On shipping costs and the past - Ashifa Kassam in The Guardian:

‘A handful of towns in Spain have sought to wade into America’s reckoning with its past, offering to rehome controversial statues targeted over their links to colonialism and centuries of genocide against indigenous peoples in the Americas.
Last month, lawmakers in California announced that the statue of Queen Isabella and Christopher Columbus would be removed from the state capitol in Sacramento, describing it as “completely out of place today” in the capitol rotunda where it has stood since 1883.
“Christopher Columbus is a deeply polarising historical figure given the deadly impact his arrival in this hemisphere had on indigenous populations,” the legislative leadership said in a joint statement.
The news prompted a flurry of action 6,000 miles away in the small town of Talavera de la Reina in north-eastern Spain. A letter to California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, was soon drafted on behalf of an association representing some 2,000 residents who said they had been “deeply saddened” to hear of the statue’s fate.
“We’re not ashamed of our history,” wrote the Neighbours Association of Fray Hernando de la Talavera,named after a confessor of Queen Isabella. “We’re aware that mistakes were made, but we also know how unfair it is to judge the past from the point of view of today’s society.” The group ended with a request for the Carrara marble statue, adding: “We’ll take care of all the shipping costs.”’

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‘“We’re not ashamed of our history,” wrote the Neighbours Association of Fray Hernando de la Talavera,named after a confessor of Queen Isabella. “We’re aware that mistakes were made, but we also know how unfair it is to judge the past from the point of view of today’s society.” The group ended with a request for the Carrara marble statue, adding: “We’ll take care of all the shipping costs.” The outreach was part of a broader offensive, launched by the Spanish government and aimed at officials across the United States after protesters targeted dozens of monuments related to Spain’s conquest of the Americas. “We have discreetly expressed our concern and also our desire to contribute to a better dissemination and understanding of [Spain’s] legacy,” the foreign minister, Arancha González Laya, told reporters last month.
She chalked up the incidents to the lack of knowledge over the shared history between the United States and Spain. “This great part of American history that was the Spanish legacy has been overlooked.”’

Read the article here.

The discussion of which streets should be renamed and which statues have to be removed will never stop. This doesn’t mean that discussion is not relevant.
Imagine if pigs became the dominant species on this planet, most humans won’t qualify for a street name or a statue.

I recommend a Museum for Fallen Statues where visitors can gather critical information about the past, without the mistaken belief that the past is fairly glorious but also without the urge to purify.

The museum could be what the Germans call a ‘Mahnmal.’