[werpon]

Spaniard here. I don't think I've ever read or heard a sugarcoated version of the conquest. In fact it's usually the opposite.

October 12 is indeed the day Columbus set foot on the New World and also our national holiday, but I fail to see how it's different from other holidays such as Thanksgiving.

[lentil_soup]

I don't think Thanksgiving is comparable.

Spain celebrating the 12th of October as its national day is as if England celebrated Thanksgiving as its own national day.

[willvarfar]

I don't understand why Thanksgiving is celebrated at all.

Its a bunch of religious bigots who left England for Holland because England was too religiously tolerant. They then had to leave Holland because they felt threatened by the fact that their children didn't want to continue their religion and were 'going native'. So they head off to the English colonies in America where they settle land cleared of native Indians by the plague. Half of them then die, and then the next year one of the pilgrim's many 'thanksgivings' is for the harvest.

After the revolution, Washington is petitioned to make it a holiday, although its not on the current day. Jefferson, for example, rallied against it.

So why celebrate thanksgiving again? Why celebrate the 'pilgrim fathers' in school? Why?

England's national day doesn't make sense through a modern lens either. Its generally believed that, if Saint George existed, he was a lowly Greek soldier from modern-day Turkey. We can speculate what the dragon might actually have been, except that story doesn't seem to turn up until later. The Catholic Saint George was executed by a Roman emperor for refusing to worship pagan gods... and this is related to England in what way? Technically that goes back to King Richard praying to him on a crusade or something. Then again, you stop someone in the English street and ask them why Saint George is the patron saint, or why, and they have not a clue!

Don't get me started on Christmas! If we had to justify every holiday and explain how it still makes any sense to celebrate it or whoever it originally venerated, then we'd have no holidays at all! :)

[dan_mctree]

Considering the Dutch connection. Thanksgiving may've just been a continuation of the Dutch dankdag/Thanksday, which is a small protestant celebration thanking God for the harvest. They do that every year, regardless of the circumstances, and it kind of sounds like they just continued that practice.

Harvest festivals in general were common throughout Europe and many immigrants would be familiar with them, so it's not very surprising that at least one version of it would survive.

[soylentcola]

Regardless of the specific framing of Thanksgiving, it seems like lots of cultures have some sort of seasonal harvest feast or festival (at least those originating in climates that support a seasonal planting/harvesting cycle).

I won't lie. Even though I'm a city dweller far removed from that agrarian lifestyle, I have zero problem with a nice yearly feast with friends and family. That aspect has a universal appeal I think.

[senorjazz]

I had always assumed Thanks Giving was similar to the Harvest Festival celebrated in (at least) England (and assumed other parts of UK).

Just being thankful for a good harvest.

[hindsightbias]

They "founded" America and their values persist into modern day in one form or another. We will always have a puritan(ical) streak.

[dragonwriter]

> They "founded" America

No, they didn't, either in fact or tradition. We have a set of people honored as founders, and it's not the Pilgrims.

[madengr]

Thanksgiving is now about overeating and shopping. Wonder what it will be about 100 years from now.

[AnimalMuppet]

> Its a bunch of religious bigots...

Plausible.

> ... who left England for Holland...

True.

> ... because England was too religiously tolerant.

Was too tolerant? No. They left for Holland because they were literally suffering religious persecution in England.

[willvarfar]

It’s true they left England because they became outlawed. But the reason they became outlawed is because they went around being intolerant of everyone else.

https://owlcation.com/humanities/Why-Did-the-Puritans-Really... is a good intro to a very interesting subject. History is “written by the victors” and the popular US school history curriculum doesn’t seem to really question it.

[AnimalMuppet]

What that page actually says is:

> Things came to a head when King Charles I came to the throne in 1625. In the first few years of his reign, the Puritans in parliament strongly opposed his royal authority.

> In order to maintain his royal power base and rid himself of those he viewed as his enemies, including many Puritans, Charles I took the unprecedented step of dissolving parliament altogether. The Puritans, probably quite rightly, interpreted this as a hostile act towards themselves and their religious practices, and so many decided to leave England and settle in the Americas, where they could develop their own communities based on their own beliefs.

That is, the issue wasn't that the Puritans were religiously intolerant; they were politically opposed to the king. That article doesn't make a case for your current claim (that they left because they were [religiously] intolerant), nor your original one (that they left because England was too tolerant).

[willvarfar]

> Things came to a head when King Charles I came to the throne in 1625

Pop quiz: when did the mayflower sail for the new world?

So the England the pilgrim fathers were moving first to holland and then to the new world was an England where Elizabeth and then James I had first tried to compromise with them before banning them.

Normally I cynically try to work out what religious leaders gain in the real world to work out what motivates them. It’s usually greed etc. But the puritans are a special case: I don’t think you can make distinctions between religion and politics with the Puritans, as they were didn’t seem to see any distinction.

[saiya-jin]

I would be really surprised if you actually got raw version of history as it happened at school. Very few countries actually admit properly their past mistakes (Germany and WWII might be rather an exception).

Raw version would be somewhere along the lines of "our ancestors were among the most horrible arrogant ignorant humans that ever lived if measured by the amount of evil done unto the others, and we are deeply ashamed to be their descendants". The fact that you actually celebrate Columbus' discovery as national day strongly indicates against that.

I mean, go to places like Potosi in Bolivia to see all the horror and misery caused by spanish slavers. 8 freaking million human beings were basically butchered by spanish just in this one single spot to mine silver to make spain richer. Not that it helped them in long run considering current state of spanish economy.

[ankalagon]

According to Encyclopaedia Britannica [1] that's false:

> The city came into existence after the discovery of silver there in 1545 and quickly became famous for its wealth. Within three decades its population surpassed 150,000, making it the largest city in the New World. The population declined from a peak of 160,000 about 1650 as silver production waned, and a typhus epidemic in 1719 claimed the lives of some 22,000 residents. By the early 19th century, Potosí had fewer than 20,000 inhabitants, but the subsequent rise of tin mining again spurred growth.

[1] https://www.britannica.com/place/Potosi-Bolivia

[wayoutthere]

I'm not saying this excuses anything, but the conquistadors looked at the natives more like smart apes than humans. They literally thought it was their God-given right to hold dominion over the earth and all the animals on it. This level of self-reflection was just not possible at the time (the age of conquest was contemporary with the Spanish Inquisition).

[spanxx]

Do you have any sources of that? Claiming 8 million people were slaved is a bit of stretch, don't you think?

[saiya-jin]

Literally the first thing that comes from google search of this. Plus they claim this number when you are actually there in their museum dedicated specifically to this horrible part of their history. Visited last year, some 'jobs' around smelting had survivability in mere weeks because of all the toxicity.

Plus took a trip quite deep into the mines themselves. Imagine mountain that is almost 4800m high, drilled through like a proper swiss emmental cheese (they claim around 500 different entrances to tunnel system).

[protomyth]

Well, I'm at a community college on a reservation and we certainly celebrate Thanksgiving but don't take off for Columbus day. So, I would say its viewed rather differently.

[darkwater]

Err, because the American continent IS NOT Spain, nor part of it? Because the current Spain state should not celebrate what a previous empire conquered? Still celebrating the national day on Oct 12th is a complete shame, and let one wonder how is still imperialism inside the Spain way of thinking. Spain national day should be Dec 6th, when the current Constitution was approved.

[spanxx]

Another victim of Black Legend...

[darkwater]

Please enlighten me

[thoughtleader31]

The Spanish try to whitewash their atrocities by speaking of a purposeful campaign of defamation from rival powers.

So successful it was, apparently, that it made disctinct stories of Spanish brutality materialize in every country in the Americas.

The legend of the Black Legend also emphasizes the enlightenment of the Crown's laws regarding the legal status and treatment of indigenous peoples.

Unfortunately the rumors spread by the English about the treatment of natives were so convincing, that the Spanish conquistadors and encomenderos also came to believe that they had the right to enslave the indians and create a racial caste system where mestizos would live as serfs for centuries.

Or maybe it just was that the laws were never effectively enforced.

[spanxx]

Not true at all. English made propaganda about supposed atrocities and that propaganda is alive today: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_legend

[thoughtleader31]

Yes, it is alive because the Spanish did do things like cutting the hands and feet of entire indigenous settlements, as they did with the village from which the mapuche general who resisted the initial Spanish drive into Chile suffered.

The somewhat reasonable laws regarding the encomienda system were pervasively circumvented by the encomenderos by always demanding tribute in labor, and having it paid for generations.

The mestizaje and conversion to Christianity was used, in the end, to also circumvent laws regarding the treatment of natives by creating an entirely new underclass of people lacking in rights.

The Black Legend is what's known in Latin America as "history".

[spanxx]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_legend

[darkwater]

Ok, my point stands exactly the same. Spain DOES NOT OWN any land in the American continent, the spanish empire is long gone, October 12th should NOT be the spanish national celebration. Focus on the present, not on the past.