24/12/2021
📍 Plaça de Sant Jaume, Barcelona
In 1827 the last case of slavery in Catalonia was detected in Tarragona. The presence of enslaved people in Catalonia goes beyond the relevant role played by captains and human traffickers of Catalan origin in Cuba, which explains why overall it has been a taboo subject in official historiography.
Slavery already existed in Catalonia in the 10th and 11th centuries. The aristocracy and the Church itself had their own enslaved labour. But it is after the Black Death of 1320 that the enslaved population grow in number.
Labor was lacking, and enslaved people of different origins began to arrive: Tartars, Balkans, Greeks, Turks, Armenians, North Africans and sub-Saharan Africans (Africans would be between 5% and 10% of all enslaved population).
In the image, a face with sub-Saharan features on a facade of the Palau de la Generalitat (a medieval palace that host the presidency of Catalonia) most likely represents a local african enslaved man.
In Barcelona, out of a population of 35,000 inhabitants, there were about 3,500 slaves at the end of the 14th century. Enslaved people could be around 10% of the population.
In the 15th century and the first third of the 16th century, enslaved people of African origin became the majority. Plaça de Sant Jaume was a point of sale, where they could be bought at a price that ranged from 15 to 80 pounds.
