The finest Rioja in all of Spain

It had been a long and no doubt fractious sea voyage. The crew would have signed up for a variety of reasons: pay, adventure, escape from domestic ties — in some cases, no doubt, escape from the authorities. After ten weeks at sea, some of them would have doubted their judgment, if not indeed their very sanity. Then came the lookout’s cry: the Spanish for ‘Land ho’. Christopher Columbus had set forth to find a passage to China. Instead, he had discovered America, a new world, large parts of which would soon be known as New Spain. The 12th of October 1492, when that forgotten sailor announced that the world had moved on its axis, was one of the most important days in history.

It is still celebrated as Spain’s National Day, which is surprising, given the malevolence of the Spanish left towards everything that is finest in their country’s past. Just so, outside the office of the Organisation of American States in Washington, there are still statues to their Most Catholic Majesties, Columbus’s sponsors and patrons. I suppose that the sullen, civilisation-hating leftists have never heard of Ferdinand and Isabella, otherwise they would wish to tear them down.

It is interesting to speculate what would have happened if Spain had not gone into decline after the mid-17th century. Could old Spain have been any more successful in wooing new Spain than we were with the 13 colonies? Latin America and Spain would both have benefited from a harmonious partnership.

My friend Ranald MacDonald, often celebrated in this column, might take exception to all this Hispaniophilia. Centuries before Columbus, his Viking forebears had arrived in Greenland. But there is a difference. Not even with an EU subsidy would it be possible to grow tobacco in Greenland.