"Hispanidad" (parenthesis and rant)

At some point it was decided that Spain would celebrate the 12 October as national day. That way people could commemorate the arrival of Christopher Colombus to the Americas, and the beginning of this concept now widely known as "Hispanity". The date had before had been called "The Day of Discovery of the Americas", then abbreviated to "Day of the Race", then politically corrected to "Day of Hispanity".
It shares all the wrong things with for example Australia Day. They tell you it's the day they celebrate all the great things about being Spanish and the fact that they share this big love with 21 other countries that speak the same language.
What it really celebrates is the colonization of what are now 21 countries for 300 years and the gradual empoverishment of said territories after the theft of their natural resources; the extermination of indigenous language, memory and culture (priests in Mexico/Guatemala for example took the liberty of rewriting the Maya dreaming to make the creation of man seem a bit more like the bible); and the installation of endemic dictatorial bureaucracies we still have to this day in Latin America.
They call it the "meeting of two cultures". My arse. As if all the indigenous cultures of the Americas had been one big blob of indians, or the Spanish hadn't brought over any African slaves.
To give credit to your every day Spanish person, most people really don't care. A religious celebration from Aragon seems to have more relevance. Ask someone on the street what happens on the 12 October and they'll tell you it's the day of the Virgen del Pilar.
Just in case we did come across some form of nationalism, we headed north to the most fiercely independent region: Euskal Herria, or Basque Country, where 12 October really means nothing: only once in the history of the celebration has the Basque government sent a representative to the official national day celebrations in Madrid...