Spain sends a stuffed body back to Africa

The stuffed body of a spear-carrying 19th-century bushman, whose display in a Spanish museum sparked international protest, will be sent home to Botswana to be buried. The exhibit has been on display since 1916 at a museum in Banyoles, a town 70 miles northeast of Barcelona. The Spanish government and the town signed an agreement on Friday to return the body to the southern African nation in the next couple of months. “It was not very appropriate to exhibit a human being of the black race in a Western and developed city,” Banyoles Mayor Pedro Bosch said after the signing. Some African countries, the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity complained that the exhibit was racist. Two years ago, the body was removed by order of the Foreign Ministry to prevent a diplomatic incident. A joint statement by the Spanish government and the town said the body had been removed out of “respect to the thousands of African immigrants who live in this town.”