“There is not a handful of land without a Spanish tomb!”, the famous lines of Bernardo López García exclaimed. And there is no shortage of people from distant places who remember those fallen.
The Spanish Navy has shared a really exciting video tonight on Twitter. It was recorded on Streedagh Beach, located in the municipality of Mullaghmore, in Sligo County (north-west of Ireland):
In that place three Spanish ships were shipwrecked: the Lavia, the Juliana and the Santa María de Visón, belonging to the Spanish Armada, known as “Armada Invencible” by English propaganda, that sailed in 1588 to England, with the mission to dethrone Queen Elizabeth I. The shipwreck took place on September 26, 1588, with waves of up to nine meters. The English executed ruthlessly 150 survivors, and the few who saved his life got it thanks to the help of the inhabitants of Mullaghmore, whose descendants continue to honor the fallen. Every year on Streedagh Beach, with the participation of representatives of the Spanish Navy and the Irish Naval Service, the Irish remember the Spaniards who perished in that shipwreck planting or drawing 1,100 crosses on the beach in their memory. A homage that, as Spanish, fills me with emotion and gratitude. You can see here the video of the homage of last year, attended by the Patrolship “Centinela” of the Spanish Navy:
The Spanish Armada could have been a liberation for the Irish Catholics, put under a hard situation by that queen, that was Anglican. Nine years earlier a small Spanish expedition had already arrived in Smerwick, Ireland, to support an Irish rebellion, which was unsuccessful. Today many Irish people continue to remember it as a historical tie that unites them with Spain, the Nation in which so many times they put their hopes to free themselves of the English yoke.
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