Columbus Day had moved around several times during the various regime changes of the 20th century; establishing it on the day of the international Columbus celebration was part of a compromise between conservatives, who wanted to emphasize the status of the monarchy and Spain's history, and Republicans, who wanted to commemorate Spain's burgeoning democracy with an official holiday. Since 2000, October 12 has also been Spain's Day of the Armed Forces, celebrated each year with a military parade in Madrid. Other than this, however, the holiday is not widely or enthusiastically celebrated in Spain. There are no large-scale patriotic parades, marches or
The Heirs of Columbus the novel is that the Mayans were the first civilization in the world, and that they had taken their civilization to Europe during the time of Antiquity. Columbus was a descendant of the Mayans through his secret Sephardic Jewish ancestry, and his ancestral memories called him to return to the ancestral homelands in America. During his first landing in the Americas, he was visited by a Native American healer named Samana, who took him to bed and became pregnant by him. The heirs of the title are the present-day (1990s) descendants of Samana and Columbus. The plot of the novel