The rain in Spain

Storm Berenice dumped a load of water on Madrid earlier today and the timing could hardly have been more apposite.

Celebrations were being held to mark Fiesta Nacional España (Spanish National Day), with a full military parade attended by King Felipe VI, Queen Letizia, Leonora, Princess of Asturias, the Prime Minister and a host of politicians. Unfortunately, it rained on their parade. In British terms the ceremony is a cross between Trooping the Colour and Remembrance Sunday, with full royal and military panoply, but is much more problematic than either of those occasions.

The British equivalents are not without their controversies, of course, but the Spanish event, a relatively modern successor (2019) to the original Día de la Hispanidad (Hispanic Day) held to mark the arrival of Columbus in the Americas on 12 October 1492, carries with it a lot of colonial baggage. Columbus Day is still marked in the USA but, with civic statues of Christopher Columbus increasingly becoming the focus of anti-colonial protests by First Nation campaigners, one wonders how long it will be before Americans decide on a name-change too. 

Tensions within Spain itself were apparent at the Madrid ceremony today. An anti-monarchist protest was audible in the background of the TV coverage and the attendance of the Catalan president, socialist Salvador Illa, for the first time in fourteen years was a reminder of the struggles for political independence within the country. Spanish Day is becoming increasingly unpopular in those Spanish regions which have strong or growing republican or independence aspirations.

The Canary Islands is one of those territories and they have strong, though not necessarily welcome, associations with Columbus. He spent a few weeks in the archipelago on his 1492 voyage to discover a passage to the Indies, re-provisioning in Gran Canaria and setting sail again from La Gomera, allegedly finding time to have an affaire with Beatriz de Bobadilla, the wife of the governor. The colonial history of the islands is not a happy one and the brutal treatment of their indigenous inhabitants set the trend for Spain's later behaviour throughout its Empire.

The miserable weather at today's celebration seemed in many ways ominous. The Spanish flag is normally delivered for hoisting by a parachutist but the inclement conditions made that impossible. It was instead presented by a detail of drenched foot soldiers and run up the flagole to hang limply in the moisty murk. In so many ways it was a symbolically loaded occasion, and not entirely in the way the Spanish state must have intended.

It was, both literally and metaphorically, a damp squib.

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