Europe. Where the History Comes From

It’s nearing the end of Day 5 in BCN, so at this point I think I can fairly say that I am now an expert on all things Barcelonian, particularly because I have now been to not one but two museums having to do with the history of the city and the surrounding area, not to mention a day visit to the ancient hub of the area, Tarragona.  So what have I surmised?

There are no fat people

This seems important given the raging debate about health care (if that’s what it’s really about) in the US.  Here in Barcelona, which is in Europe which is as all Americans know vastly inferior to the US, health care comes as part of the standard equipment package.  People get up late, eat more often, eat later, drink more, drink more often, go to bed later, live longer, live healthier lives, aren’t half as fat, and don’t obviously mope about bemoaning the fact that they’re not Americans.  For that matter, most don’t even speak English!

Taxes are evil

I’ve been to Spain several times, the first time more than thirty years ago. Franco was still holding down the fort and the country was far poorer and much more closed.  The south had also not yet been annexed by the English or reinvaded for at least the second time by the Moors.  Three decades on, the evils of joining the EU can be seen everywhere.  The infrastructure is modern and works well.  The harbors are clean.  The population is secular and open to the world.  The overall standard of living is up to varsity standards.  Think how much better a place it would be if none of those tax dollars from Northern Europe had never shown up!

Earth may only be 6000 years old but Spain is much older

I don’t know why I thought about this but it is absolutely clear to me that the people who think that the earth is only 6000 years ago have never seen any of it.  Here in Spain, the previous gold medal winner for Religious intolerance, folks have been living and building on the same patches of land for, oh, 400,000 years or so.  I tried to imagine all those liths (neo, paleo, etc.) telescoped into just 6000 years and, well, spots like Barcelona would have been pretty darned crowded with all those different civilizations building on the same foundations at exactly the same time.  Must have been quite a sight.

God of the month club

If by some miracle some lithic person could have lived for a couple of thousand years, besides meeting Adam and Eve, here’s what his life would have been like.

1. A bunch of people show up from somewhere else.   Depending on the era, those people came from the North, East, or South.
2. They bring some cool new stuff (pottery, bronze, Iron, ivory, silk, the alphabet, numbers, etc.).
3. They reorganize the populace (again) . . .
4. So they can tax the populace (again, still, more).
5. They impose a new order (political, military, social, religious).
6. They fight a war or two.
7. Repeat and rinse.

So for several thousand years, the basic idea was, “Hi, we’re new on the block, we’re here with a brand new belief system which you will now follow, and you now work for us.”  The only thing that changed was the name on the back of the uniform.  How or why anyone thinks that Christianity was a better deal for Joe and Mary Peasant than being a Visigoth or a Carthaginian, or a Husky is beyond me.

Picking a pocket near you for a thousand years

Going to the history museum snapped me out of my picked-pocket funk.  Somehow it helped to realize that the good people of Catalonia have been banditing and pirating since before Jesus was a gleam in Mary’s eye made me feel less singled out.  The search for an honest man is best conducted elsewhere.

Where did Islam go wrong?

Somehow I had forgotten that one of the waves of Iberian occupiers were the Moors.  During their time here, they built cool buildings, generally civilized the southern part of the Peninsula, and introduced every conceivable cultural, scientific, and material wonder to Europe (via the monks of Catalonia).  They also left the Christians and Jews alone to do their thing, which at that particular time in history did not involve slaughtering each other.  That came later after the One True Church managed to pull together enough flash, bang, boom to toss the Moors out and get things properly sorted.

Not long after, the Christian nobility re-enslaved (they didn’t call it that) the peasantry, the Plague made a star turn, and the Inquisitors stopped by for a couple of centuries (including the counter reformation).  If you were one of those lithic peasants who’d been hanging around for a couple of thousand years, this wouldn’t have been your favorite epoch.