13.10.2014 - 10:34
On Sunday, the Spanish Unionists met in Barcelona to celebrate the traditional ‘Hispanitat’, in commemoration of 12 October 1492, the date on which the expedition led by Christopher Columbus reached the island of Guanahani (Bahamas). This year, with the independence consultation called for within a month, the Catalan Civil Society platform organised a demonstration to stress the Spanish nature of Catalonia more than ever. However they did not reach the objective, there were not more participants than previous years. Barcelona’s police counted 30,000 people, a similar number to last year’s same demonstration. Contrastant, a group specialised in counting crowds, said about 16,000 people participated.
Video of the demonstration:
The organisation had called the left-wing unionists, but only received support from extreme right-wing groups such as ‘Plataforma per Catalunya’, ‘Casal Tramuntana’, the ‘MSR’ and ‘Falange Española y de las JONS’. The Unionist parties of the Parliament of Catalonia, the ‘Partido Popular’ and ‘Ciutadans’, also participated in the demonstration.
Last year, with the process of independence in full flight, this organisation managed to gather also about 30,000 people. Alícia Sánchez-Camacho, the leader of the Partido Popular in Catalonia, the party in government in Madrid, was portrayed alongside people with their arms raised in a Francoist sign (as shown in the video on the right).
Until a few years ago, in Barcelona there were only meetings of small Nazi and Francoist groups and normally in the area of Montjuïc. This year, the ‘Democracia Nacional’ fascist group has made the call.
The rejection of many Catalans
The commemoration of 12 October is criticised both for its direct link to colonialism and the genocide in America, and for the Spanish national and militaristic nature of the celebration. For over twenty years, on 12 October the groups expressing solidarity with the indigenous peoples have come out against the national day and political parties such as ‘Esquerra’ generally show their rejection of the festival with popular gatherings and meals.
For many years too, antifascist groups have demonstrated in Barcelona against the gathering of small Nazi and Francoist groups.
In recent years, certain companies, institutions, municipalities, schools and entities have begun not to have a holiday on 12 October, ‘a day on which there is nothing to celebrate’.
12 October, the controversial Spanish National Festival
On 12 October, the Spanish state celebrates its festival with a great military parade as the central event. This is a date full of controversy. Today it is called the Day of the National Festival, but for a large part of Franco’s time, it was also called ‘Hispanitat’ Day and originally the Festival of the Race. And it was and is not only observed in Spain, but also in a few American countries under very different names, in commemoration of the beginning of the Spanish colonisation of America.
In Argentina for example, it is called the Day of Respect for Cultural Diversity, and in Chile the Day of the Meeting of the Two Worlds, whereas in Nicaragua and Venezuela, the 12 October is the Day of the Indigenous Resistance.
Following requests sent by American hispanists at the end of the 19th-century, King Alfonso XIII of Spain established the Day of the Race in 1918, a name which was maintained until 1958, when it was changed for the Day of ‘Hispanitat’ (or the day of Spanish influence). The date of the 12 October, officialised by a Borbon monarch, followed unequally by the Republic and exalted by Francoism (alongside 18 July), was ratified as the Day of the Spanish National Festival by the PSOE Socialist party in 1987.
