Alana Casanova-Burgess

And I looked at my friend, I was like, well, fuck it.

And when Rafael got up there, he did the Ponce de Leon pose.

A finger in the air and a hand on the hip.

I was definitely trolling.

I had no intention of staying the entire day.

And yeah, I stayed there maybe for an hour.

It was long enough to make some news that a protester had delayed the installation of the statue.

They took it very seriously.

It was getting close to the deadline.

Laura Perez is a journalist based in San Juan and an editor for La Brega.

She had been reporting for a wire service that day and had been in the plaza for nearly five hours.

It was 4.45, an hour to go.

People actually started screaming at them.

The riot police marched forward, forcing people out of their way and forming a line around the pedestal, creating space for the municipal workers who had just arrived with the repaired statue.

Municipal workers brought a couple of cherry pickers with them.

They're like a small crane with a basket on the end.

They had wrapped yellow straps around the now intact statue, so it looked like Ponce was wearing a ziplining harness.

He was hanging from a crane while workers in the baskets and on the ground tried to position him on the pedestal.

There was a live stream, so we could all watch through splayed fingers.

He was at an angle as though he was really ziplining and they couldn't quite place him as he swung around.