Daniel Hannan

Spanish practices

In Spain national unity is elevated in an almost spiritual way. The slightest concession is treated as a betrayal

issue 07 October 2017

In October 1936, on the anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of the New World, a ceremony was held at Salamanca University, in the heart of the nationalist Spain, to celebrate the ‘Day of the Race’. The Bishop of Salamanca, who had recently offered up his episcopal palace to be Franco’s headquarters, stood in the great hall next to the founder of the Spanish Foreign Legion, General José Millán Astray, a one-armed and one-eyed thug of a man.

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