While English is the most spoken language, Spanish is fourth behind Mandarin and Hindi. Italian is ranked around 21.
As every American schoolchild knows, in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, making landfall on 12 October on San Salvador in the Caribbean. It is Columbus Day or a cognate for the US and for many Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas.
In Spain itself, the day is not only Fiesta Nacional de España; it is Día de la Hispanidad, the Day of Spanishness; as the government of October 1987 put it:
The date chosen, October 12, symbolizes the historical anniversary on which Spain, about to conclude a process of State construction based on our cultural and political diversity, and the integration of the kingdoms of Spain into the same monarchy, begins a period of linguistic and cultural projection beyond the boundaries of Europe.
A “linguistic and cultural projection” is a considered conceit; Spanishness is as “Anglo-Saxon” is to an Englishman or “Hellenic” is to a Greek. For Spain itself, 12 October is much more than a national day. From 1640, the day has been the feast day of Our Lady of the Pillar, the name given to the Virgin Mary when she, still living in Jerusalem, appeared supernaturally to the Apostle James in Spain.
In this context, 1492 has been chosen not only to mark a Spanish-sponsored discovery of a new world; it also marks the entry of a recently united Spain into a new world order; in 1492, Spain was the new kid on the block. The older kids – including Venice, Genoa and Florence – had been pivotal in a just-passing phase of renewal we call the Renaissance, but trade was now shifting its focus from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. So it was that the Genoan Columbus and the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci tended to follow old Italian families such as the Medici as they set up shop in new centres such as Seville.
And with Italy in mind we turn to a very different and not so Spanish Columbus Day for the United States.
While the Tammany Hall known to history is the Tammany of corrupt New York politics, it originally represented a democratic or at least middle-class new America which wanted to turn its back on centralism and on social hierarchy; its support for Thomas Jefferson may have cost John Adams his re-election as president.
Tammany comes from the name of a Delaware chief Tamamend but the organisation called itself an alternative Colombian Order. The New York Public Library suggests I think correctly that the names were chosen to counter European-based fraternities patroned by St Patricks, St Georges, St Andrews and other saints wrongly vying for a foothold in the new world. In any event, Tammany led the tercentenary celebration on 12 October 1792.
Yet it was neither the Spaniards in their Spanishness nor the Tammanies in their new patriotism who really got Columbus Day going. It was the Italians, with New York in 1866 and with many others including Denver and San Francisco following. With good reason. The Italian labourer was often despised; in 1891, 11 were lynched in New Orleans; and in 1892 President Harrison attempted to clean up the slate with the quadcentenary and with the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition aka the Chicago World’s Fair with a one-off:
Now, therefore, I, Benjamin Harrison, President of the United States of America, in pursuance of the aforesaid joint resolution, do hereby appoint Friday, October 21, 1892, the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus, as a general holiday for the people of the United States.
The 21st got a mention because the people arranging these things wanted to get it right and allowed for the post-Columbus switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. The rest of us have had none of this political correctness and 12 October has stayed.
With more Italian lobbying, President Roosevelt proclaimed Columbus Day on 12 October in 1937; in 1942, he used Columbus Day to remove the designation “enemy aliens” from Italian Americans although that wasn’t implemented in full until Italy’s surrender in 1943.
More recently, Columbus Day has met and has occasionally been vanquished by various indigenous protests in the US and in the rest of the Americas.
Colorado is an interesting example. In 1905 it had been the first state to accept Italian immigrant lobbying and to make the day a legal holiday. A century later, its legislators were hearing fresh voices including fresh voices of the Italian community. The indigenous lobby didn’t have the votes but a change was nonetheless made. Columbus Day is out and Cabrini Day is in: Frances Xavier Cabrini is still an Italian but this time a woman, the first US citizen to be canonized by the Catholic Church and the patron saint of immigrants.
At a federal level, Columbus Day has moved from 12 October to the second Monday in October. Indigenous Day is the same day, although some might argue that President Biden made an astute call in proclaiming the first Indigenous Day as 11 October 2021, presumably on the basis that indigenous Americans were in America at least a day before Christopher.
