Mumbai se Madrid Bombay se Barcelona
Mumbai se Madrid, Bombay se Barcelona
Updated on: 26 October,2025 07:08 AM IST | Mumbai
Meher Marfatia
In the month marking Columbus Day, we trace some of the city’s Spanish connections on wide-ranging fronts
Amin Sheikh and his wife Sara Mampel Vallve at Bombay to Barcelona Library Cafe in Marol. PIC/SAYYED SAMEER ABEDI
From conquistadors and colonisers during the Age of Discovery, to traders, priests and socio-cultural contributors in their country of adoption, the Spanish bond with Bombay has stayed special and close in a variety of ways.
When Columbus conquered Parel Say “Hola” to a fascinating part of Espana midtown. In the heart of quintessentially Maharashtrian Parel — specifically Naigaon in Dadar East — stand La Nina, La Santa Maria and La Pinta. How did Christopher Columbus’ historic ships come to christen these four-storey buildings near Bhoiwada police station?
Advocate Charmaine Bocarro from La Nina, one of a trio of Bhoiwada buildings interestingly named after Columbus’ historic ships; Tile detail of a ship from the adventurer’s voyages — commemorated as Columbus Day on October 13 — in the entranceway of the building La Pinta. File pics/ATUL KAMBLE
Erected in 1937-38 alongside rowed chawls for mill mazdoors, the trio of blocks accommodated St Xavier’s College staff. Spanish priests of that institution were fired by the spirit inspiring Columbus to helm four Spanish transatlantic maritime voyages to the Americas. The seminary in Parel from 1936, till it got shifted to Goregaon, cemented Bombay’s Jesuit-fostered education.
Advocate Charmaine Bocarro of La Nina directs me to neighbours with colourful anecdotes about cops and conquerors. A floor above her lived Khashaba Jadhav, the freestyle wrestler winning independent India the first individual Olympic medal, a bronze at the 1952 Summer Games in Helsinki, at age 27. Stung by the unfairness with which he was initially overlooked for the 1952 squad, Jadhav bagged rightful inclusion on petitioning the Maharaja of Patiala, a wrestling buff himself.
The Burma teak balustrades and banisters reveal delightful details. Fading tiles lining the entrance corridor of La Pinta are illustrated with ships on foaming waves, surrounded by seagulls and fleecy clouds. As a longtime resident says, “Once the three jewels of Parel, these buildings boast embellishments and grilles today’s masons cannot master.”
Standing with free Spain
It was a battle waged on Iberian soil. But progressive political and literary stalwarts like Nehru, Tagore, VK Krishna Menon and Mulk Raj Anand viewed the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War (when military fascists and right-wing conservatives led a bloody coup against Spain’s elected leftists) as a trailer that envisioned independent India a decade later.
Denouncing the League of Nations for failing to encourage the Republican faction championing democracy, at the 50th annual session of the Indian National Congress in December 1936 at Faizpur, Nehru announced, “We watch this struggle not merely with the sympathy of friendly outsiders, but with the painful anxieties of those who are themselves involved in it.”
Shanta Gandhi (garlanded, centre) in a dance-drama staged in support of the Republicans fighting military dictatorship in the Spanish Civil War. PIC COURTESY/RATNA PATHAK SHAH
Among leading intellectual giants, Rabindranath Tagore pleaded, in an article: “I appeal to the conscience of humanity. Help the peoples’ front in Spain, cry in a million voices ‘Halt!’ Come to the aid of democracy, to the succour of civilisation and culture.”
Mulk Raj Anand had represented India at the World Congress of Writers Against Fascism in Madrid in 1935. Travelling again to Spain two years after, he joined the predominantly Comintern-run International Brigades and met George Orwell. Sympathetic to the same side, their friendship flourished further in London.
Indians in Britain rallied around Nehru’s call. The India League there founded the Indian Committee for Food for Spain, with Feroze Gandhi as its organising secretary. Befriending him and Indira (Nehru), theatre personality and dancer Shanta Gandhi — then studying medicine in England — got acquainted with VK Krishna Menon’s “Free India” associates. She joined a dance troupe often presenting events whose proceeds went to the London-based Aid Spain Committee.
Though shaken by the reality of General Franco establishing his dictatorship regime from 1939, Nehru was convinced about the role India played. He observed, “It wasn’t Spain only, the new world was locked in with barbarian hordes and brutal violence. If I deserted them, what would I cherish in India? For what kind of freedom do we struggle?”
‘Bombay brought joy; I didn’t need Spain’
Where would language education and social welfare be without the wonderful Spanish priests who walked among us. Urged to actually be the change they wanted to see in the world, these remarkable men modestly began work here from 1921. Many more left their homeland after the Civil War — assigned to missions in South America, Japan, the Philippines and India.
Of the dozen Spanish priests whom I profiled 15 years ago, Fr Francis Juan at St Stanislaus School, Bandra, and Fr Joseph Aran at St Mary’s, Byculla, still grace the city. Fr Tony Jurschik might have been a lawyer had he not “distinctly heard God’s call” at a riverside retreat in Manresa. It was not just challenging English to study from scratch, as all Spanish missionaries had to. Stepping on desi soil, he diligently learnt Marathi and Hindi to minister to Adivasis in Dindori and Dalits in Manmad.
The treasurer of Seva Niketan in Byculla when we had met, Fr Manolo Tasso came away as a 21-year-old, to teach theology, Spanish and French. He returned only twice to Spain in his lifetime, content to keep in touch with nieces and nephews on email.
Smilingly recounting he was “fortuitously sent to India”, Fr Peter Ribes was the last Latin tutor in Bombay. From a Barcelona family of lawyers, doctors and engineers, he quietly stepped aside solo, assuring his SJ (Society of Jesus) superior of his willingness to go wherever in the world he was intended to serve as a missionary. The city of his adoption inspired a strong sense of belonging — “Bombay brought joy; I didn’t need Spain.”
Other legendary Spaniards have included Fr Henry Heras, admired for his knowledge of ancient indigenous cultures, and Fr Joachim Fuster, a memorable Director of the Institute of Counselling at St Xavier’s College. Arriving with two doctorates and a deep love for India, Fr Hermenegild Santapau became chief botanist to the government, with plant species and even a genus bearing his name: Santapauella.
Fr Ramon Nubiola remains adored by the tribals of Talasari, whose rights he tirelessly championed. When over 400 of them wept over his coffin, one said, “Open his heart and you will find the word ‘Warli’ engraved.”
Paying it forward
In a week of celebratory moments, the Diwali morning shining brightest has to be the recent one at Amin Sheikh’s library cafe, Bombay to Barcelona, in Marol. His story of grit and guts has been told earlier. But to witness firsthand the glow Amin and his beautiful family cast around friends and customers alike is something else. They have come straight from the airport, landing from Almaty where his Catalonian wife Sara Mampel Vallve is a music teacher at the Kazakhstan International School.
The moment his sparkly six-year-old son Jaan dashes in, he slips a friendly, small palm in mine, steering us importantly through the buzzy interior of his father’s pride project. Grinning when he figures his baby sister has the same name as my adult daughter, Ayesha.
With incredible courage combined with dogged determination Amin has chased near-impossible dreams. “Near”, because “impossible” is a notion he has never entertained. Not even as a slum kid turned runaway and vagrant, forced to make Dadar station his home, reduced to beg, routinely fighting beatings and other physical abuse.
This exceptional life story is shared in frank detail in his autobiography (fully drafted in capital letters on account of a minimal formal education), titled Bombay Mumbai: Life is Life, I am Because of You. Translated into 11 languages worldwide, Amin dedicates it “to Snehasadan and to every street child in the world”. Self-published and hawked at city traffic signals, at first this fared better in Spain and France.
Amin constantly expresses deep gratitude to Fr Placido Fonseca, Br Molines and Fr Tony Fonseca of the Snehasadan orphanage at Chakala in Andheri East, for the loving care with which they tended to the lost boys and girls of his rough growing up years. He says, “Like those amazing Jesuits at Snehasadan, I have the greatest respect for Spanish priests like Fr Federico Sopena, Fr Peter Ribes and Fr Javier. What examples they have been for our country. Spain for me holds much solidarity.”
Scavenging for food from garbage cans while dodging beatings at various jobs, from a teashop hand to boot polish boy, after some very secure years at Snehasadan, Amin was gifted an experience that proved the ultimate turning point. A flight ticket to Barcelona from adman Eustace Fernandes, co-creator of the Amul Girl with Sylvester daCunha, for whom he worked as a Man Friday.
Returning with high hopes of realising lofty dreams, he decided to use funds generated from his book sales as seed money to start Bombay to Barcelona, a safe space offering food and employment to one-time street boys and girls like him. It floats on a pervasively cheerful vibe. Customers can munch on B2B chicken sandwiches and minced mushroom vada pao, topped by crisp churros with dense chocolate sauce.
Or simply sip a frothy coffee and soak in a good read from piled books on shelves alongside plants. Beside hang rows of shirts and trinkets, fashioned by the trained youngsters who wait at tables — warmly welcoming, politely attentive.
“The B2B kids are my real heroes,” Amin is clear. “Do what you want but no one has the right to play with any child’s life.”
Author-publisher Meher Marfatia writes fortnightly on everything that makes her love Mumbai and adore Bombay. You can reach her at meher.marfatia@mid-day.com/www.meher marfatia.com
