This November marks sixty years since the arrival of Snowflake in Barcelona. Hunters sold the then-gorilla infant for 15,000 pesetas to the primatologist Jordi Sabater Pi, and he was transferred first to Ikunde, the center established a few kilometers from Bata (Equatorial Guinea) which supplied collections for various institutions linked to the Barcelona City Council, and then to the Catalan capital. He became an icon and an endearing figure, but behind it there are also some darker episodes linked to Spain's colonial past.

Between April and May 1954, one of the most ambitious expeditions of the Ethnological Museum of Barcelona, inaugurated in 1949, was organized in the protectorate of Morocco. The sculptor Eudald Serra, who was part of the expedition, wanted to model a nude bust, but local law and morals made it impossible to find any woman who would pose. Serra did not give up; he simply looked where colonial power was absolute. With the collaboration of the Spanish authorities, he visited prisons, reformatories, and "public houses." The use of sex workers as models was systematic and deliberate in many campaigns, taking advantage of their extreme vulnerability in a context of colonial domination.