'Uncomfortable memory' tour faces Barcelona slave history

Slavery is just part of a long cruel history. Wherever there is chance to make money, people of any race or creed will gladly join in.

Even the African warlords who sold the "prisoners" to the slave ships played their parts in this piece of history.

Even today fortunes are made by sending young men to die in the name of "Defence". Money has no morals.

'Presentism' is always a danger for historians, but in this case, there's a real issue of interest based on the late-in-the-day entry into slave-owning by the later Catalan grandees; they went into it when all European countries had already abolished it, and when it had been abolished in many colonial areas. Sadly, not Cuba, Brazil, or, at the beginning of that period, the United States.

One of the reasons it's important to consider these past things is because they do enter into the present, and shape how we think about peoples, countries and regions. Imagine, for example, trying to understand why New England "gentlemen of property and standing" opposed the Abolitionist movement without knowing that their grandfathers and fathers had owned the slave ships and made the money with which they, themselves, built the mills that made cloth of slave-grown cotton. Makes it a lot clearer, no?

It is good that a people face up to and learn from the past.  We must learn from the lessons of history, but I do hope this will not become a "self-flagellation" exercise.  At the end of the 18th century, everyone had slaves.  Every people, every race, every culture, every country participated in the buying, selling and owning of other people.  It was the norm.  Fortunately, with a few rare exceptions, modern society has become enlightened and the rights of individuals is now a central focus of most peoples.  Slavery still exists and ending these pockets of slavery should be what we as a modern people should focus on.