An undated portrait of Christopher Columbus from the Naval Museum in Madrid
© AFP/NM-HOMADRID (AFP) - The argument over whether Columbus was a source for good or a wealth-crazed egoist who ran roughshod over native American culture when he and his fellows came ashore in 1492 has fuelled interest in the anniversary.
A major concert was televised from the main square of the city of Valladolid in the centre of Spain, where the navigator died aged 55, almost forgotten, on May 20, 1506.
A church mass and the unveiling of a new statue were set to follow later at Rabida Monastery in the southern town of Palos near Huelva, a key departure point on the voyage that took Columbus across the Atlantic Ocean.
It was there 1485 that Fransciscan monks received an explorer seeking funds for a project to reach the Indies by sailing westwards.
But otherwise the anniversary was given low key treatment, with no national government or other official events.
Meanwhile experts from France, Italy and Spain are comparing DNA samples from the explorer's elder son, Hernando, whose remains lie in Seville cathedral, with those of the hundreds who believe they are Colombus's descendants.
Results of the DNA quest to establish whether Columbus had in fact been born in Genoa, as tradition has it, have been delayed, said Spanish historian Marcial Castro Sanchez, coordinator of the international investigation.
Speaking at a seminar of 100 Colombian specialists meeting at Valladolid, historian Nito Verdera claimed that Columbus in fact hailed from Catalonia in north-eastern Spain. Others have said he was from the northwestern Spanish province of Galicia, or from Venice, or Corsica, or even possibly from Portugal.
The DNA investigation, according to Castro Sanchez, had already revealed that the explorer's remains were in fact buried in the southern Spanish city of Seville and not in the Dominican Republic as claimed by the Caribbean country.
An oratorio by Colombian composer Blas Emilio Atehortua called "Lifting Anchor Towards the New World," was set Saturday to receive its world premiere at Valladolid by the symphony orchestras of Colombia and the Dominican Republic.
Saturday also saw the opening in Valladolid of a new "Cristobal Colon" museum devoted to the explorer.
The anniversary was also given muted treatment in Italy and Latin America, where the genocide of indigenous peoples and the annihilation of age-old civilisations is known as the Black Legend of Christopher Columbus' "discovery" of the New World.
But a descendant, Cristobal Colon de Carvajal Duke of Veragua, complained recently that modern society "denigrates" his ancestor by believing in the "Black Legend" of colonial cruelty, "the bad side" of the Conquistadors who claim to have discovered the New World.
Biographers say Columbus was a great navigator but also a man out for glory and wealth, who did not hesitate to sell the local Caribbean population into slavery.
The determination of clerics such as Dominican priest Bartolome de Las Casas to document acts of great brutality after Columbus arrived in 1492 helped create the "leyenda negra" (Black Legend).
In decades following Columbus' arrival, between 12 and 20 million native Americans were killed or fell victim to diseases brought in by the Spanish.
Ancient civilisations such as the Maya, the Aztecs or the Inca were destroyed, while the continent saw its mineral riches pillaged.
Bitterness over the destruction lives on, 500 years after Columbus' death.
After two months aboard his flag ship, the Santa Maria, Columbus and his fellow voyagers disembarked in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492, so "discovering" the New World they thought was Asia.
Three more voyages would follow but two years after the last one Columbus lay dead, rich but ignored by his contemporaries.
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