National day
Importance attached to the national day as well as the degree to which it is celebrated vary greatly from country to country. For example, Spain's national day Fiesta Nacional de España is held on 12 October, the day celebrated in other countries as Columbus Day or "Día de la Raza", and commemorates the anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas. A military parade is held in Madrid celebrating the occasion. The national day in France is 14 July and known as the "Fête nationale" (known in English-speaking countries as Bastille Day) commemorating the Storming of the Bastille, which is considered the start of the French Revolution. It is widely celebrated and the French Tricolour is much in evidence, while the President of the Republic attends a military parade on the Champs-Élysées of Paris. In the United States, the Independence Day celebrations on 4 July are widely celebrated with parades, fireworks, picnics and barbecues. In Ireland, Saint Patrick's Day, 17 March, is the equivalent of a national day and has been a public holiday for many years. However, in the United Kingdom the constituent countries' patron saints' days are low-key affairs. In recent times campaigns have commenced to promote the national days of England, Scotland and Wales, with St. Andrew's Day being designated as an official bank holiday when the Scottish Parliament passed the St Andrew's Day Bank Holiday (Scotland) Act 2007. A National Day for the United Kingdom has also been proposed in recent years.
French Resistance
As various cities, towns and villages were liberated in France, the Resistance was usually the most organized force that took over. Many "résistants" were disgusted by the mass influx of new members in the dying days of the struggle, contemptuously calling them the FFS ("Forces Françaises de Septembre"-French Forces of September) or the "Septemberists" for short, as all these people had conveniently only discovered their French patriotism in September 1944. In the middle of 1944, Chaban-Delmas had reported to de Gaulle that the FFI numbered 15, 000 in Paris, but the time of the liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944, between 50, 000-60, 000 people were wearing FFI armbands. The liberation of France began with D-Day on 6 June 1944, but different areas of France were liberated at different times. Strasbourg was not liberated until November 1944, and some of the coastal towns on the English Channel and the Atlantic like Dunkirk were still in German hands when the war ended on 8 May 1945. Ousby observed: "There was no national day for Liberation. Each town and village still celebrates a different day, the gaps between them marking advances that often looked bogged down, pockets of German defense that often turned out to be unexpectedly tough. It proved the bitterest of ends to a bitter war." As France was liberated, many "résistants" enlisted in the French Army, with 75, 000 "résistants" fighting as regular soldiers by November 1944, and by the end of the war, 135, 000 "résistants" were serving with the French forces advancing into Germany. For many resistance leaders who gave themselves the title of captain or colonel, it was quite a comedown to be reduced to a private.