Spain’s national holiday, Coloniality of Power, and Vivir Adentro y En Contra
Día de la Hispanidad, Día de la Raza and Fiesta Nacional de España
Spain’s national holiday is the 12th of October to commemorate the day Columbus “discovered” the Americas. It’s characterised by a military parade in the capital, broadcast on national television and radio, during which the Spanish flag is hoisted in the presence of the royal family. There are no major celebrations in other important cities around the country or held by other national institutions for the public. In short, it is a militarised celebration concentrated around the capital.
This celebration did not spring up immediately after 1492. Spain started marking the occasion in 1892 on the 400th anniversary of this “discovery”. The Spanish monarchy decided to commemorate the date as it lost colonies and clung to power on the international stage. A decree, signed by the Queen, declared it a “national holiday”.
It was not until 1913 that it was renamed Fiesta de la Raza, the result of former minister Faustino Rodríguez-San Pedro’s efforts. He intended to “externalise the spiritual intimacy existing between the discovering and civilising Nation and those formed in American soil”. This tradition lasted for 40 years.
Ever since then, a debate emerged on whether this date should be officially called Día de la Hispanidad. However, the 12th of October only formally adopted this name in the late 1950s under Francisco Franco, the fascist dictator.
In 1987, much after Franco’s death and Spain’s transition to democracy, the socialist president renamed the date to Fiesta Nacional de España (Spain’s National Holiday). Although the official title of the celebration of October 12 is Spain’s National Holiday, the idea of Día de la Hispanidad remains instilled in the public imagination and many Spaniards still refer to the holiday as such.
All of this to say, this national holiday has gone through many rebrands.
Aníbal Quijano, Coloniality of Power and glorifying Spain’s colonial history
The prominent Peruvian sociologist, Aníbal Quijano, wrote about the coloniality of power. For him, coloniality of power is a framework of power that produced and continuously relies on the “idea of race”.
This form of power defines non-Europeans by their “nature” or their “biology”, instead of their histories of “struggles for power”. In other words, under coloniality non-European communities are defined by their race.
When the conquistadors first arrived in the Americas they did not ask themselves who the Indigenous peoples were, instead, they asked themselves what these people were, questioning their humanity. This ideology marked the formation of what Anibal Quijano calls the “coloniality of power”. This form of power emerged when the conquistadors first stepped foot in the Americas.
From that moment on, a framework was established that prioritised domination over understanding, reshaping the relationship between the colonisers and the colonised. The caste system that Spain imposed on the Americas illustrates the importance placed on race by Spain’s colonial administration.
This coloniality of power, based on the idea of race, justified institutionalised inequality, slavery and forced labour that upheld extractivist economies, and the complete erasure of Indigenous cultures, ways of life and knowledge systems. There was a policy of forced cultural assimilation and annihilation, paired with the forced evangelisation of the people and territories in Abya Yala which relied on the Spanish Inquisition and missionaries.
Celebrating Spain’s national holiday on the 12th of October applauds, glorifies and distorts the horrors of Spain’s colonial history. By colloquially referring to this holiday as Día de la Hispanidad, we are invoking an image of sisterhood, companionship and shared heritage that sanitises this brutality.
We have options…
Simply put, Spain’s national holiday does not have to “coincide” with the day Columbus mistook the Bahamas for India. The day we allocate as our national holiday reflects our values and our national founding story or founding myth if you will. We could choose another day.
In fact, during the transition period to democracy from Franco’s military dictatorship in the late 70s and early 80s, there was an ongoing debate about this exact subject.
There were important political forces – among them the socialist and democratic groups, the Comisiones Obreras trade union and the Communist Party – that debated and some even proposed the 6th of December as our national day. This date was chosen to commemorate the passing of the new constitution in 1978 that declared Spain a democracy.
Other dates have been proposed, including the more fringe option of March 19th which references the Spanish rebellion against Napoleon in the early 19th century.
The 19th of March 1812 was the year that the ‘Pepa’ Constitution was passed. Marking this date as Spain’s national holiday would commemorate the reduced power of the monarchy, the separation of powers, and the principle that Sovereignty lies with the citizens. At this time Spain abolished feudalism, enshrined equality amongst those born in mainland Spain and the ‘Americas’, and ended the Spanish Inquisition. These changes were short-lived, and throughout the 19th and 20th century, the country oscillated between republics, absolutist monarchies, fascist dictatorships, and back to monarchic democracies.
Ultimately, choosing this date would embrace the values that this constitution brought and celebrate this watershed moment. It would also memorialise a change in Spain’s trajectory from a colonialist country with centralised power and inequalities enshrined in law and all major institutions, to a country that starts to align itself with more inclusive and equitable values.
I do not have concrete conclusions on what date I believe Spain’s national holiday should be – what date would be the most unifying or create social cohesion, be sensitive to the various buoying national identities in the country, or be most reflective of the values I believe Spain should champion.
I also acknowledge that these dates have limitations. Spain even after the 19th of March 1812 was not precisely the epitome of equality, equity, freedom, or communal living. Additionally, many people have taken issue with the 1978 constitution being outdated because it declared Spain a monarchic democracy.
My point here is that continuing to have the 12th of October as Spain’s national day is a choice, and continues to be a choice; we have other options.
As Jose-Enrique de Hayala, a defence analyst and retired brigadier general, explains, most countries “celebrate their national day in relation to their birth as a nation, or the birth of the regime they are now under”. Ultimately, for me, Spain needs to do some soul-searching about what national narrative it wants to tell itself, what values it wants to be defined by and whether it will continue identifying with the atrocities committed during colonialism.
Abya Yala and Living Within and Against
Aníbal Quijano’s proposed solution to the coloniality of power is vivir adentro y en contra, or to live within and against. This necessitates a “constant political and social battle (and a) constant epistemic subversion“.
This subversion does not mean creating a singular alternative episteme. For Quijano, We should not strive for another form of hegemonic domination. Instead, this subversion will create varied and new epistemes and will involve a reawakening of older indigenous cultures, knowledge systems and practices that have been deconstructed, changed or even eliminated. In light of this, I believe changing Spain’s national holiday is incredibly pertinent.
It is inspiring to see countries across Latin America rejecting a positive narrative of colonialism and refocusing their attention on celebrating and memorialising cultural diversity, intercultural dialogue and Indigenous struggles.
It is encouraging to see countries such as Argentina, which now has renamed the 12th of October as the Day of Respect for Cultural Diversity, establishing it as a day to practice “historical reflection and intercultural dialogue”. In Bolivia, this date is now known as the Day of Decolonisation and honours Indigenous communities’ struggles against colonialism. Yet another example is Peru’s Día de los Pueblos Origiaários y Diálogo Intercultural.
For obvious reasons, I do not endorse what all Latin American states do at all times, and more specifically their approaches when working with Indigenous communities — this would be an overly simplistic characterisation. At InsightShare, we’ve seen instances where a government passes a law attempting to remedy an injustice done to Indigenous communities, only for that law not to be applied correctly, or implemented at all.
It goes without saying that by focusing exclusively on the semantics of the name we give the 12th of October, we run the risk of focusing on optics, instead of concentrating on Indigenous peoples’ demands and lived realities. All in all, I believe that changing the name is a necessary start.