African women in Iberia. The Fernandino elite in Barcelona

ABSTRACT

Little is known about the role African women played at the end of the nineteenth century in the Iberian Peninsula. This paper describes the reconstruction of the first studied late modern African diaspora, settled in Catalonia in the 1880s, with its precedent, the very rich Fernandino woman of Spanish Guinea, Amelia Barleycorn. Historical reconstruction shows that this elite was highly visible with the Catalan bourgeoisie in the first half of the twentieth century in Barcelona, later resulting in having complete anonymity at the end of the century. This was evidenced by the neglect observed in the racist attack suffered by the descendant of two illustrious Fernandino families in 1992. The article reviews how the Fernandino community broke colonial moulds, as well as putting strain on the Iberian seams of race, class and sex from the end of the nineteenth century, and reflects on the Catalan and Spanish state promoted amnesia.

KEYWORDS:

• Afro-Iberia
• herstory
• Krio Fernandino
• African diaspora
• gender
• Barcelona

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This work was supported by the Research and Development Project directed by Y. Aixelà-Cabré (IMF-CSIC) “Africans and Maghrebis in the Iberian Peninsula (1850–1975). A history on the margins of Spain and Portugal” (AFROIBERIA) (PID2019-108397GB-I00/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033), funding by MCIN/ AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ and “FEDER Una manera de hacer Europa.” This article has been translated by Emma Brown. I would like to mention the URICI services and to thank the Barleycorn family and, especially, Amalia, for their generosity in collaborating with this research, as well as the excellent contribution by Elisa Rizo (Iowa State University) and Remei Sipi on the topic of African diaspora. I would also like to thank the Annobonese writer Ávila Laurel (2022) who accepted to write a novel about the life of Fernandino women and the Barleycorn-Vivour family in Barcelona, for bringing this topic closer to everyone. In order to know how the Fernandino community was, see Aranzadi (2016), Aixelà-Cabré (2022) and Valenciano-Mañé (2022), and the online exhibition Aixelà-Cabré, Avila Laurel and García (2022).

2 La Guinea Española 5, 1920, 52.

3 As all Fernandino were Krio, but not all Krio were Fernandino (Yakpo 2010, 12), I will refer to them as “Krio Fernandinos” or “Fernandinos.”

4 This study does not deny the previous black diaspora, but studies the contemporary one. In order to delve into the excellent scientific production on the African presence in the Iberian Peninsula in the early modern age, see some of the works recovered by Aixelà-Cabré (2023). See Cohen (1997), Brah (2011), and Cohen and Fisher (2018) on the concept of diaspora. Here a diaspora of the same origin (Krio) and geographical origin (Spanish Guinea) is analyzed.

5 Regarding slavery routes, see Schmieder (2016) and Rodrigo (2022). Naranjo Orovio and Puig-Samper (2022) studied race and slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean.

6 This is not obvious that there could be racist outrages against the Fernandinos or that the Fernandinos themselves had racist attitudes towards the rest of Equatorial Guineans.

7 Wade (2010, 159) suggested prudence in the supposedly inevitable relationship of the African with race and blackness.

8 See Afroeuropeans at https://www.afroeuropeans2022.com/en/vision-statement/. Accessed January 2023. See Afroféminas at https://afrofeminas.com/. Accessed January 2023.

9 In fact, as Yuval-Davis (2006, 199) outlined, the categories were positional and changing over time: “a man or a woman, black or white, working-class or middle-class, a member of a European or an African nation: these are (,,,) categories that have certain positionality along an axis of power, higher and lower than other such categories. Such positionalities, however, tend to be different in different historical contexts and are often fluid and contested.”

10 Feros (2017) highlighted that after the Spanish Constitution of 1812 it was agreed that almost all people born in Spain's territories, whatever their ethnicity, were Spanish.

11 Although Goldberg (2006, 349) does not seem interested in the concept “deracialized”, he does define it in one of his texts: “The denial of racist arrangement, racial articulation, and targeted restriction called for on one side matched by racist defamation, resentments, and close to random violence in response” could obey “to the deracialization of racist exclusions by public forces.”

12 When the project began, it was not necessary to submit this study to the CSIC Ethics Committee because it was designed as archival research. When I later located the descendants of Amelia Barleycorn, I could no longer request it because this committee does not assess projects that have already started. However, both Barleycorn descendants were rigorously informed, they signed informed consent forms that protected their rights and they actively participated in the dissemination of my historical ethnography about the Fernandinos (Aixelà-Cabré 2022), as collected in different videos on YouTube.

13 In order to know more about the Krio of Sierra Leona, see Goerg (1995).

14 The concept of transnationality refers to Vertovec (1999), the multi-sited and multi-local perspective to Marcus (1995), transcontinentality to Oualdi (2020), and Afropolitanism to Mbembe (2007).

15 Pekarofski (2021) applied the concept to study if some African-American figures modified the concept of race in the US through their own existence.

16 Regarding the debate on the weight of race in Europe, Goldberg (2009) had warned that race was a way of being in a changing world whose representations differed in space and time, something that for Mbembe showed “the historical processes by which 'blackness’ was invented” (Goldberg 2018, 4).

17 Studying Amelia Barleycorn's plantations shows that her laborers worked under a contract, it was not slavery work. A complaint is known about small rations of food. For example, an article of 4th June 1919 of a complaint from a laborer of the Boloko plantation. General Archive of Alcalá de Henares, box 81/07956.

18 La Guinea Española 19, 1903, 8.

19 La Guinea Española 36, 1904, 4.

20 See La actualidad española, Year VIII, special number Extraordiario, 1959, 54–55.

21 La Guinea Española 36, 1904, 4.

22 La Guinea Española 45, 1905, 6.

23 La Guinea Española 48, 1905, 32. In 1909, the chronicler described the Barleycorn passengers as “morenos” (Brown), a word that intended to intensify racialization regarding the traditional term “indigenous” (La Guinea Española 3, 1909, 32).

24 The Fernandino transcontinental movement that began in 1880 preceded the migration of the rest of Guinea-Ecuadorians in 1940 to other cities such as Madrid, Valencia or the Canary Islands (Aixelà-Cabré 2020). This flow of people that travelled between the colony and the metropolis was parallel to that of the Fernandino community. Travelling to the metropolis ceased to be an exclusive benefit of the wealthy Fernandino families.

25 It is not possible to reproduce Amelia Barleycorn's lawsuit against the Spanish government in 1911. However, she won it in 1912 by imposing retroactive legal improvements for the entire Krio population of the colony. See, Aixelà Cabré (2022, 293-304).

26 See La Guinea Española 679, 1928, 83–88.

27 La Vanguardia, 25-5-1962, 37.

28 Amelia's luxurious house in London in 1881 was located in Castle, 81 Holloway Road, Islington N7. See at http://pubwiki.co.uk/LondonPubs/Islington/Castle.shtml. Accessed January 2023.

29 La Guinea Española 501, 1921, 8.

30 La Vanguardia, 16-9-1921, 5.

31 La Voz de Fernando Poo 263, 1921, “Rhodes-Jones”, 9.

32 Open Source Guinea, “Memory of the homage to Mr. Alfredo Jones Níger.” The italics are mine.

33 La Vanguardia, 3-12-1992, 27.

34 La Vanguardia, 5-6-1994, 51.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Agencia Estatal de Investigación [grant number (PID2019-108397GB-I00)].