A descendant of Christopher Columbus introduced a tourism project with the main purpose to recreate in Panama the Spanish colonial period and its cultural and religious traditions. From a Spanish background, Cristobal Colon, Duke of Veraguas and descendant of the discoverer of America, presided over the Fundación Castilla de Oro, which provides a foretaste of what visitors can relive when visiting places where the adventurers and European colonizers settled in the 16th century. This project aims to bring to Castilla de Oro, as it was known at that time Panama, “a new impetus to tourism development”, indicated the Panamanian businessman Richard Fifer-Carles, who leads the idea.
The Fundacion Castilla de Oro intends to aid residents of the area in becoming housing accommodations for tourists, shops or develop activities related to tourism, which would help them to increase their incomes. “We are offering inhabitants the opportunity to become protagonists of their own destiny”, said Pascual Montañes, Panamanian President of Fundacion Castilla de Oro, who indicated that a few thousand residents have shown interest in participating in this initiative.
The chosen area for the development of the project includes towns of the Panamanian provinces of Los Santos, Herrera, Colon and Veraguas and Cocle, where America’s first Catholic Church was later founded in Nata de los Caballeros. “The first time gold was discovered in Castilla de Oro, it was taken away by the Spaniards. 21 tons of gold funded the largest empire the world has known” added Montañes. Now, “it is guaranteed that the Spanish will no longer take the gold but instead the project is an invitation to the Spaniards to come to spend the money”, he stated.
“Columbus sought a friendly approach with the inhabitants of those lands and historic chronicles tell us about the gold and other ornaments which they once traded for Castilian products,” said the descendant of the navigator who once sailed on the Panamanian coast.
He shared that in the Belen River, off the Panamanian coast, the navigator knew of the existence of mines of gold and had the first idea “to establish the first Spanish population in the Americas”, but “the hostile position of the cacique Quibian” prevented him from doing so. The legend says that the Spaniards exchanged indigenous gold for mirrors, although Columbus denied that it was only gold that caught his attention “. The sailor came to Panama during his fourth voyage (1502-1504) sailing off the coast of Honduras in search of the strait that would allow him to reach the “islands of spices”, of which Marco Polo spoke of in his description of Asia.
Related posts:
English
No Comments