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

 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 owner Pedro José Cohucelo, unearthed by local historian Ismael Almagro and published on his blog, is a fine example of the sentiments which certain Spaniards, evidently smarting from the country's diminished role in the world following the loss of its colonies, were feeling:

Raise your hats, citizens!  It's Columbus Day.  Burn the lamp of reverent enthusiasm on the altars of the Fatherland; may the flowers of our inextinguishable love perfume the altar of our History, and the Hispanic soul sing the hymn of brotherhood.  Today is the day when the blood of the noble Hesperia boils in the immense lagoon of two worlds, showing  the world that there are races which do not perish, weaken or expire, thanks the immortality of its origin and the omnipotence of its faith.

The adverse wave of fate cannot extinguish [the Spaniard's] energetic good looks nor tame the impulses of his valiant heart ... he smiles and compassionately rejects the selfish onslaught of his rivals.

There follows a lengthy comparison of Spain's situation with the fall of the Roman Empire, summarised thus:  

Great peoples, when they are razed by force, do not face eternal death because their exploits will be a perpetual lesson that will mark the paths of victory for successive generations.

Then come several paragraphs extolling the virtues of Spanish colonialism:

I have seen my race, this glorious Race of Titans, feel the holy ecstasy of pure patriarchal love, lulled by the monorhythmic rhapsody of hope ... I have admired her armed with slings in open field facing the hordes of the barbarian Alaric…  I have seen her exchange the iron armour of the warrior for the toga of the jurist who legislates with utmost wisdom in the first charters ... 

I have seen my Race merge in glorious rapture with the semi-divine soul of Columbus and the superhuman soul of the Catholic Isabella, to launch itself into the sea of prowess, and in the likeness of God, rise like a colossus that amazes by its gigantic proportions over the mysterious waves of the Atlantic, and pronounce the sovereign fiat that brings forth a new world, a shining pearl that brightened the fleurons of the crown of Spain.

And so on. You get the gist. 

The master race arrives to enlighten the pagans

Pedro ends on a flourish:

If the sun that shines in the heights sets in the political dominions of Spain, not so the sun of her loves or her hopes; that this sun, sinking into the twilight of national life, will once again illuminate the world of Christopher Columbus, to say to those brothers with the luminous language of his glory: America! Hispanic America! The mother who incubated your prowess in her womb, is tearful, dejected and eager to tighten more and more the bonds of her love for you. The vile men who ruled their destinies, wanted to undo their History by dint of indignities and infamies. Today he seeks in his daughters the regenerative and fruitful support to triumph over his assiduous and secular enemies. 

A few days before the date of festival in 1919 he wrote urging the Alcalá town hall to splash out and celebrate, but his pleas appear to have fallen on deaf ears since no expenditure on the event is recorded in the minutes for that year.

Today there are probably more demonstrations against Spanish colonialism than for it, and in Alcalá the puente de Pilar is little more than a half-term break.  Unless your name is Pilar of course, in which case it is your Saint's Day and you are entitled to party.

Military parade in Madrid

Protesters in Barcelona