimony related
to the language spoken by Columbus on his arrival in La Ràbida (Huelva),
that of García Hernández, a physician from Palos, who during the Columbian
trials declared: “E que estando ally ende este testigo un frayle
que se llamaba fray juan peres q’es ya defunto quiso hablar con el dho don
crystobal colon e viendo la desposysion de otra tierra e reyno ageno a su
lengua le preguntó…” In English this means: “And so there present as witness was
a monk by the name of Fray Juan Peres, now deceased, and he wished to address
the honorable Christopher Columbus and judging him to come from another
land and to speak the language of another kingdom, he asked him…”.
(Nito Verdera, Cristóbal Colón,
Catalanoparlante, Editorial Mediterrània-Eivissa, 1994 pp. 27,28,312,313
and 314).
Towards the end of August 1500 a new
governor, Diego Bobadilla, arrived in Santo Domingo. He arrested the Columbus
brothers and sent them to Castile in chains. This fact was recorded by Pietro
Martire D’Anghiera in his Décades and he relates how “this new governor
has said to have sent the king and Queen cyphered letters written by the
Prefect (Columbus), in his own hand, urging and advising his brother, the
Governor (Bartolomé), then absent from the island, to hasten back with armed
troops to defend himself from injustice, should the new governor decide
to commit some outrage against them”.
According to historian Juan Gil, writing
in cyphered characters “was a common custom in those times”. This might
very well have been so, and I have no intention of disputing the matter,
but, at any event, I am sure that it would have been a practice reserved
for educated people. Salvador de Madariaga, on the other hand, examining
it from another angle wonders precisely what kind of characters these were
and points out that neither Columbus nor his brother Bartolomé knew any
language apart from Latin. “It is quite possible”, he adds, “that they could
have made up a code for their personal use. It seems far more likely, however,
that they might have known some cursive form of Hebrew through their family
circumstances”.
There are two strange annotations in
Eneas Silvio Picolomini’s Historia Rerum Ubique Gestarum, B54 and
B59, written partly in code, and which it appears that even now, no one
has been able to decipher. B54 says “Nota de Seres multa nobis
spectantibus pro T76 y 78/= 849Y8/” which appears to translate as “Pay
heed to the Beings, tha many things that await us in order to…”.
B59 says “Miram dicunt aeris dementiam
ministrare.adeo quod sit ultima.4m.clima 7=3y8=9p547>6=7p…”
This means: “They say that this grants them wonderful madness of the air.
So much so that it would be the furthest foureth climate…”.
As regards B54, Juan Pérez de Tudela
(Cristóbal Colón. Una Nueva Historia del Descubrimiento, Rembrandt
Editions, Alicante, 1989) points out that the first coded word means lignis
(trunks, canoes) and the second Esdras. As for B59, Juan Pérez de
Tudela tells us that the first word in code means Uidigueipolis referring
to Dominica (the island), Guaytucabo in the native language. The
second word would mean Iemaserpolis,
referring to Yamaye, the native name of Jamaica.
As we know, Doctor Juan Pérez de Tudela
y Bueso, a member of the Royal Academy of Spanish History, is the author
of a theory about the discovery of America, whereby Christopher Columbus
– prior to 1492 and in the middle of the Athlantic Ocean – came across a
canoe full of natives who told him of the existence of islands in the Caribbean.
Naturally no attempt is being made right now to assess the results of his
efforts to decipher the words in code, but, in any case, we should thank
the illustratious Spanish historian for his determination to clarify the
meaning of Columbu’s annotations.
In regard to note B54, Gerard Garrigue
(Christophe Colomb le catalan, Confluences, Barcelona, 1992, p 157)
also offers us his opinion on its meaning. The author, whom I met made in
Barcelona in 1993, has been a professional seaman and has sailed the Indian
Ocean and the sea of China, and reminds us that the Seres (Beings),
for educated Europeans in the fifteenth century, were the yellow-skinned
people who lived in the Far East. Gerard Garrigue considers that the word
in code indicates a position and that the 7 is its longitude to the west
of the 0 meridian, which passes through the island of Hierro, 19 degrees
from Greenwich and latitude 78 north according to Columbus’s calculations,
and which would correspond to the south of the Iceland and which is 11 degrees
out. So Garrigue arrives at the following conclusion:
Longitude 19+7=26 degrees west.
Latitude 78-11=67 degrees north.
This would correspond to a point in
the mountain range on the eastern coast of Greenland, at an altitude of
3,700 metres, which Columbus would have observed for several hours during
the northern winter. “In fact,” concludes Garrigue, “he had seen America”.
That is that Columbu’s note would confirm that there had been a pre-discovery,
as we are told in the Articles of Santa Fe, a fact which is further confirmed
by the study of what I have termed the “Norwegian Connection”.
(Nito Verdera, Cristóbal Colón, Catalanoparlante,
pp. 313 and 314).
COLUMBUS AND THE HEBREW ALPHABET
Salvador de Madariaga’s theory to the
effect that the Columbu’s brothers might have used a ciphered cursive form
of Hebrew, fits in perfectly with the twelve ornamental flourishes used
by the admiral in signed letters written to his son Diego, in which the
Hebrew letters beth and hei appear interwined in the top left-hand
corner, standing for Baruch Haschem (Praised be Lord). The research
which I have carried out (Cristóbal Colón, originario de Ibiza y
criptojudío, published by the Consell Insular d’Eivissa I Formentera,
1999, pp 137-179) into these initials, written from right to left as is
customary in Hebrew, in which I have been able to avail myself of the invaluable
collaboration of the Archivo General de Indias, (Seville’s Archives),
experts from the Central Identification Office of the Spanish Judicial Police
Headquarters and the Jerusalem Institute of Hebrew Manuscript Microfilms
enables us to state irrefutably that Columbus was familiar with the Hebrew
language. The German Philologist Fritz Streicher (Die Columbus Originale,
Spanische Forschungen I, Görresgesellschaft, Münster i.w., 1928) also
states categorically that the rubric is written by Columbus in his own hand,
which refutes those who have claimed for many years that the famous flourish
was in fact the work of some archivist from the House the Veragua.
(Nito Verdera, Cristóbal Colón, Catalanoparlante,
Ibiza, 1994, pp 28, 29 and 30).
COLLOQUIAL COLUMBIAN VOCABULARY
In Cristóbal Colón, Catalanoparlante
(pp 97-150) I analysed 63 words or expressions used by Columbus, not chosen
randomly but for their idiosyncrasies and because I did not agree with the
interpretation given to them by historians and philologists – in particular
Consuelo Varela, Juan Gil and Ramón Menéndez Pidal- , and others since,
in my opinion, these particular words can only be understood with reference
to the Catalan language. The result is that 61 of them (96.8%) can be found
in Catalan; 31 (42.9%) are exclusive to Catalan; 22 (34.9%) are common to
both Castilian and Catalan; and 4 (6.4%) are common to Catalan, Castilian
and Portuguese. There is one word which is common to Catalan and Portuguese
and another word in Arabic. I consider another word to be a hybrid of Catalan,
Portuguese and Italian; yet another word is common to the same three languages
and finally there is one word which
I have been unable to classify in any language. Finally, there is a group
of six words which I have termed special words and which make up 9.5% of
the total number analysed, which are as follow:
-
Mozada (bite, mouthful): common to Catalan and Galician-Portuguese.
-
Burcam (volcano): authentic Arabic.
-
Faxones/ faxoes (beans): a mixture of Portuguese, Catalan and Italian.
- Luxengero (flatterer): a word from
ols Occitan which passed into Catalan,
Castilian, Portuguese and Italian.
-
Per forza (by force): common to Catalan, Portuguese and Italian.
- Porsimolum (parsley?, fennel?): difficult
to place in any particular language.
Of the 31 genuinely Catalan words I
would like to draw special attention to bil.la (meaning rag, tatter
and bandage and used only in Ibiza), abalumado (harassed), barjaca
(bag), almucadas (hoods), fexes (bundles), launes (sheets
or layers), manadas (handfuls or bunches), manillas (bangles
or bracelets), redusir a memoria (remind), pusad (in the sense
of being very demanding or pushy), quisto (tax collector), setcentas
islas de nombre ( seven hundred islands in number), terrado (flat
roof), cans (dogs), encomparable (unbearable), ian face
(there are in front), el mundo es poco (the world is small), ençengir
(surround), arreo (without exception, successively), arriscada
(daring), çeçiones (bout of fever), aver o tener lengua (obtain
information secretly), pardales (sparrows), pellas (trays),
resurtir (retreat, retire).
(Nito Verdera, Cristóbla Colón, Catalanoparlante,
Ibiza, 1994, pp 295 and 296).
NAUTICAL VOCABULARY AND PLACENAMES USED BY COLUMBUS
Of the 79 terms analysed, 69 (87.3%)
are quite common in Catalan; 37 (46.8%) are exclusive to Catalan; 26 (32.9%)
are Castilian, though also commonly used in Catalan; and there are even
one or two common to Galician-Portuguese and French. Only one word is used
in Italian and Genoan: 16 (20.2%) can be found in Galician-Portuguese and
one in Gascon. One word is exclusive to Galician –Portuguese, two are Italian,
three are French and the rest are commonly used in both Catalan and Castilian.
Apart from this, 11 (13.9%) of the
terms studied are French, though also frequently found in Castilian and
Catalan, and of all these only one is exclusive to French; another is Provençal,
Venetian and Genovese, and yet another is a common Italian term. The result
of the analysis of ten words shows that one of them is commonly found in
some Swiss dialects, the north of Italy and the Balearics; the other words
are common in Catalan, Castilian Portuguese and Occitan. In conclusion,
of the 79 nautical terms analysed, only ten are not Catalan, but found in
Castilian, Galician-Portuguese and French.
The 37 exclusively Catalan words or
expressions are the following; ampolleta (sand clock), angla
(cove or inlet), agrezuela (crucible shaped), basa (sandy
seabed), bojar (sail or measure an island’s coastline), boltejar
(veer or sail close to the wind, tacking in one direction and then the other),
boneta (bonnet- small additional sail), bruma (a headless
mollusc eats into wood immersed in sea water and destroys it), camari
(a species of shark and a placename taken from the island of Formentera),
estar o ponerse a la corda (arrange the sails of a vessel so that
it moves very slowly or not at all), cheranero (lee), derrota
(course, way), jamás se desabarcan (they never go far away), despalmar
(clean, grease and caulk a ship’s bottom), enfundió (sank), farallón
(a large rugged rock rising above the surface of the sea), tener farol
o hacer farol (to signal), fisga (harpoon with several
hooks), gabia (sail), margalida (Margarita, a Venezueland
island and an islet situated off the north-west coast of Ibiza), martinet
(in Castilian, martinete, a kingfisher, and also the name of a place near
the entrance to the port of Ibiza), poner navío a monte (put the
vessel into dry dock for repairs or painting the hull), papahigo
(mainsail without bonnets – smaller additional sails), portada (sailor’s
baggage or goods), reguardo (safe distance which a ship leaves between
itself and the coast or some dangerous point),
estar al reparo (sail without endangering the vessel), retreta
(harbour, refuge), revesos (from the Catalan revesa- hard and difficult-,
fish which has a rough spot, which causes them to stick to whatever they
touch, causing anyone who tries to detach them to tear them to pieces),
saona (from the season, and the name of a cove in Formentera), soldar
(cast a pumbline into the water to discover the depth and quality of a mooring),
sorgir (cast anchor), sotil (small), surto (anchored), temporejar
(moving with little sail, as if marking time), será tant avant (will
have arrived), terral (offshore wind) and treo (mainsail with
no bonnets).
Another 32 words are more common in
Catalan and have been passed to other Romance languages; so that of the
79 words which have been analysed, 69 (87.3%) of them are to be found in
Catalan; balcos (gentle gusts of wind), sirga (cable to pull
a boat from shore), batel (a boat carried on a ship), blandear
(loosen or subside), encabalgar (mount, double), gabia (sail),
pozo (anchorage), tonina (tuna), trabucar (capsize),
xarcia (rigging and ropes on a ship), bolina (ir de bolina
is to sail close to the wind, in such a way that the direction in which
the keel is pointing forms as small an angle as possible with the direction
in which the wind is blowing), resaca (undertow), vento abal
(wind that blows between the east and south), nacaras (mother- of-
pearl), jusente (low tide), cala (small cove), estar a
la colla (wait for favourable sailing conditions), conventos/comentos
(joining of two planks), cor(r)i (forced landing), naveta
(small vessel), resegundava (repeated), tramuntana (north),
turbiada (squall or squally shower), amainar (lower or shorten a
sail), ataraçana (shipyard), ensolvia (diluted), entena
(sloping yardarm of lateen sails), escombrado (disencumbered, clean),
passada (pass), puntero (wind coming from the prow) and sotavento
(the side opposite to the direction in which the wind is blowing). But it
turns out that up to 20 words from Columbus’s writings are recorded in Castilian
for the first time. Corresponding to 1492 we have barlovento (the part from
which the wind is blowing, and previously undocumented in any language),
bojar, estar a la corda, hacer farol, fisga, poner navíos a monte,
naveta, papahigo, estar al reparo, sorgir, temporejar, terral and
treo (see above for meanings). Portada (sailor’s baggage or goods)
is a real gem, which first appears in Castilian in 1495 and is recorded
in Llibre del Consolat de Mar, written in the fourteenth century.
Puntero (wind coming from the prow) appeared in Castilian in his
fourth voyage in 1503. Despalmar appeared in 1502, estar a la
relinga in 1492 and comes from a French word; resaca first appears
in Castilian in 1492 and it comes from both Catalan and French; restinga
also appears in 1492 and in Galician and Portuguese. Strangely enough, 17
(21.5%) of the words and expressions mentiones come from Catalan.
It turns out that barlovento
(the side from which the wind is blowing) is neither Catalan, Castilian,
Italian nor Portuguese. The word used in Catalan is sobrevent and
barlovent is considered to be a barbarism, a word taken from Castilian.
However, this “strange” word turns out to come from the Catalan per
lo vent, which also means “the sice from which the wind is blowing”,
and under Arabic influence the initial “p” has changed to “b”, something
which can only be explained by looking at the Catalan spoken in Ibiza.
Another word we should pay attention
to is cheranero (lee) which does not mean either carenero or quersoneso
as some historians would have us believe, but can be explained by looking
at the old (thirteenth century) Catalan verb serenar, xerenar (calm).
As for the word xeraner (that which gives protection from the wind)
this is castilianised by Columbus to cheranero and thus ends the “mystery”
of the word used by him on December 6th 1492 in Haiti. This is
all quite clear, but one needs to be aware that there is no “ch” in Catalan,
because the “x” is used for this sound. Also, the Catalan spoken in Ibiza
shows a tendency to initial palatalization: xindria (watermelon),
xamarra (fur jacket), and xinglot (hiccup) instead of sindria,
samarra and singlot. Therefore, without a shadow of a doubt,
philology yet again provides an explanation of a controversial word, in
this case, cheranero, and also points to Columbus’s mother tongue.
(Nito Verdera, Cristóbal Colón, Catalanoparlante,
Ibiza, 1994, pp 298, 299 and 300)
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS COULD NOT HAVE BEEN GENOVESE
The conclusions reached show that Columbus
had very little knowledge of either the Genoan or Tuscan dialects and if
we add to this the fact proved by Las Casas and Ramón Menéndez Pidal to
the effect that neither Castilian nor Portuguese were his mother tongue,
then we can presume that he was actually a Catalan speaker; i.e. a subject
of one of the lands belonging to the former kingdom of Aragon. The Admiral
also knew Castilian very well, but nor proficiently, as I have discovered
during my linguistic research, since when he does not know the correct word,
he never hesitates to use the Catalan term. It is such an evident fact,
that on several occasions he has to explain what he means, on the assumptions
that his correspondents will not otherwise understand him. We can, therefore,
consider Columbus, to a certain extent, “an artifact in the creation of
Castilian”.
Christopher Columbus lived and sailed
with both Portuguese and French shipmates for 14 years, so it is perfectly
understandable that he should use new words and expressions. But there is
one question that really must be asked: where in his writings can the alleged
influence of the Genovese and Tuskan dialects actually be seen? The scientific
answer to this question is that it is not to be found, Genoan or Tuscan
words being practically non-existent. So in conclusion, thanks to research to which I have devoted
several years of my life, I consider that I am in a position to offer important
ans perhaps even irrefutable proof that the Genovese Cristoforo Colombo
could not be the same Chrostopher Columbus found in Spanish archives.
(Nito Verdera, Cristóbal Colón,
Catalanoparlante, Ibiza, 1994, p 304)
THE LINGUA FRANCA AS AN EXCUSE
It is evident that when Columbus did
not know to correct the words in Castilian he would write them in Catalan
and even very occasionally in Portuguese or French. The admirable Consuelo
Varela (Cristóbal Colón. Retrato de un hombre, Madrid, 1992,
p 68) says that “the Admiral was a seaman used to jabbering away in a thousand
different languages and he and his shipmates understood each other perfectly
in the patois which was known in those days as “Levantine”, that is to say
from the “Levant”,from the Mediterranea area as a whole (…) while the Castilian
sailors’ patois scarcely ever appears in this
vocabulary. Columbus,” she goes on to say, “brought up among Italians
and Portuguese, but living in Castile, speaks a bewildering mixture of all
these languages”.
As regards the way in which Columbus
spoke, I would like to make clear that today it would be impossible for
anyone to know exactly what his pronunciation was like, accent being a virtually
infallible method for ascertaining nationality, but, nonetheless, we do
not know how he wrote. It must also be taken into account that, as Las Casas
says, “he did not fully grasp the true meaning of Castilian words” a fact
which excludes all the lands belonging to the kingdom of Castile as Columbus’s
birthplace, without giving us, however, any real clue as to where he might
actually have come from.
I do not dispute the fact that Columbus
spoke Levantine patois, the lingua franca of the Mediterranean, a
fact that has been used for many years as an exuse to permit continued support
to the Genovese Cristoforo Colombo’s candidacy to the title of discoverer
of the New World, but we will see that this language has little or no influence
in what he wrote. In fact, the lingua franca (Nueva Enciclopedia
Larousse, Barcelona, 1981, vol. 6, p 5844) is a mixture of Latin words
which go to make up a sabir or kind of pidgin language which contains
elements taken from many different Romance languages, Arabic and Turkish
spoken in Mediterranean ports until the nineteenth century. This lingua
franca served, from the times of the Crusades onwards, as the language
of commerce berween people speaking Turkish or Arabic on the one hand and
Franks (Christians) on the other. In Algiers it was also the language of
the lower classes, used between slaves and their masters and also among
slaves of different nationalities. It has also been used on occasions as
a diplomatic language, especially inTunisia.
It should perhaps be explained, to
aid our greater understanding, that the word sabir means a language used
for communication, composed of different tongues mixed toguether on purpose,
deliberately simple in both its vocabulary and grammatical structure and
used for specific reasons among people of different tongues. It is important
to make clear that these pidgin tongues are special languages limited to
certain areas: commerce, dealings with slaves, and professional communication.
They are real language mixes, and are more or less artificially created.
Further examples of a sabir are “Russonorsk”,
the language of Russian and Norwegian fishermen; “Chinook”, the hybrid tongue
of the American Indians who lived in the north-west Pacific coast, the present
day states of Oregon and Washington; the pidgin English spoken in China,
which is gradually dropping out of use and pidgin Melanesian, known by the
name of “Beach-la-mar” which is still extensively spoken.
In addition, Professor Estelle Irizarry
from the University of Georgetown in the United States arrives at the following
conclusions in a work titled Cristóbal Colón, escritor, published in October
1992:
1.
Columbus introduced essay writing to the New World, producing epistolary,
testimonial, persuasive and personal essays.
2.
Columbus succeded in writing prose that could be persuasive, informative
or descriptive.
3.
historians and biographers may interpret as they will the figure of Columbus
as an explorer, but all these writings stand as testimony to his skill and
eloquence as a writer.
This work obviously represents a devastating
blow for those who continue to affirm that Columbus’s language was the Mediterranean
lingua franca, the Levantine patois.
Are we able to clear up all the mystery
surrounding Columbus by classifying him beyond any doubt as a Catalan speaker?
I believe not. And I am pessimistic because all the Columbian researchers
from Catalonia and Majorca whose common language is Catalan are only too
happy with my linguistic research and its conclusions. What I am saying
will continue to fall on deaf ears. Each of them will carry on fighting
in their own corner, and it must be remembered that in Spain there are those
who claim that Columbus was from Galicia, Extremadura, Asturias, Valencia
or Toledo. And the worst of it is that all these researchers who are defending
tooth and nail such diverse theories are fully aware that Columbus’s mother
tongue was neither Castilian nor Galician. Even more worrying is the fact
that Catalan researchers, fellow members of the Centre d’Estudis Colombins,
a section of the Barcelona Omium Cultural, want the sailor and explorer
to belong to a branch of the more-or-less noble Barcelona Colom family and
will not even admit the possibility of Columbus and his brothers being members
of the Colom family of Ibiza, a powerful family of converted Jews. They
also claim that the fact that Columbus used numerous placenames taken from
the coasts of Ibiza and Formentera to name geographical features in the
Caribbean is not significant and in no way proves Columbus’s connection
to Ibiza, while, in fact, quite the opposite is true, because typonimy is
a science, a branch of history. I honestly believe that if the Columbian
researchers of Catalonia of Majorca were able to present evidence to show
that there exist or have existed on their coasts the placenames which Columbus
transferred to the Caribbean during his four voyages, then the “Columbus
Case”, Columbusgate, would have been long closed.
(Nito Verdera, Cristóbal Colón,
Catalanoparlante, Ibiza, 1994, pp 32, 33, 32, 304, 305, 306)
