The Diplomat in Spain

Museum and statue of Ponce de León./ Photo: Town Council

The Diplomat. 25/06/2017

The Town Council of Santervás de Campos inaugurated, on 21 June, the Ponce de León Museum. With this initiative, this small locality from Valladolid, which has 300 inhabitants, wants to pay tribute to its most illustrious son, who accompanied Christopher Columbus in his second trip and who discovered La Florida and, by extension, North America.

The Museum has been set up in an old convent of the 17^th century whose adaptation has been based on the book Retablo de Ponce de León, by the historian Enrique Sánchez Goyanes. Besides, inside of it, taking advantage of the building’s shape, the prow of a ship has been reproduced to achieve greater identification with America’s discovery.

The museum if full of portraits of figures that surrounded Juan Ponce de León (the Catholic Monarchs or Christopher Columbus), of elements typical of the daily life of the 15^th and 16^th centuries, and of numerous stories and legends about Juan Ponce de Léon.

Besides, in front of the building there is a statue dedicated, precisely, to Juan Ponce de León, to whom his home town wants to pay tribute and “give him the place he deserves in history books”, according to statements made by the mayor, Santiago Baeza Benavides.

Juan Ponce de León (1460-1521) was born in Santervás de Campos in a noble family. After taking part in the conquest of Granada, in 1493 he participated in the second trip of Colón to the Indies by order of Ferdinand the Catholic, an expedition that disembarked in Santo Domingo, in the island of Hispaniola.

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The locality from Valladolid of Santervás de Campos will pay tribute to one of the members of the Columbus’s expedition

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After taking part in the repression of the indigenous uprising in the province of Higüey, where he was appointed lieutenant governor, in 1508, he was sent to the island of San Juan (current Puerto Rico), where he founded the first settlement, Caparra, and was appointed governor a year later.

Finally, he was dismissed by Diego Columbus, governor of the Indies and with whom he had lost favour for his wish of loyally following the Crown’s instruction as regarding the treatment given to the Indians.

In 1513, the distinguished marine from Santervás de Campos prepared and financed an expedition to look for the legendary island of Bimini, where he hoped to find the legendary Fountain of Youth. Finally, the expedition disembarked in a peninsula that, for its appearance and for coinciding with Easter Sunday (or Resurrection Sunday), was baptized with the name of La Florida. Ponce de León had just discovered North America.

In 1514, back in Castile, he received the title of Adelantado de La Florida by the hands of the King, and, seven years later, he led another expedition to La Florida, during which he was wounded with a poisoned arrow of the Calusa tribe. He died in Havana and his mortal remains were taken to Puerto Rico in 1559, where they have been since then in a big mausoleum.