It’s this month’s teacup storm. Barcelona City Council has rejected an outlandish proposal that had been submitted to the Public Art Council, the jury of experts that analyzes which sculptures deserve to be exhibited in the city’s streets, squares and parks. In this case, what was proposed was a three-meter-high robotic Snowflake. They even set up a change.org to get support. The storm has not been because the cost of the erection was 1.5 million euros that, according to the promoter, should be paid by the municipal coffersbut because in its rejection response the Public Art Council added that, “Despite the fact that the figure of Copito de Nieve may be friendly and arouse sympathy, in the end it was the result of colonialism in Equatorial Guinea”, something that is not uncertain, but we must remember that this city usually lives just one degree from the political boil, that is, it was intuitable beforehand that there would be trouble. Poor Copito, treated as if he were a Marquis of Comillas or a Leopold II of Belgium, but here is the singular thing, even this is not the worst thing that has happened to that iconic gorilla once he died.
Before going to the most dire thing that happened to Copito once he died (something even above the vicissitudes he suffered in life, which were not few), it is convenient to first vacuum the news of the week. Dust to see what’s left. The proposal certainly reached the council of wise men in urban art and, reading the file, was dispatched in five minutes, first because it was expensive, then because it was unfeasible (it would require permanent surveillance) and thirdly because it was also ugly, but those were not the issues that They used up all five minutes of time. It seems that there was a gathering and it was there that it came up that on horseback from the 50s and 60s Barcelona, more than Spain, had an African colony, the Guinean jungle, with a sweet face and a bitter one. The sweet one is that of the Barcelonans who invested in cocoa plantations and to whom, in a certain way, it is due that Barcelona is today one of the strongest cups of world chocolate. The bitter thing is that from this same city, a lucrative chain of capture and sale of wild animals of gigantic proportions was piloted, something like the dark version of the comedy ‘Hatari!’
In an indisputable miscalculation, the essence of that discussion was transferred to the official response. The storm, then, was served. But, what has been said, Copito’s ‘post-mortem’ story has had more unpleasant moments and, taking advantage of the opportunity, it is worth repeating.
That gorilla, who had never been a prodigious specimen, began a rapid process of decrepitude in the final stretch of his life. He weighed 300 pounds in 2001 and by 2003 he was down to a scrawny 250 pounds. He meekly allowed himself to apply the cures for his skin cancer, but the day came when the wise decision had to be made to proceed to a painless euthanasia, nothing strange in these cases except that, alas!, some councilor from the city council has launched a farewell campaign close to paroxysm. Almost 10,000 schoolchildren passed through the zoo to say goodbye to that animal that was partially entrusted with the task of turning Barcelona into a great tourist city and that, as if it knew that the mission had been achieved, knew that its time had come and he was preparing to die.
His flame was extinguished with a lethal injection. He went at night by strict political order. Zoo employees were ordered to leave through the back door that day, to avoid the press, as if what had happened was embarrassing. What really was was that the councilor in charge of that ‘circus’, Jordi Portabella, proposed to send Copito’s remains back to Guinea and give him a proper funeral therewhich, since it didn’t happen, gives rise to all kinds of (sorry for the easy play on words) animals.
No plane was chartered, agreed, but the path of ridicule was retraced by another path no less swampy. It was announced that Copito would be cremated and that his ashes would be used as compost for the seed of a tree that would grow beautifully inside the Zoo enclosure. Where is that tree? As a prelude to the answer, we must bear in mind that this, Barcelona, is a city of worrying inconstancy. He wanted to have a walk of fame for athletes on Montjuïc and abandoned the project at the first opportunity. He began to reward centennial stores with a plaque on the sidewalk, but as they began to close and be replaced by inconsequential franchises, the project also quietly declined. Copito’s tree really germinated, but when it was a foot above the ground, a gardener uprooted it because he mistook it for a weed.
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Neither tree nor, at the moment, sculpture. That’s the way things are. The city council assures that one day that debt will be settled, but for now the spirit of that albino gorilla shares the same pain as that of, to give another example of another illustrious Barcelonan, Ildefons Cerdà, of whom it was said that in the square that bears his name there would be a sculpture that would do him justice and for the moment there is only the ingratitude of crossing it on foot.
Glass of water storms have the virtue of being brief. There are no shipwrecks in them. But in case any reader has become thirsty to know more, they are cited here in the near future, where unpublished facts of the life and death of that animal will be revealed. Great ape word.