John Lennon Statue in A Coruña's Méndez Núñez Gardens

The John Lennon statue in A Coruña (La Coruña), called the Monumento a John Lennon or estatua de John Lennon locally, is a bronze by José Luis Ribas on the Cantones side of the Jardines de Méndez Núñez. It was unveiled on 7 May 2005 after a campaign by local Beatles collector Chema Ríos.

A collector's idea, backed by the mayor

Lennon never had a documented connection to A Coruña. The statue exists because of José María "Chema" Ríos, a gynecologist in the city and a serious Beatles collector whose home holds items that once belonged to Lennon and Yoko Ono. Ríos pushed for a monument, and the city council under mayor Francisco Vázquez took it on. Vázquez presented the finished bronze on 7 May 2005.

English-language guides tend to say July 2005. El Correo Gallego and the local sculpture blog Esculturas en A Coruña both give 7 May.

Local press called A Coruña the third city to put up a Lennon statue, after Liverpool and Havana. Treat that as a newspaper line rather than a census. Some sites go further and say the city has one of only three Lennon statues in Spain, which nothing we found supports. For the two cities it was compared with, see the Liverpool statue on Mathew Street and the Havana bench in John Lennon Park.

He didn't stop at Lennon. When Ringo Starr played A Coruña in 2018, Ríos handed him a statue of Ringo by the sculptor Álvaro de la Vega.

The Galician thread: a housekeeper at the Dakota

When El Correo Gallego looked for a Galician link to Lennon, the one it found was Rosaura López Lorenzo from Pontevedra. She kept house for Lennon and Ono at the Dakota in New York from 1976 to 1980 and later wrote about those years in her book En casa de John Lennon. Esculturas en A Coruña adds that a woman from Pontevedra who had worked in Lennon's home was at the 2005 inauguration, though it doesn't give her name.

Julia Baird's ongoing link with the city

Julia Baird, Lennon's half-sister, came to A Coruña in person for the May 2005 unveiling at the invitation of local residents. (A few online guides claim she only sent a video message from Liverpool. She was there.)

She kept coming back. In 2019 Baird filmed a promotional video for the Camino Inglés, the English Way pilgrim route. In January 2020 she presented the video and her memoir at the city's Teatro Colón, and told the audience that A Coruña reminded her of Liverpool.

Size, pose and the Epiphone guitar

Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons both list the bronze as 120 cm high and 126 cm wide, and Commons files it among statues of seated men. A piece that's slightly wider than it is tall doesn't fit the 1.8-meter standing Lennon described on some visitor sites.

The guitar in his hands is modeled on his Epiphone Casino. Commons credits the casting to the Arte Bronce Fundición foundry, and the sculptor, José Luis Ribas Fernández, was born in 1948.

You may also read that the base carries a Spanish line from "Imagine." We couldn't find any source for an inscription, so don't go looking for one.

The guitar neck that keeps getting broken

The Epiphone is the weak spot. Two local sculpture blogs say its neck was found broken, one dating it to 2010 and the other to 2013. Neither points to a news report, so it could be two incidents or one with a wrong year. If you want a close-up of the guitar, see what shape it's in before you plan the shot.

The 2022 petition to remove it

In May 2022 the gender-equality group Genus Aequalitatem asked the mayor to take the statue down, citing Lennon's own admission that he had abused his first wife. The group called a protest at the statue for 25 November 2022. When that day came the council still hadn't answered, and the bronze stayed put. The English-language guides we looked at skip this entirely.

Around the statue in Méndez Núñez

Lennon is on the Cantones side of the gardens, and he has company. The Palco de la Música bandstand was designed in 1884 by municipal architect Juan de Ciórraga, though what stands now is a 1985 replica. The modernist Kiosco Alfonso (1912–13, by Rafael González Villar) is used as an exhibition hall. There are also monuments to Galician cultural figures by sculptors such as Agustín Querol and Francisco Asorey, so it's worth walking the whole garden rather than stopping at Lennon and leaving.

For other Lennon statues around the world, browse the memorials list or the map.