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España First: the racist origins of Spain's Fiesta Nacional

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 Today, 12 October, is a public holiday in Spain.  It is the date when Columbus (allegedly) discovered the Americas, and Spain reaches out to its former colonies to celebrate the notion of Spanishness.  It's also the day of Our Lady of the Pillar (aka Pilar), patron of the armed forces and the Guardia Civil, hence the grand military parades which take place on the streets of Madrid and other large cities on this date every year. Many people assume that the festival was invented by General Franco, and he certainly took advantage of it to promote his particular brand of nationalism.  But it dates back to 1914, just sixteen years after Spain lost the final fragments of its once vast empire.  It was dreamed up by Faustino Rodríguez San Pedro, Spanish politician and President of the Unión Iberoamericana, and declared a public holiday by the King in 1918 under the name Fiesta de la Raza - Festival of Race.   The Spanish Empire around 1600 An article published in 1918 by Alcalá newspaper

Reflections on Alcalá by a visitor from abroad

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An American gentleman penned these lines during a recent stay in Alcalá de los Gazules, and has kindly allowed me to share them with you. Gazpacho The social climbers won't leave simple fare alone; have somehow to corrupt and claim it as their own, endow it with Privilege and Prestige, attempt to slide it out of reach. They've taken guacamole, dead easy and good (ripe avocado, chopped onion, squeeze lemon, dash salt, mash with fork) to come up with versions that hinge on this or that: a blender, paprika, sour cream, capers... till fancy and high-strung, it's no longer for just anyone. They've done all they can to appropriate gazpacho. The next time you pay through the nose for a bowl, take time to reflect that as good a gazpacho's as ever been made happened 80 years back at a camp in the cork oak-forested hills northwest of Algeciras where a crew of corcheros weeks absent from home soaked their leftover bread in a basin with water, added garlic, olive oil, salt. Wh

Fermín Salvochea (Cadiz 1848-1907), Republican and Anarchist

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Now and again you come across people who spend their lives fighting for magnificent but futile causes, and their names fade from the pages of history. Salvochea was one of those. He was committed to social justice for the labouring classes at a time when they had few rights and no political voice. The 19th century in Spain was marked by conflict between conservatives who supported the status quo, where the monarchy and the Catholic Church had absolute power, and liberals who wanted reform and a voice for the emerging middle class. Those at the bottom of the pile were largely ignored by both parties. Salvochea began by believing that social change could come through the existing political system, but towards the end of the century when the poor were still dying of hunger he changed tack and supported the anarchist idea that workers must take matters into their own hands and bring about change by whatever means were available to them. He died a frustrated and disillusioned man, his