How do people and nations evolve over time?
🔊 Millions of tiny changes in people's daily lives, mixed with the events of History, somehow end up forming nations and cultures that last for centuries.
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Right, let’s go again. I shall start with some general notes and then work back in to the regular columns over the next few days into the New Year. 2023 is going to be a fascinating political year in Spain, with local, regional and general elections all on the cards. Let’s begin with differences and nations.
I have been back in England for a few days for Christmas with my parents and son, and for the first time since the Covid pandemic began. Lots of turkey and chocolates and presents and country walks full of interesting reflections.
Still after almost 25 years, almost all of my adult life, in Spain, England always surprises me again, every time, with how very green she is, compared to the southern edges of the Iberian peninsula. Green and brown and grey and wet, with rolling hills and fields, not the yellow, blue, arid, more jaggedy landscape we are used to at home (of course there are different parts of different countries with different landscapes and climates but those of you who have lived or travelled in other countries for long periods of time will understand and allow me the generality).
It also always makes me wonder about how the differences between countries, or the differences in one country over time, happen. How change slowly creeps up on us all. Things that seem so noticeable and obvious to visitors but are so imperceptible or even forgotten to locals.
The language you hear all around you, of course, or the way people make coffee or prepare meals. The times of the meals or the types of chocolates. The tones that TV presenters speak in. The sports references. The shops and companies and adverts that are different this time than last. Maybe a whole new road or interesting bridge has been built. The kids are playing with different new toys they think are cool in one place but not another.
Some relationships have become tighter over the past few years of events in a society, some have stretched apart or even broken, perhaps never to be repaired. Especially during Covid with all the lockdowns, social distancing and new rules for interacting. My son, now 10, is noticing the differences for the first time: the police cars look different and their sirens sound different, people drive on the other side of the road, we go round the roundabouts the wrong way.
Small changes, mostly unremarkable in the moment, fleeting details in the lives and habits of millions of individuals with their own daily struggles in their brief absolute time on Earth but who in one form or another, in the meantime, form part of families and villages and cities and groups that all together make up a society, a mix of tribal and shared cultures and values and narratives and languages and symbols that together over many years generate memories of shared events and problems and build out infrastructure and technology to try to solve them.
Then there is an entity we call a nation or a nation state, divided into some form of regions, that sits atop it all to manage political and legal and military power for all the people who live in that place, and sometimes against other nations. Those nations, which can last for centuries and encompass multiple millions of lifetimes over many generations, share a common era in the course of global affairs and themselves change slowly over time under the influence of ideas, ideologies, technologies and events to become something that previous generations long dead would perhaps only recognise in name or geography if they were to visit again for a few days.
The England of Henry VIII or the Spain of the Catholic Monarchs slowly became the United Kingdom of Charles III and the Spain of Felipe VI. Both countries are dealing with independence movements in the current period. In one there are lots of republicans; in the other, not so many.
In the midst of those busy daily lives, the locals sometimes walk past symbols or monuments that point to that whole nation and a large part of its history—without thinking about it for even a second on the way to work or to see friends close by—and that still today might resonate and form part of national meaning, decades or centuries after the events took place. In other countries, those kinds of symbols might not exist, or might not have that meaning or might divide instead of uniting. Like this cenotaph (below), for example, in the small village where my parents still live, very well looked after more than 100 years after it was unveiled by one Captain France-Hayhurst in the year 1920.
My father mentioned he had recently read one of Anthony Beevor’s books on the Spanish Civil War and asked between mince pies if people in Spain had moved on from all that after so many years or if it was still divisive. “Can you see that cenotaph, there, Dad? Let’s tell you some stories…”
Merry Christmas, everyone.
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How unbelievably trivial. Your dad must be embarassed by you.