Columbus Day
Columbus Day is a holiday celebrated in the USA, Latin America and Spain. It is celebrated on October 12, the day of the anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the Americas, in 1492.
The holiday is called Columbus Day in the United States and is the world’s largest celebration of Italian-American culture. Over 35.000 people parade along Fifth Avenue in New York City to celebrate the spirit of exploration and the courage that inspired Christopher Columbus’ expedition.
El Día de la Raza was first celebrated in Argentina in 1917 and was conceived as the commemoration of the first encounter between the Europeans and the Native Americans. In the following years, the holiday started to be celebrated in Venezuela and Colombia in 1921, in Chile in 1922, and in Mexico in 1928.
Some indigenous cultures in the American continent oppose the holiday as it reminds them of the invasion of the Europeans and the beginning of the destruction of their culture. For this reason, in many countries the name of the festival has been changed into more politically correct denominations. And so el Día de la Raza has become el Día de la Divesidad Americana, in Argentina and el Día de la resistencia Indigena, in Venezuela.
In Spain el Día de la Espanidad or Fiesta National de España is celebrated with the raising of the Spanish flag in the centre of Madrid and a military parade presided over by the King, while the armed forces’ planes perform acrobatics in the sky, ejecting yellow and red smoke, the colours of the Spanish flag.