Plaza Colón is the main plaza

Plaza

Plaza is a Spanish word related to "field" which describes an open urban public space, such as a city square. All through Spanish America, the plaza mayor of each center of administration held three closely related institutions: the cathedral, the cabildo or administrative center, which might be...

 in the city of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...

. This plaza and its fountain commemorate the explorer Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...

, whose name in Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 was Cristóbal Colón. The plaza presents the traditional urban relationship in Puerto Rico with the church, now Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria Cathedral on one end of the plaza and the "Alcaldia" or Mayagüez town hall in the other. Its location was designated in 1760 close to the city founding.

The plaza is paved in marble is graced by a group of lampposts in bronze that date over more than one hundred years. Each lamp is held by an oriental odalisque, including characteristic clothes, turbans, and veils. The plaza was designed after the Great Fire of 1841, approximately in 1842; years later, after being paved the plaza had a fountain in the center. The plaza has been remodeled several times including when Benjamin Cole was mayor and under the current mayor José Guillermo Rodríguez

José Guillermo Rodríguez

José Guillermo Rodríguez is a Puerto Rican politician who serves as the Mayor of the city of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. He was born in Mayagüez on October 10, 1956. He is a member of the Popular Democratic Party of Puerto Rico.-Early years and education:...

.

Statues

Following the theory that Columbus disembarked in Mayagüez; in 1896 a statue of the Admiral was placed in the main plaza in the city, thus it came to be known as Plaza Colón. The statue was made by A. Coll y Pí in Barcelona in 1843.

In 1944 a monument to the city founders was constructed in the plaza. In 1944 Regino Cabassa made great efforts to get the creation of a Monuments to the founders of the city in the Plaza Colon. At first there were some obstacles especially since the monument was to be built of bronze

Bronze

Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...

 and because of the war that metal was hard to come by. But finally on November 19, 1944 the monument was unveiled before Mayor Don Manuel A. Barreto.

Footnotes