What we celebrate. Or don't

Such a lot of nations have national days, don’t they? You know, the kind of thing that’s celebrated with flags and bonfires and fireworks, generally with too much to eat, and washed down by far too much to drink.

Switzerland’s national day is one of the most venerable. In fact, no one’s really sure that the anniversary falls on the right date: the Swiss celebrate 1 August because some time ‘early in August’ in 1291, the men of the original three cantons – Uri, Schwyz (which gave its name to the country) and Unterwalden – came together on the Rütli meadow and swore the oath to spring to the aid of any of their number who came under attack.

1 August is, of course, as early in August as you can get, so it’s probably not a bad choice. A choice made, incidentally, in 1891, the 600th anniversary, and the first time it was celebrated nationally. The event is venerable, the celebration far less.

Then there are the Americans. Oh, what a day the fourth of July is. Huge celebrations for the moment that the American colonists declared their independence from the overbearing rule of Britain. A historic assertion of the rights of man. Rights of man, that is, not necessarily woman. And the subtext that the man’s white. A legacy the country’s still living with today.

And the French. Celebrating the fourteenth of July, when the people rose from poverty and oppression, and stormed that hateful symbol of royal and aristocratic authoritarianism, the Bastille prison in Paris. A glorious moment when the citizens of France declared themselves forever attached to liberty, equality and fraternity. They then spilled a lot of fraternal blood to prove it, and ultimately proclaimed themselves subjects of an Emperor who led them to disaster in the country’s longest conflict since the hundred years’ war.

Other countries have no such day. Britain does have its bonfire night, which also includes fireworks, and generally sausages washed down with large quantities of intoxicating liquor. That’s Guy Fawkes Night when kids join together, up and down the land, to celebrate the death by torture of a Catholic fanatic who wanted to blow up Parliament. That’s an act a great many Englishmen today would see as more appropriate to celebrate than Guy Fawkes’s burning.

But Guy Fawkes Day isn’t really a proper national day. Burning a Catholic? Not uncommon at the time. Not exactly glorious. No, Britain hasn’t found itself a unique day of glory to mark, a rival to the Rütli meadow oath, the Declaration of Independence, or the Storming of the Bastille. You can attribute that to Britain’s history being so glorious that no single day stands out above any other, or to Britain never having done anything glorious enough on any one day, to justify turning it into a particular celebration. You choose the explanation you prefer.

And then there are countries where there is, frankly, confusion. That’s the case, for instance, of the country in which we live today, Spain. Specifically, we live in the Community of Valencia, on the Mediterranean coast. That matters in this context, as you’ll soon discover if you read on.

Goya's Fusiliamentos del 3 de Mayo

Spain does have a date it might choose to mark nationally. It has been burned into national, indeed international, consciousness by one of the country’s greatest artists, Francisco Goya. Although, strictly speaking, his great painting, the Fusilamientos del 3 de Mayo, the Executions of the 3rd of May (strictly, the ‘shootings’, but that doesn’t really work in English, does it?) shows the aftermath of the event itself.

What was that event?

Well, Spain had been an ally of France, locked by then in 15 years of bloody war with most of the rest of Europe, and above all with Britain. 

Yep, that’s the war I mentioned before, that followed the storming of the Bastille.

That alliance had done Spain no good at all. It lost most of its fleet when, together with the French fleet and under the command of a hopeless French admiral, it was destroyed by a British fleet under Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar. That was a tragedy for a nation proud of its huge overseas Empire. That kind of thing made it a less than wholly enthusiastic partner of France.

Then, when France decided it had to invade Portugal, it marched its troops straight across Spanish territory to take on this new foe and ally of Britain. Aware of Spain’s lack of enthusiasm for their joint cause, the French chose to peel off troops as on their way across the peninsula. These turned themselves into an army of occupation.

This got right up the noses of the Spanish. The people of Madrid rose on 2 May 1808. The thing about armies of occupation is that, once they’re in place, they reckon they have every right to be there. They view the people who rise against as criminals. Even terrorists. So they feel themselves justified in executing them.

Britain did the same with those who had the gall to resist its rule in India, or Malaya, or Kenya or pretty much anywhere else where Johnny Foreigner failed to grasp the benefit of British rule. The French did it in Indochina or Algeria. The Americans did it Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan.

Well, back then in 1808, the French did it in Madrid. On the day following the uprising, the 3rd of May, they executed a bunch of men they viewed as criminals, because they had had the gall to attack them. Providing Goya with the subject matter of one of his most famous paintings.

Goya also did a painting of the uprising itself, El Dos de Mayo en Madrid,
with the people attacking French Mameluke soldiers

That makes the 2nd of May a key date in Spanish history. Glorious enough, you might imagine. Bloody enough. And the start of what Spain still refers to as its War of Independence. 

You’d think the whole nation might celebrate it. But, it turns out, it doesn’t.

On the 2nd of May, we were in the Madrid Community and travelling back to our home in the Valencian Community. At the Madrid end, everything was shut. We drove quickly, worried that as we reached home, we’d be caught in the homebound traffic of holiday makers. But there was nothing of the kind. Far from it, the traffic we saw was what we’ve come to expect at the end of a working day, as people leave the colossal industrial estate near us. Fortunately, that traffic tends to be mostly in the opposite direction.

Why was there that traffic?

The answer came when I greeted a neighbour of ours, as she climbed out of he car.

“Hi,” I said, “all well?”

“Great, now that work’s over,” she replied.

“Work? On the 2nd of May?”

“Oh, we don’t celebrate it here.”

It turns out that in Spain, with its highly federal structure of Communities, some take the 2nd of May off, and others don’t. Valencia is one that doesn’t. 

That’s a fine reflection of the somewhat confused nature of the Spanish national soul.

Making our trip home quite an illuminating experience.

P.S. Spain does have a national day, incidentally. The 12th of October. But, boy, is that confused too. Perhaps I’ll come back to the theme nearer the day.