Took Some Time To Celebrate

Another day, another holiday. What’s this one? Día de la Hispanidad - day of Spanishness, or something like that. A national day, though there are some factions none too keen on the whole deal, like some of the Catalonians, a bunch of whom are using today to declare that the Catalan countries are the last colony of the Spanish monarchy. Whatever.

In actual fact today is a sort of three-in-one day as it is also Columbus’s day and the day for the Virgen del Pilar. How about that, three “holidays” and they go and put them all on the same day, but given that holidays come thick and fast here, we should be grateful, or ungrateful, depending on your view. One chap in “Ultima Hora”, asked about the meaning of today, reckons it is of no consequence except for the fact that he doesn’t have to work. Like public holidays everywhere, in other words.

And just a footnote to yesterday’s history lesson. There was something else that bugged me about that article. Couldn’t put my finger on it. Then it registered. The article says that “a man named Pedro de Córdoba wrote to King Ferdinand (Fernando) in 1517 and told the monarch ...” What this “man” (actually a quite important figure of the times) told the king is of little consequence as, and this was what had been concerning me, Fernando died in 1516.

And as I looked at this article again, I noticed something else very strange. It says that Columbus could have merged two cultures, one of them (the Spanish presumably) being a culture that “had grown with the teachings of Aristotle, Galileo and Newton.” Eh!? Galileo was born in 1564, Newton in 1663. Given that Columbus died in 1506 ... Enough, enough. Where do they get this rubbish from?


QUIZ
Yesterday - Chick Corea. Today’s title is the second line from ...?

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