Simon Bolivar Monument - Cadiz - Andalusia

This equestrian monument on Avenida Duque de Nájera , in the roundabout named after the American liberator, in front of the future Olivillo Business Transfer Center, was a 1974 gift from Venezuela to Cádiz .

On a bronze marble base with plaques and a copy of a 19th-century original reads "Simón Bolívar, Hero of the Race" on the front plaque.

Born in Caracas in 1783 to a family of Basque origins of the Venezuelan Creole nobility, Venezuelan soldier and politician Bolívar was a Freemason and took his political ideals from European thinkers such as Montesquieu and traveled throughout Europe, having a particular influence on him since the French Revolution. .

His reference was Francisco de Miranda, leader of the independence revolution that broke out in Venezuela in 1810, whom he eventually betrayed and handed over to the Spanish authorities . Great leader and military strategist, father of Greater Colombia (Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama), prone to dictatorial power, died of tuberculosis in 1830.

However, the Association of Tercios Viejos de España is demanding that the equestrian statue of Simón Bolívar disappear from the roundabout , which is also said to lose its name. According to them, this monument, which Venezuela had donated to the city in 1974, should be returned to its country of origin.

The organization recalls that in 1814 Simón Bolívar ordered the execution of 886 Spanish prisoners in Caracas , and on February 13–16 of the same year added another 500 Spanish prisoners, sick and wounded , who had been transferred to La Guaira Hospital, to that list added . He is also the one who signed the life-and-death war decree that would kill all Spaniards and Canarians who did not actively participate in Venezuela's independence, which would today be considered genocide, they add. All this considering the fact that Bolivar, who was born in Caracas in 1783, was Spanish , so his actions constituted an act of treason that in itself and forever would invalidate any recognition of his character by Spain.

Willem Vandenameele