Blue world

I hate the flag-waving and military parades around October 12, particularly when accompanied by the sight of the Spanish prime minister and king embracing a man who clearly regards himself as the next Latin American Mussolini. In it had been left to the church, the ceremony might have been rather different. Here’s part of a piece by the Augustine Félix Garcia, published in ABC on 1946/10/12:

October 12 has fortunately ceased to be that faded and anaemic celebration of the Race to become one of America’s Nativity and Spain’s Maternity, or, simply, of the Virgin of the Pillar… Of when faith and empire were as one in their ideal aspirations, and the loins of Saint Mary gave birth to the wings of this great transoceanic enterprise. And I do not call it a celebration of Spanishness [Hispanidad], because this word, so hackneyed, is now on the verge of disrepute. [I think this is a reference to the late 30s and early 40s ultra-right cult of the Pillar Virgin as model for the “Mothers and Forgers of Spanishness”.]

As we wrote before 1936, the phrase “Celebration of the Race” is incapable of vernacularisation and acclimatisation. And that is all the more true now we see racism degenerating into heresy (as we said then), coming to mean the triumph of blood over the spirit, of the ethnic over the universal, of colour over ideas and of the sect over Religion.

Feast of October 12, of the Virgin of the Pillar. That is how it should be. Spain knew then, and remembers again now, that, in order to walk the blue of the sea, we must look to the blue of the sky.

For all our tomb today is vaulted grey, and speaking as an atheist, one does sometimes regret that the church died while the fascists clung on.

Original
La fecha del 12 de octubre ha dejado de ser, por fortuna, aquella fiesta, exangüe y desvaída, de la Raza para convertirse en la fiesta de la Natividad de América y de la Maternidad de España, o, sencillamente, de la Virgen del Pilar. La fecha ungida de su alumbramiento. De cuando la fe y el imperio iban acordes en sus aspiraciones ideales, y en los costados de la Santa María le nacieron las alas para la gran empresa transoceánica. Y no digo la fiesta de la hispanidad, porque a esta palabra, tan manoseada, se le está llevando al borde del descrédito.

No acaba -escribíamos ya antes del 36- de vernaculizarse y lograr adaptación climática este mote de Fiesta de la Raza. Y menos ahora que el racismo va degenerando en herejía -decíamos ya entonces- y significa el triunfo de la sangre sobre el espíritu, el de lo étnico sobre lo universal, el del color sobre las ideas y el de la secta sobre la Religión.

Fiesta del 12 de octubre, de la Virgen del Pilar. Así está bien. España sabía entonces, y vuelve a recordarlo, que, para andar sobre el azul marino, hay que mirar hacia el azul del cielo.

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