THREE chunks of the Berlin Wall have been on display in a Madrid park for exactly 29 years – but the day before they were unveiled, council workers started cleaning the original graffiti off them by mistake.
Saturday was the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the start of the reunification of the 'two Germanies', on November 9, 1989 – a moment for great celebration across Europe, including in Spain, according to José María Álvarez de Manzano.
Now 82, he was mayor of Madrid between 1991 and 2003 and, the year before he gained power, helped out his predecessor, Agustín Rodríguez Sahagún, in setting up the pieces of the wall in what is now known as Berlin Park.
“From the start, it had a tremendous impact,” admits Álvarez de Manzano.
“So many people went to see them out of curiosity.
“It was really intriguing, knowing we had a piece of the Berlin Wall right here in Madrid, and the people of Madrid were fully in support of the idea of what the wall's coming down really meant.”
The three pieces, now made into a fountain (pictured above), cost nine million pesetas to acquire and ship over - €54,000 – and the city hall was due to cut the red tape on them in a public ceremony on November 9, 1990, the day of the first anniversary.
But on November 8, 1990, Álvarez del Manzano – who was deputy mayor to Sahagún – got a panicked call from the head of city cleaning services.
Council technicians were, reportedly, scrubbing off the graffiti, believing it to have been the recent work of local vandals rather than the historic spray-painted messages left by the separated citizens of East and West Germany.
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