Rich returns: Catalonia’s Cuban legacy

On the beach in Vilanova i la Geltrú, 40 kilometres southwest of Barcelona, Spain, stands a huge bronze statue of Pasiphae, mother of the Minotaur in the Greek myth. Cursed by the god Poseidon, she lies naked inside the stomach of a cow, gazing out to sea, waiting for an enormous white bull to arise from the water and impregnate her. It’s a disarmingly sensual symbol of a people’s relationship with the sea.

For the inhabitants of Catalonia’s Garraf region – of which Vilanova is the capital – the Mediterranean has been a source of food, work and trade since antiquity. The Iberians traded wine around the Mediterranean 2,000 years ago. Between the 6th and 1st centuries BC, ceramics were exported from the seaport of Adarró, the ruins of which can be seen in Vilanova.

Three thousand years ago, Greek sailors spoke of the Iberian town of Blanca Subur, present-day Sitges, just 10 kilometres up the coast from Vilanova. But for those who dwelt on its shores, the sea also represented a gateway to new worlds and fresh starts.

In the 1870s, with a series of civil wars finally over, Catalonia had begun to experience a period of great economic and cultural progress, driven by trade with the colonies in the New World.

In 1862, Sitges’ most famous son, Facundo Bacardi, typified the entrepreneurial spirit when he founded his distillery in Cuba, transforming rum from a fiery local grog to an internationally renowned beverage. Others made their fortune trading textiles or guano – fertiliser made from the excrement of sea birds.