Or white gorilla, in Fang language. You don't even have to be a boomer, just a little ícser, to have a corner of your heart reserved for Floquet de Neu in the same drawer as Columbus's caravel, the "breakwater" restaurant, the sheds, the Cova del Drac, the Zeleste club, or the tramvia blau. You don't even have to be a little sensitive to facilitate his memorial in the form of a plaque, a street, or a statue, as even the renovated Wax Museum has done, giving him a much more prominent role than Billie Eilish, Paul McCartney, or Greta Thunberg.
Singularity is a sacred and protected asset, no matter how kitsch it may be, and the failure to understand this explains why not even Salvador Dalí has a plaque, a street, a statue, or even some sad public urinals in some corner of the city. For ideological reasons too, obviously. It is incomprehensible that, in this case appealing to Spain's colonial past, it should be so difficult to fulfill the municipal promises that since 2003 guarantee a remembrance for our beloved albino fellow citizen. When, if Nfumu Ngui was anything comparable to a homo sapiens sapiens, he was a refugee. A welcomed one. One more Barcelonian, albeit an illustrious and unrepeatable one.
But it turns out that Nfumu Ngui was not a sapiens sapiens, but a gorilla gorilla (this curious habit of scientific terminology to repeat terms, like the advertisement for el torró-torró). And because he was a gorilla gorilla and also blond and white blond and white, he deserved to be bought for twenty thousand pesetas and exhibited in the city zoo, not without first defecating on the chair in Mayor Porcioles' office. He wouldn't care if they dedicated a plaque or a street to him, he would defecate on all these things and even more on the absurd municipal excuses, but the beautiful part of Floquet de Neu is that we did care about him.
He wouldn't care if they dedicated a plaque or a street to him, he would defecate on all these things and even more on the absurd municipal excusesIt is indeed somewhat ridiculous, the image of children and adults pointing at the white monkey because it was white, just as at one time the black man of Banyoles was exhibited for his mysterious condition of being black. But our childish behavior is not what has to receive judgment, or remembrance, or homage, or disapproval: here we are not the protagonists but him, the white monkey, unique in the whole world like the Sagrada Família (another supposed monkey), theor how it dancesor Ocaña's earrings.
I don't know if the zoo treated him well, I suppose not in those times. But I truly know that we citizens loved him, no matter where he came from, whether he was bought or gifted, captured or rescued, happy or unhappy, here he was a monkey like us from day one and from day one he colonized our hearts. In other words, we citizens are not to blame for what happened in Equatorial Guinea and Floquet, as the singular fellow citizen he was, isn't either. Our love was above all this.
From this thorny debate about the cruel Hispanic empires, the statue of Antonio López has been removed, and Columbus's statue has been saved by a hair's breadth, looking, as always, the other way. And it is curious that, when it comes to eradicating the trace of colonialism's privileges, Admiral Cervera's street is changed to Pepe Rubianes's but the neighboring Joan de Borbó promenade remains undisputed. Not to mention other living busts present in the council chambers.
If the street namer is controversial in ideological and human terms (any day they will remove the statue of Cambó or Pla's street), it should not be for an undisputed generational icon who knew nothing of ideologies or the overseas fleet. Nor of what a zoo is, which perhaps is the issue that has been sought to divert and which one day would indeed be interesting to address. And, even so, keeping a memory for Floquet de Neu would precisely serve to raise awareness about the treatment of animals as well as the treatment of former colonies, because he precisely is not to blame for one thing or the other. But above all, it would be a memory for a smile, irresistible forgiving eyes, and saintly patience inside the display case that many of us were able to enjoy live and that, as for later generations, they also deserve to know and exhibit. Perhaps we are much more than monkeys, I don't know. But it is also possible that we are not much more than monkeys. And it is also possible that we are, in the end, nothing more than curious specimens of the species estúpido estúpido.
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