In Spain, December 6th marks the anniversary of a referendum held in 1978. In this referendum, a new constitution was approved, finalising the transition from Franco’s fascist regime into a democratic constitutional monarchy. Since then, the 6th of December has been celebrated as an official national holiday in Spain. In celebration of this anniversary, here are ten curious facts about the Kingdom of Spain!
1 – The official currency of the United States, the U.S. dollar, got its name from its Spanish counterpart. Prior to American independence, Spanish silver coins were widely accepted in North America as Spain had more silver than any other country in the world. This is why the US opted to pick the so-called “Spanish dollar” as a model for both its design and the name.
2 – The world’s most expensive ham is made in Spain, with a single leg costing no less than €4.100! Made in the southwestern province of Huelva, this jamón won the annual Biofach award in 2016, which is basically the cured meat equivalent of winning an Oscar.
3 – Spain was the last country in the world that executed people with a garrote, which is a sort of strangling device. The last execution happened in 1974, when two men were strangled to death for killing police officers.
4 – After the Spanish Civil war, many Republicans fled to exile in France. During World War 2, more than 60,000 Spanish Republicans joined the French Resistance and Free French Forces. The first allied division that entered Paris upon its liberation in 1944 was the 9th Armoured Company of the Free French Forces, and was almost entirely made up of Spanish volunteers.
5 – In 1966, two US Air Force planes collided over Spain during mid-air refueling. One of the planes, a B-52G, was carrying four nuclear bombs. Three of them hit land and one of them was later found in the sea. The non-nuclear parts of two of the bombs actually did detonate upon impact, which contaminated a two-square-kilometer area with plutonium.
6 – The small village of Castrillo de Murcia has a very special yearly ritual to baptise new-born babies. Once a year, babies are laid out neatly in rows over pillows in the streets. Men dressed like devils then proceed to jump across the pillows, leapfrogging the babies. The baby jumping festival is known as El Colacho, and is considered a traditional baptism ritual by a number of Catholic families.
7 – The 1918 influenza pandemic, a calamity that killed up to 100 million people around the globe, is also known as the ‘Spanish Flu’. The pandemic didn’t actually originate in Spain, but due to wartime restrictions on freedom of the press, neutral Spain was the only country where the media could openly report on the outbreak. This gave a false perception of Spain being the only country that got hit by the flu.
8 – During the Spanish-American war of 1898, the Spanish government failed to communicate to its manned fortress in Guam that a state of war existed between Spain and the US. When the American Navy came to conquer the island, they fired thirteen rounds at the fortress. Instead of returning fire, the Spanish sent out a ship to the American fleet to show their friendship and welcome these visitors. The Spanish apologized to the Americans for not returning their salute shots and asked if they could borrow some gunpowder so they could return the salute. The Americans then told them that they were in fact at war with each other and that they had just become prisoners of war.
9 – In the Paralympics of 2000 in Sydney, Australia, Spain won a gold medal in basketball for athletes with intellectual disabilities. However, thirteen years after this victory, the Spanish athletes were found guilty of fraud as they had fielded not one, not two, but ten people who posed as mentally disabled.
10 – In 1873, during the Contal rebellion, a city in the southeast of the country supposedly declared its independence from Spain. What makes this declaration of independence especially weird is the fact that the city also sent out a letter to the US president Ulysses Grant, asking him permission to join the United States. This was an attempt to get the Spanish forces to stop bombing the city.
