In life and death. Avi, the emblematic elephant of the Barcelona Zoo

Abstract

Born around 1875, the Indian elephant Avi, spent the first part of his life in the private collection of animals of the wealthy Barcelonese banker Lluís Martí-Codolar. In 1892, Martí-Codolar sold his collection to the city of Barcelona. It became the nucleus of the Barcelona zoo. Soon Avi became the most popular animal of the new zoo drawing large crowds. There are numerous photos of the pachyderm, many of them showing him in "interaction" with the visitors. Avi also figured in a number of caricatures in the Barcelonese press often in conjunction with political criticism. Avi died in May 1914 yet his second career a a public animal was only about to begin. The taxidermist Lluís Soler i Pujol was charged to mount the skeleton of the elephant as well as his hide. For the remainder of the twentieth century Avi's remains were exhibited in the Natural History Museum of Catalonia. This paper will use Avi's biography to explore the cultures of natural history of Barcelona in the late nineteenth and in the twentieth centuries. Due to the numerous traces Avi left in different media and the collective memory of the Barcelonese he represents a form of popular natural history. This paper will discuss how this elephant was reconfigured, renamed, relocated, repaired and remembered. Avi was more than just an object of knowledge. He oscillated between zoos and natural history museums, between entertainment and education, between exotic animal, "emblem of Barcelona", "friend of children" and not least as an "exemplary Catalan", well behaved and patient.