I was on my own in Barcelona when I decided to go up the Columbus Monument. That’s how I know it was a bad idea. Rick was back in Oregon, so he wasn’t there to patiently remind me for the umpteenth time that I don’t do well with “the tippy-tops.”
Of course, at the moment I decided to head “upstairs,” I wasn’t afraid of heights. I was on the ground looking up at an improbably thin column with a small globe and a giant pointing man on top, and thinking, "Why shouldn’t I? Also, how did they fit an elevator in that tiny column? Now that’s an engineering marvel, I tell you what.” I talk to myself a lot when I’m alone, which often leads to making unfortunate choices.
The Mirador de Colom—Columbus’s lookout—is one of those attractions that practically dares you to bother. It’s a 197-foot-tall, fluted column built in 1888, topped by a 24-foot bronze Columbus who is allegedly pointing toward the New World. He’s not. Just like in real life, he got it wrong. We think he may be gesturing vaguely toward his hometown of Genoa, though why he’s in Spain doing it is a bit murky.
In any case, you can go up it. There’s a two-person elevator—for a guest and an elevator operator—so it is very much a solo mission. The elevator rises slowly inside the column, and the operator only speaks Spanish, which means you have a lot of time to begin to regret your decision while staring at 150-year-old rivets glide slowly past.
And then, just like that, with only the smallest of unnerving bumps, you arrive and step out onto a donut-shaped viewing platform with a domed roof and a waist-high barrier, roughly 18 feet in diameter, with a small sign, “Maximum occupancy 8 people.”
The friendly elevator attendant waved a bit as if to explain where to find things up there, even though it seemed fairly self-explanatory before saying something like, "Call me when you're ready to go back down." Or something. It was Spanish. Fast Spanish. And I was busy trying to process how far my brains would splatter if I fell 197 feet.
Anyway, he left, and I was on my own. I stepped forward to take a photo and realized the floor slopes outward—slightly, just enough to feel like a terrible prank. I didn’t scream, I swear. I did let out a manly grunt of surprise.
I pretty much saw everything there was to see in about five minutes. Which is when I thought to myself, “Wait, what? I’m supposed to call him? How?” Which led to a fair amount of increasingly desperate rapping on the elevator door, “Perdon, señor…Señor? Mister Elevator Man? Hello? I’m ready to get off this death trap now!”
Silence. There was no one else there. No elevator ding, no murmuring tourists, no mechanical hum—just me and the horrifying realization that I had forgotten to ask how to summon Elevator Man. I became convinced I was going to be stuck up there until the whole thing simply fell over from age, and my legacy is reduced to a Wikipedia footnote, or someone downstairs thought, "Hey, didn't a squirrely American go upstairs, like, 4 hours ago?" There's not a lot of foot traffic for this monument, by the way. But eventually, after roughly 150 years, the elevator did return. And I appreciate your concern.
As a viewpoint, the Columbus Monument is…fine. The harbor looks nice. You can see up La Rambla. The statue’s feet are right above you, so if you’re into historical podiatry, you’re in luck. But the best part might be the sheer absurdity of the whole thing. You go up a skinny column to stand under a guy who misidentified the continent he landed on and still proudly points the wrong direction, despite what tourists and postcards would have you believe. Maybe he’s just encouraging people to travel in general? We’ll never know.
I would not recommend this experience to anyone who enjoys peace of mind, stable surfaces, or exit strategies. But otherwise, yeah, do it. Knock yourself out.
But maybe leave a note for your loved ones.
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