Christopher Columbus was Galician? Wow, I didn't know that...Thank you for the links Herrerano! Very interesting.
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The Discovery Channel programme Who was Columbus? argues that Columbus was Catalan, primarily because of the Catalan phraseaology found in his writings. Galicia and Catalonia are on different coasts of Spain. Catalan is spoken in multiple provinces of Spain, so both may be correct.
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Dave (SCA: Geoffrey Genour of Carney) Protector of Bits and Bytes, Third cousin once removed to Phil, Prince of Insufficient Light
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I'm just new in the Forum. I'm original from Galiza.
Herrerano, I'm a bit confused about the Columbus subject. I've heard so many histories that I don't know what to believe.
Fernandez Armesto, of Vigo, spent most of his life trying to prove that he was a Galician, but never came to concluyent proof.
Still I believe that he was a crap navigator (I have a copy of the voyage's log) and that he was a Venetian adventurer, a conman and a playboy.
A chap from Huelva seems to have found a quite strong evidence that he "knew positively" that that land was there (thought he thought that it was Catai or Cipango, the actual China or Japan) because he steal some maps from a dying Portuguese fisherman in Madeira. He tried first to get help from Juan I of Portugal, but couldn't present the proof since at that time everything that belonged to a national, did belong to the King, so he would have been beheaded for stealing from the crown. So when he went to the king of Castillia and the queen of Aragon, he did present the maps and so he got help. Well... A part of the national believe that "something else was going on" between him and the queen, but that is still to be proved.
About being Catalan, probably is a misunderstanding since Venecia was not too far back in time colonies of the Catalan Empire, so part of the west coast of what today is Italy did speak Catalan.
In any case it would have been a lot better if he had left that continent alone but...
Catalá is certainly not spoken in Galiza and -as I am aware of- any other part of Spain but apart of the 4 provinces of Catalunya (Barçelona, Tarragona, Lleida and Girona), two variations of Catalá are spoken as national languages: In the Valencia autonomy (Castellón, Valencia and Alicante) -the Valençiá- and in the Balear Islands -the Mallorquí- but they are not exactly the same than the Catalá.
Same thing in Galiza. The Galego is pretty close to the Portuguese, but is not exactly the same. Actually we speak Galego in Portugal and they answer back in Portuguese and we haven't got any problem to understand each other.
Yeees! Spain, is a mess. Of course all of us do speak Castillian, but at home and in our autonomies, we speak different.