Yeah, same experience here. In Spain there is a character in child mythology (one of the Santa Claus analogues, who bring gifts from children) who is black. I remember that when I was a kid in the 80s, he used to be portrayed by a white man painted black, what Americans call "blackface", but for purely practical reasons: no one was black.
Perhaps in big cities there were some, I don't know, but in many places in the country you would live your life without ever seeing a black person outside of TV. Just as you say, we didn't have a past of slavery and at that point the country wasn't rich enough to be an immigration magnet, we did have some immigration from Morocco but Moroccans aren't black.
Now it's very different, of course, and we do have enough black people that that character can be portrayed more realistically :)
> Just as you say, we didn't have a past of slavery
Spain (together with Portugal) were the first to invent "put people in boats and ship them across the Atlantic" type of slave trade and had large numbers of slaves in their colonies.
And as with all other European countries that had big boats, they also brought many slaves back to Spain itself. For hundreds of years.
Also calling blackface "practical because there are no black people around" is missing the point of why people don't like blackface.
Yeah, my wording was definitely too general. There was slavery in Spain, my intended meaning was that there was no systematic enslavement of black people but there is definitely a chasm between what was in my brain and what I actually wrote, so I stand corrected.
Regarding blackface, what do you suggest to do, then, if there is a tradition of someone portraying a character (whom children believe in) that happens to be black, if there are no black people at all to do it?
Do you have as an example of where applying dark coloured make-up to anyone of a European background to make them look exotic/foreign doesn't also look completely ridiculous (and inevitably somewhat insulting)? And yes I'd include "Zwarte Piet".
If you're putting on a performance where it's crucial that the audience identifies a particular character as African (or Moorish) then find a performer who can convincingly and respectfully pull it off sans make-up, or adapt the plot to what you have available. I gather that's what's done for the part of Othello for at least 30 years now at any rate.
>By the 16th century, 7.4 percent of the population in Seville, Spain were slaves. Many historians have concluded that Renaissance and early-modern Spain had the highest amount of African slaves in Europe
As for what to do about blackface characters, the simplest solution is just to portray them differently. I believe this is gradually becoming a more popular option in the Netherlands, which has a similar problem with Zwarte Piet: https://raffia-magazine.com/2020/12/02/outgrowing-zwarte-pie...
If you agree with that innovation, you also seem to agree with me that the spanish were in fact involved with slavery, as opposed to what the person I replied to said. Not sure where you saw me "pretend" about anything, I just presented facts and a wikipedia article.
> Yeah, same experience here. In Spain there is a character in child mythology (one of the Santa Claus analogues, who bring gifts from children) who is black.
I would assume a somewhat close analog, since Saint Nicholas (the name source, if only a small part of the overall inspiration, of the “Santa Claus” figure) is, in one major tradition of, I believe, Italian origin, typically depicted as very dark-skinned (probably originally as a sign of foreignness rather than literal racial blackness; as he was geographically from Asia Minor and apparently of Greek ethnicity.)
Perhaps in big cities there were some, I don't know, but in many places in the country you would live your life without ever seeing a black person outside of TV. Just as you say, we didn't have a past of slavery and at that point the country wasn't rich enough to be an immigration magnet, we did have some immigration from Morocco but Moroccans aren't black.
Now it's very different, of course, and we do have enough black people that that character can be portrayed more realistically :)