What Is Día de la Hispanidad & Why Is It a Holiday?

Living in Spain means you get to add a lot of new holidays to your calendar. If it’s not a day celebrating one of the many Catholic saints or feasts, it’s a holiday commemorating an historical event. This is, in a word, awesome, if you have a “normal” job, because it means lots of paid days off. It’s less awesome if you’re a business owner who has to pay for those days off, or if you’re a freelancer who can’t figure out why no one is answering their phone today—until you realize, whoops, it must be another holiday.

One of these holidays is the Día de la Fiesta Nacional de España (the National Day of Spain), or Día de la Hispanidad (the Day of Spanishness, or Hispanicity), which celebrates the “discovery” of the New World by Christopher Columbus. The quotes around “discovery” are there because, as we all know today, Columbus didn’t discover the New World at all; there were indigenous peoples already living in the territories that Columbus and his crew claimed for Spain when they accidentally landed on their shores. 

While the holiday is the National Day of Spain, it’s also celebrated in other countries across the globe.

What the Día is All About

The holiday was originally known as el Día de la Hispanidad, or el Día de la Raza (the Day of the Spanish Race).

In 1913, a conservative Spanish politician who was the President of the Ibero-American Union at the time, Faustino Rodríguez-San Pedro, chose October 12th as the Día de la Fiesta de la Raza, a gesture meant to unify the celebration of this day both in Spain and its current and former territories in Central and Latin America and beyond. Starting in the year 1915, it was commonly called el Día de la Raza.

In 1918, it was declared a national holiday in Spain by King Alfonso XII. The day took on even more prominence during the Franco era, when all things specifically referring to Spanishness were revered. It was legally proclaimed the day of national celebration of the country itself in 1982 by the Spanish government, and a law was passed to formalize the day’s status in 1987 (Real Decreto 18/1987). 

In Spain, the day is traditionally marked by a military parade in Madrid, which is attended by the King and various dignitaries. Certain museums or public buildings are also open to the public, free of charge. But the Día de la Hispanidad is not only celebrated in Spain; it’s also been recognized as an official holiday by other Spanish-speaking countries around the world. It’s meant to commemorate the linguistic and cultural legacy of “Spanishness” worldwide, and Spain’s ties with the international community. 

This sounds like it a positive thing, right? Isn’t it good for Hispanic people to be proud of their heritage, and to celebrate historical links between nations? Sure, except that the holiday only celebrates the part of their heritage that came from their Spanish colonizers, ignoring the damage done to their indigenous ancestors by the conquistadores (conquerors) from overseas. As a result, Western society as a whole has started to wake up to the long, dark shadows its colonial legacies have cast across the globe and the holiday has come under scrutiny in recent years. On the right side of the political aisle, Spanish, Hispanic and American politicians have railed against, in their minds, the supposedly unfairness or inaccuracy of these criticisms.

So which is it? Is this holiday a holdover from a racist past, or a celebration of the history and heritage of all things Hispanic?

Cultural Heritage: It’s Complicated

In 2014, the United Nations declared October 12 to be a day honoring the importance of the Spanish language, which “represents an element of cohesion and consolidation in the Hispanic world.”

On a website dedicated to explaining the meaning and historical context of various holidays, El Día Internacional De (“The International Day Of”), el Día de la Hispanidad is said to celebrate Columbus’ landing in 1492 because it “represents the first contact between two worlds, representing the union of distinct languages and cultures.” That’s pretty much how our primary school teachers in the United States told the story, too: that the so-called "Indians" (Native Americans) welcomed Columbus’ arrival, and that everybody shook hands and got along just fine.

Those who are fans of the holiday define it as a day celebrating “unity and fraternity,” “the rich cultural diversity of Spain and its former colonies” and “the uniquely Spanish way of life.” The emotional significance of honoring their country’s history far outweighs any overly-politically-correct squeamishness over possible misunderstandings (or smallpox, forced labor and bloody massacres) between dead ancestors. 

There is also a significant religious aspect to the celebrations, thanks to the legacy of another cultural element brought to the New World by the Spanish colonizers: Catholicism. El Día de Nuestra Señora del Pilar (the Day of Our Lady of the Pillar), who is also referred to as the patron saint or “Mother of the Hispanic Peoples;” as well as the Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, also called La Reina de la Hispanidad (The Queen of Spanishness), are also celebrated on this day. The majority of Spanish-speaking nations are Catholic countries, by law or by heritage or both, which means that the importance of the religious significance of the holiday in these countries can’t be ignored.

Pushback from… Well, Lots of People

In some countries, October 12th is called by other names: the Día de la Resistencia Indígena (the Day of Indigenous Peoples’ Resistance) and the Día del Respeto a la Diversidad Cultural (the Day of Respect for Cultural Diversity), in attempt to rebrand the holiday by recognizing the damage that colonization did to native populations without erasing it from the calendar altogether. For example, Bolivia passed a law in 2011 which says that the day must be called the Day of Decolonization. Other Hispanic countries, such as Panama and Perú, don’t recognize this day as a holiday at all. 

In the United States, most of us know it as Columbus Day. (However, it’s not always on October 12th; it’s traditionally celebrated on the second Monday in October.) Nineteen US states and dozens of cities around the United States officially or unofficially refer to the holiday as Indigenous People’s Day in protest of the same.

Other Spanish-speaking countries have tried to find a middle ground by giving the holiday name that sounds more neutral, such as the Bahamas (Discovery Day); Chile (the Day of the Meeting of Two Worlds, according to a law passed in the year 2000); Uruguay (the Day of Cultural Diversity). 

However, some researchers argue that Spain has no claim whatsoever to have been the first Europeans to “make contact with the New World,” as historical and archaeological proof shows that the Vikings probably beat Columbus to the proverbial punch by at least 500 years; in more recent history, the Portuguese landed in the Americas in 1424.

The debate continues as to whether the Día de la Hispanidad holiday is a way to recognize the shared history and language that bind together millions upon millions of people across the planet, or an anachronistic and insensitive veneration of the violence and oppression of Spain’s colonial past.

Published October 4, 2022, updated Oct 11, 2023.