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SPANISH TRADITIONS

How Spain turned a child massacre into its April Fool’s Day

April 1st has no special meaning in Spain, instead December 28th is the day of practical jokes among Spaniards. But the celebration's macabre origins are far from a laughing matter.

Published: 28 December 2020 08:12 CET
Updated: 28 December 2023 11:31 CET
How Spain turned a child massacre into its April Fool's Day
Medieval painting of the massacre of children in Bethlehem ordered by King Herod, at Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Siena, Italy. Photos: José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro/Wikimedia

Unless you’ve lived in Spain or another Spanish-speaking country, the chances are that you’ve never heard of December 28th being El Día de los Santos Inocentes (Holy Innocents’ Day).

This is Spain’s April Fool’s Day – pranks or inocentadas take place all over the country, there are spoof reports on Spanish television programmes (less so in recent years) and there’s even an annual charity event called “Gala Inocente, Inocente”.

Hurling eggs at friends or passers-by is also quite common on this day. The Alicante town of Ibi steals the show in this regard every year thanks to its mock coup d’état and edible projectiles.

Els Enfarinats festival in Ibi has Spain’s most famous prank festival on December 28th. Photo: Jaime Reina/AFP

Other villages and town have their own take on it, such as the Fiesta de los Locos (Day of the Mad) in Jalance in Valencia, but a common theme with this celebration in both Spain and Latin American countries is children.

That’s largely because Holy Innocents’ Day has biblical origins, and gruesome ones at that.

The day marks the Massacre of the Innocents as depicted in the New Testament, when Herod ordered the murder of all children in Bethlehem under the age of two, fearing that the newborn Jesus Christ everybody was talking about as the Messiah would replace him as King of Judea.

Historians aren’t sure about whether this truly happened, but at some point during Medieval times, the mourning for this infanticide turned into celebration among Christians. 

Painting depicting the “Massacre of the Innocent” by Nicolas Poussin, 1629.

Even religious clergy took part in these festivals where jokes, crossdressing and excesses took over towns (including the Feast of Fools in France).

The Vatican tried to have the revelry banned but couldn’t stop it from living on in Spain, leading the Church to accept it as normal practice on Holy Innocents’ Day.

Some historical sources say the pranking ritual could’ve come as a result of the Romans’ Saturnalia celebration, which also took place at the end of year.

One of the traditions involved a member of the pleb or a slave being chosen as a temporary Caesar.

As Saturnalia king, they could give comical orders that had to be followed by their subjects, with the aim being to create a chaotic and absurd world.

Even if the exact origins of pranking on Holy Innocents’ Day cannot be established, it’s likely a similar story to that of so many other slightly bonkers celebrations in Spain.

It starts off as a solemn religious celebration, throw in a bit of Medieval ale and paganism (and unfortunately, often a heavy dose of animal cruelty) and 500 years later you have a day that’s an excuse for Spaniards to have a good time and celebrate.

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SPAIN EXPLAINED

Why does Spain have no nuclear weapons?

Despite a top secret project to build them during the dictatorship, Spaniards have never been keen on the idea of nuclear weapons, especially since the US accidentally dropped four nuclear bombs on Almería.

Published: 15 April 2024 16:36 CEST
Why does Spain have no nuclear weapons?

Spain isn’t part of the reduced group of nations that have nuclear weapons, which includes European neighbours the UK and France.

It has never tested nuclear weapons, does not manufacture them, nor has it bought them from nuclear allies who make them.

Spain is still a NATO member and doesn’t shy away from involving itself in foreign policy debates, often taking positions against the mainstream.

But it has still never joined the nuclear club nor have Spaniards ever really wanted to, even though former dictator Francisco Franco had different ideas (more on that below).

In fact, Spaniards seem to have an indifferent if not abnormally negative view of nukes, largely stemming from an accident by an American air force on Spanish soil in the 1960s.

READ ALSO: How important is nuclear power to Spain?

A 2018 study on state attitudes towards nuclear weapons concluded that Spain had “little to no interest in nuclear weapons.” Yet Spain still benefits from NATO’s so-called ‘nuclear umbrella’ defence and has nearby neighbours, including France and the United Kingdom, that are nuclear powers. It is also home to several American military bases.

In that sense, Spain balances a somewhat unique position of being pro-nuclear for other countries and as a broader defence deterrence at the global level, but not on Spanish territory because it knows that would not sit well with Spaniards.

But why is this? Why doesn’t Spain have nuclear weapons?

Anti-nuclear sentiment among Spaniards

According to an article for Institut Montaigne by Clara Portela, Professor of Political Science at the University of Valencia, the Spanish people are “sensitised on nuclear weapons, if not negatively disposed towards them.”

Much of it comes down to history and, in particular, an accident involving nuclear weapons on Spanish soil. As part of post-war defence and security agreements Spain made with the U.S, American nuclear weapons were kept on Spanish soil.

Spaniards weren’t keen on the idea. Portela notes that “their presence at the Torrejón base near Madrid was a controversial issue” among the public, but it was an accident in 1966 that really soured Spaniards to nuclear weapons after an American aircraft carrying a hydrogen bomb crashed and dropped the device in the waters near the town of Palomares off the coast of Almería.

READ ALSO: Ten of the best documentaries about Spain

The incident caused “one of the bombs to fall to the seabed and leak radioactivity” into the surrounding area, Portela states, something that would have no doubt hardened many Spaniard’s perceptions towards nuclear weapons, especially as the American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was still in living memory for many.

A NATO-nuclear referendum

This scepticism towards nuclear arms was solidified twenty years later in a referendum on NATO membership. Though the government of the day campaigned for continued membership of the military alliance, it made it conditional on Spain also continuing as a non-nuclear power. A clause in the referendum consultation outlined this condition: “The prohibition to install, store or introduce nuclear weapons on Spanish soil will be maintained.”

Spaniards backed their continued, non-nuclear NATO membership by 13 percent.

A year later, in 1987, Spain formally signed the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), further cementing its non-nuclear stance.

And that was it — with this and the result of the referendum, Portela suggests that “the issue of nuclear weapons was all but archived. It hardly re-surfaced in public debates for decades.”

An atomic bomb of the type nicknamed “Little Boy” that was dropped by a US Army Air Force B-29 bomber in 1945 over Hiroshima, Japan. (Photo by LOS ALAMOS SCIENTIFIC LABORATORY / AFP)

The nuclear dictator?

Despite the Spanish public’s distrust of nuclear weapons, there was one Spaniard in particular who was quite keen on the idea: Franco.

In what may be one of the most terrifying historical ‘what ifs’ ever, the fascist dictator wanted to equip Spain with a nuclear arsenal, started a project to do so, and came very close to achieving it.

The ‘Islero Project’, as it was known, was top secret and lasted for several decades of scientific research until it was finally abandoned in the 1980s after his death.

Firstly, a brief consideration of the geopolitics of the time is worthwhile here, and it concerns the Americans again. When the Second World War ended in 1945, Spain immediately became isolated on the international stage owing to its support for Nazi Germany and fascist Spain. It was excluded from the UN and shunned as a real player in international relations.

As the Cold War and threat of nuclear annihilation grew throughout the 1950s, Franco’s fierce anti-communism combined with the strategic geographical positioning of Spain led the U.S. to form closer ties with the dictatorship, promising financial aid and image rehabilitation in return for allowing American military bases in Spain.

READ ALSO: Where are the US’s military bases in Spain and why are they there?

The Junta de Energía Nuclear was created in 1951, undertaking research and atomic energy development more broadly, and it sent promising researchers to study in the U.S. When they returned, the Islero project continued in secret.

Rather bizarrely, it was the accident at Palomares years later that actually gave the scientists the key to designing an atomic bomb. Unconvinced by the American’s explanations for the debacle, the Spaniards working on plans discovered the Ulam-Teller method, which was fundamental to the development of the thermonuclear bomb or H-bomb.

However, the project was then frozen by Franco himself because he feared the United States would discover that Spain was trying to develop its own atomic bomb and impose economic sanctions.

After Franco’s death in 1975, Spanish scientists secretly restarted the project, but in 1982 the new Socialist government discovered the plans and disbanded the project. By 1987 the González government announced Spain’s accession to the Non-Proliferation Treaty NPT and the issue has rarely even come up as an issue since then.

And despite that, Spain is a NATO member, regularly attends the G20, and often plays a leading role on the global stage. Certain elements of the dictatorship had eyes on building a nuclear arsenal, but it never happened. Franco ultimately worried about the economic repercussions of being discovered, and Spaniards were themselves sceptical about the idea based on the experience in Palomares.

In terms of nuclear weapons, Spain is what Portela describes as a ‘de-proliferation’ state – in other words, a country that aspired to have nuclear bombs but reversed it.

It doesn’t look like changing anytime soon either. A survey in 2021 showed that Spain had the highest level of support for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, with a massive 89 percent majority.

READ ALSO: Why is Spain not in the G20 (but is always invited)?

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