Alana Casanova-Burgess

I immediately called a friend and we came here, like really, really early, just sort of to see it.

I needed to see this statue on the ground.

Rafael Capó García leads Memoria de Colonial, a group that gives counter-narrative history tours.

It was me and probably three other people interested in what had happened.

And then you had the press, you had municipal employees outraged with how you could deface this monument.

Rafael already knew the statue really well.

He used to be a high school history teacher, and he'd bring his students to Old San Juan for field trips, teaching them to question whether violent colonizers were really heroes and champions who deserved to be on a pedestal.

So when he saw Ponce de León lying on the ground...

He felt hopeful?

I was.

I was hopeful.

I was excited that we were going to finally have these conversations, much-needed conversations.

But that conversation about who really represents Puerto Ricans and Puerto Rican-ness...

It didn't seem like there was going to be time for it to happen, because by 8.30 a.m., Mayor Romero had already made a promise in interviews.

He sounded confident, even breezy, standing next to the empty pedestal, speaking with a reporter from Nuevo Día.

He expected the statue to be back up that very same day.

So the municipal government had to run, had to hustle to get this statue up because in their minds, they couldn't allow the King of Spain to visit San Juan and see this symbol of Spanish heritage on the ground.

Did you think that they would be able to do it?

Imagine, like, it takes them forever to fix a pothole, right?

It was actually Mayor Romero who acknowledged the pothole problem that morning.