" Greatness dies, unsung and lost, invisible to history..."

[nuraicha]

My name's Irene and today I have witnesed history happening in front of my eyes. Today, after 39 years of kingship, Juan Carlos, king of Spain, has abdicated in his son, Felipe (future Felipe VI of Spain).

To be honest, I don't know how I feel about these news. I don't like politics at all, and monarchy is just another kind of politics to me. I never liked Juan Carlos much, but Felipe gives me some sense of fondness. However, I don't like the royal family in general, because of all the scandals they are involved with (especially Juan Carlos and the princesses, to be fair Felipe hasn't done anything wrong, yet), even if I kind of like the Queen, Sofía, mostly because she looks like a good woman who has had to stand a lot of shit (and she studied archaeology).

As I'm writing this, there are people all around the country in demonstrations of protest, because they want to have a referendum to vote against monarchy and in favour of a republic. This is relevant because Spain has been a republic only twice in its history: the first one in the 19th century only lasted a year and, if I'm not wrong, had more than 5 presidents; the second one lasted from 1931 to 1936 and it had good points (universal suffrage) and bad points (violence against many things). Many people believes that, if we had a republic, it would be a left wing republic, which means tons of other people (from the right wing) are completely against the idea.

Myself, I don't care. I don't think a change of king or representative system (the king doesn't do another thing that being the represent of our country, and if we had a republic I suppose we would change to have a Prime Minister and a President who did that task, as in Italy) would do any good to Spain nowadays, because the main problem is the corruption and that needs way more than a new face on top. Still, I think it'd be a good idea to have a referendum pro-republic if people want it, because hey, that's democracy, isn't it?

Anyway, what I wanted to talk about was about my pride of being alive at this time. So many stuff has happened, in Spain and in the rest of the world, at the time I'm living. Stuff that will appear in History books of the future. I've seen many wars, many protests, many acts of terrorism, many falls, many risings. You can never know what will be written in posterity, but I'm sure that stuff like Obama, the Arabic Spring or Felipe VI of Spain (okay, Philip VI for you, anglospeakers) will feature. And, as a person who is in love with history and will dedicate her life to search and fight for it, I'm inmensily happy I'm alive at this time.

In times like this, I can't help but loving what I do and being jealous of what the future 'me's of the future will dig. I bet we will be called the 'Phone Civilisation' or something like that, though. It's a pity that I don't want to be buried, but if I reconsider it, I'll totally leave in my grave something for the future archaeologists to be able to identify my body and the period. Or I might get naughty and just bury myself with some scarabeums to make them crazy!


PS: BTW, guess who got a 10 in Archaeometry II exam!!!!!! YES, ME!!!!!! \o/ So this makes an average of 7 so... FIRST SUBJECT PASSED! ONLY 4 TO GO!!! \o/

Comments

[nuraicha.livejournal.com]

The problem is that I have never exactly liked the idea of burying for myself! For instance, my grandma's ashes were spread in a mountain of her natal city (Granada, I might have moor's blood in me!), so I have always liked that idea, more than the typical tomb in a cemetery. But if I don't bury myself I won't help my colleagues when they are doing their job, so it's tricky! Anyway, I won't help them either because I am so going to joke with their minds! ;)

Oh my god, this is really embarrassing! I must have heard it for uninformed people or in comparisition to other countries (we tend to do that, the whole 'omg we're better because we did X before Y, W and Z', but they omit other data). Reading this, I'm punching myself for forgetting about some Sweden women voting in the 18th century!! I wrote that in my Fucking Modern Paper last year! But yeah, the universal suffrage for women (and in general) came with the Second Republic and lasted until the Civil War; the next time all women could vote was in 1978 with the Constitution. Thanks for the correction!

Yeah, I bet as well for the Internet Age. One of my teachers made us reflect about what would survive if the class collapsed at the exact moment and after some centuries, and we came to the conclusion than the only stuff we would have in common would be phones, laptops and... pens! (especially BIC, almost everybody has at least one BIC); obviously, if they compared us to other people of other sites, I bet the most common objects would be phones and laptops (so they could classify us as a subculture or infer we were from a different social class or something). I remember when I was a child in the 90's and the computers started to be more common, it was like a revolution to us! Everytime some child at class (well, their parents) got a computer was like a sign of social ascense. Nowadays though it's the most common thing in the world and that makes me reflect how the human kind will change because of it.