National Holiday – Columbus Day

Hispanic Day (Día de la Hispanidad) or National Day (Fiesta Nacional de España) is an annual national public holiday in Spain on October 12.

It commemorates when Christopher Columbus first set foot in the Americas in 1492.

History

Italian-born Christopher Columbus set off from Palos de la Frontera in southwest Spain on August 3, 1492. Just over two months later he arrived in the “New World”, landing on an island that is now part of the Bahamas on October 12, 1492. Columbus, who was sponsored by the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, was actually looking for a western route to India but instead stumbled upon the Americas, a continent that had been largely unknown to Europeans. The discovery led to a period of rapid exploration of the continent.

Día de la Hispanidad was first celebrated in Madrid in 1935 and was made an official public holiday in 1981. In 1987, its name was changed to Fiesta Nacional (Spain’s National Day), removing any reference to Spanish colonialism.