Che Guevara’s face is one of the 20th century’s most iconic images, adorning posters in student bedrooms and T-shirts across the world. But not content with this, the mayor of a small Spanish town decided the guerrilla fighter deserved to be commemorated in style.
Angel Garcia Seoane, an independent who governs Oleiros in Galicia, secretly used 179,000 euros (NT$8,600,000) of public money to build an eight-meter high statue of Guevara. Conscious, perhaps, that the town’s residents might be concerned by this use of council money, Seoane arranged to have the work carried out at night. The figure was unveiled last week.
Seoane claims to be a personal friend of Fidel Castro, whose family was Galician. He hopes the statue will not only be seen by locals but also by airplane passengers flying over Oleiros.
PHOTO: EPA
News of the statue, created by two Cuban artists, was revealed not in the local press but by the Cuban daily Granma.
Seoane said Guevara deserved such a monument because he was “a soldier of freedom, an international guerrilla aid worker, a dreamer of feasible utopias and a symbol of all the world’s revolutionaries.”
But many of the town’s 32,000 residents are less enthused. Pablo Cobin, leader of the conservative Popular Party (PP) in Oleiros, said: “This is a waste of money, a pet project of the mayor’s and an act of arrogance.”
The PP claims Seoane may have breached legal rules because the contract for the statue was granted through a Cuban arts institute.
Seoane was unrepentant. “If it were a statue of Christ or the Virgin Mary there would not be a single protest round here, God damn them,” he said.
There is already a six-meter-tall Guevara statue in Barcelona.(THE GUARDIAN)
切．格瓦拉的肖像是二十世紀最具代表性的圖像之一，世界各地學生寢室內的海報上，以及汗衫上都可見他的肖像。但這樣還不夠，西班牙一個小鎮的鎮長決定，應該要用更氣派的方式來紀念這個游擊鬥士。
無黨籍的安傑．賈西亞．塞奧尼是加里西亞區歐雷洛斯鎮的鎮長，他暗自挪用了十七萬九千歐元（相當於新台幣八百六十萬元）的公款，蓋了一尊八公尺高的格瓦拉雕像。也是意識到鎮民應該會反對這樣花掉公款，塞奧尼刻意安排雕刻工作在夜間進行。這尊雕像已於上週揭幕。
塞奧尼聲稱，他和老家在加里西亞的費德爾．卡斯楚兩人私底下是好朋友。他希望不僅只有當地民眾可以景仰這尊雕像，就連搭機飛過歐雷洛斯鎮上空的乘客都能看到這尊雕像。
古巴的《Granma》日報報導了這尊由兩位古巴藝術家創作的雕像的消息，但西班牙媒體上反而不見相關新聞。
塞奧尼表示，他認為格瓦拉理應有這樣一尊紀念雕像，因為他是個「自由鬥士，是國際游擊隊的援助者、可行的烏托邦夢想家，也是全世界革命份子的象徵」。
但該鎮三萬兩千名居民中，許多人並不像塞奧尼這麼興致勃勃。保守派的民眾黨歐雷洛斯黨部主席帕布羅．柯賓說：「這根本就是浪費公帑，這是鎮長最得意的計畫，也是一種傲慢的表現。」
民眾黨表示，這座雕像的修建契約是透過古巴某藝術機構核發，可能違法。
塞奧尼對此毫無悔意，他說：「如果這是尊耶穌或聖母瑪利亞的雕像，今天就不會有人反對了。去他們的。」
巴塞隆納已有一尊六公尺高的格瓦拉雕像。
（衛報�翻譯：袁星塵）
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