Colombia

The Basque mark on the history of Colombia was left, above all, by people with a first name and a surname: an admiral, the governor who made the founding of Medellín official, the conquistador who founded Pamplona, a friar who became a musician and a Jesuit who installed the country’s first seismograph. To them is added a monument that the Basque community gave to Bogotá.

Blas de Lezo, the admiral of Cartagena

Blas de Lezo, born in Pasaia, lost a leg in combat at the age of fifteen, an eye at twenty and an arm at twenty-two. In 1741 he defended Cartagena de Indias against the English fleet, and he died in the city he had defended.⁴

Medellín, made official by a man from Eibar (1675)

The governor of Antioquia Miguel de Aguinaga y Mendigoitia, a native of Eibar, officially confirmed the founding of Medellín in November 1675.¹

Pamplona, in the Colombian Andes

In the mid-sixteenth century Pedro de Ursúa, from Navarre, nephew of the royal inspector Miguel Díaz de Armendáriz, founded with Ortún Velasco the city of Pamplona, in the north-east of the country, and afterwards Tudela, in the land of the Muzo people.¹

Luis Miguel de Zulategui, the friar who became a musician

Luis Miguel de Zulategui was born in Pamplona on 5 July 1898 and came to Colombia in the twenties as a Discalced Carmelite friar. In Medellín he met Blanca Mejía Montoya, a woman from Antioquia, and left the habit for her. In 1932 they had to marry in Panama, because in the conservative Antioquia of the time they could not find a judge who would marry a former priest.⁸

He lived for five years in Bilbao, and after the war and his writings against Franco he settled with his family in Medellín in 1937. There he was a teacher and rector of Bellas Artes (Fine Arts), a very demanding music critic and a composer of works of Colombian folk music: his cumbia Caribianas received a mention in the national music competition of 1951. He died on 1 September 1970, on leaving a concert.⁸ His archive is kept by the Universidad EAFIT, and the Casa Vasca de Antioquia bears his name.⁸¹⁰

The Jesuit of the first seismograph

The Basque Jesuit Simón Sarasola, a meteorologist, founded the Observatorio Meteorológico Nacional (National Meteorological Observatory) in 1922, installed Colombia’s first seismograph and founded the Instituto Geofísico de los Andes Colombianos (Geophysical Institute of the Colombian Andes), according to Auñamendi.²

A monument to Gernika in Bogotá (1945)

In 1945 the Basque community gave Bogotá a monument to Gernika.²