Michael Coy
TO non-Spaniards, it sounds slightly odd – “El Día de la Hispanidad” (‘The Day of Spanishness’), but October 12 is an important landmark on the national calendar.
Really, it’s a combination of various minor feast days, clustered together to excuse yet another day off work!
It was on October 12, 1492 that Christopher Columbus sighted land, and as a result the New World entered western history.
It’s also the Day of the Spanish Language (there are 600 million Spanish-speakers in the world) and no fewer than two religious feast days dedicated to the Virgin (Pilar and Zapopan). If you know a Spanish woman named ‘Pilar’, congratulate her – it’s her ‘santos’, or second birthday. To complete the set, October 12 is also the Day of the Armed Forces.
Why is Monday 13 thrown in? To make a ‘bridge’, of course. The Spanish custom is, if a holiday falls on a Sunday, we’re all entitled to take the Monday off, so that we don’t lose the benefit. (The previous Friday, 10 October, is also at risk!)
By October 12, 1492 Columbus and his men, sailing west in their three little ships, had been at sea for five weeks. Though Columbus himself was sure that land would appear soon, his crewmen were getting nervous. They were short of drinking-water and decent food.
The previous night they’d seen a flock of birds, and Columbus reasoned that this must be a good sign – usually, birds make their nests on land, so solid ground can’t be far away. A crewman, Rodrigo from Seville, shouted “Land ahoy!” at two in the morning. The Americas had been discovered, and the destiny of the human race would now follow a radically different course.
Columbus was not averse to a bit of cheating. The Spanish king had offered a reward to the first man who spotted terra firma – so when Columbus made a diary entry for October 12, he said that he had walked the deck that night, unable to sleep – and had seen a camp fire in the distance, an hour before the shout.
Thus Rodrigo was swindled out of his prize by his unscrupulous captain, who claimed to have spotted land first!
There have been many conflicts between Britain and Spain over the centuries, but perhaps the most absurd of all of them was The War of Jenkins’ Ear, which came to a close on October 12, 1748. Britain was trying (let’s not beat about the bush) to steal the Spanish empire of the Caribbean and what is now the USA.
Spanish coastguards boarded a British ship off the coast of Florida, and there was a bit of a brawl. It is claimed that the British captain, Robert Jenkins, had his ear cut off in the tussle.
Back in London, Jenkins appeared in the House of Commons to display his wound, and to stir up anti-Spanish feeling. What followed was a nine-year war which achieved nothing.
The British had hoped to be granted ownership of Florida as compensation for the skipper’s ear, but it never happened. A generation later, Britain gained control of Florida, but only as a ‘swap’ – Spain got Cuba. By 1783, Florida was Spanish again.
It was only after the collapse of Spanish power in the New World in the 1820s that the ‘new kid on the block’ – the USA – moved in. Florida finally became the 27th state of the USA in 1845.
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