This weekend, Spain celebrated a national holiday. Bummer that it was on Saturday - that would never fly in the US, amiright? My coworkers tipped me off that there would be a big parade, so I hopped on Google to find out where it was going down and how I could join. Each year on October 12, Spain celebrates Día de la Hispanidad or Fiesta Nacional de España. Hmm...the name doesn't say much...but I found a site that seemed pretty official, 12octubre.es, and within about three seconds determined that I'd be sitting out the festivities:
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| "discovery of America"... oh word? |
It's Columbus Day. Womp. Disappointing that a shared Spain/USA national holiday is so wack. First of all, how can a man claim to discover a land where many,
many people already live? Just like a man. It just suddenly became a good idea now that
you said it, huh? Second, the actions of Christopher Columbus and his supporting home country <
cough>SPAIN<
cough> spread disease and initiated genocide. Boy, BYE.
Since this "holiday" is one I'm not willing to celebrate, I stood in silent protest while my students enjoyed a performance by the Madrid police band Friday morning.
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| Banda de Policia Madrid...they were aight |
Well, not protesting for real, for real, but instead of paying rapt attention, I decided to document the lovefest happening between two of my students who (I think) are brothers. This is what happened the entire hour:
It was all very sweet. At school in the States, my understanding is that kids are forbidden from touching or generally messing with other kids (for some good, precedence-based reasons that I don't knock), but it's the norm here in Spain for kids to be falling all over each other and behaving in all types of physically loving (and because they're kids, sometimes menacing, ways) - and it continues as folks (yes, dudes) get older! This has zippo to do with ol' Cristóbal Colón, but it made my Friday happy! :)
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