A statue of a Spanish conquistador has controversially been reinstated in the centre of Peru’s capital city, bucking the anti-colonialist global trend.

The decision to refurbish and return Francisco Pizarro on his horse was met with a backlash from indigenous people who have campaigned for relics of colonial Spain to be removed.

Statues have been toppled around the world in recent years, from slave owners in the UK to Confederate leaders in the US.

But conservative leaders of Lima said they wanted to “vindicate the pre-Hispanic and Spanish past” by reinstating the statue of Pizarro, who conquered Peru in 1533 and led a bloody conquest against the Incas to help found the city two years later.

Rafael López Aliaga, the mayor, rededicated the statue, which was removed in 2003 and moved to a park next to train tracks outside the city centre, during a ceremony marking the 490th anniversary of Lima’s founding.

“History is made, like our life, between light and shadow, but it is never definitively concluded,” he said.