A walk through Spanish time

We're going to take a stroll through a typical Spanish Archaeological Museum. First though some figures to show just how much of our history is really prehistory. Take my figures with a pinch of salt. The information is generally European and, because there was some variation in the detail, I rounded and massaged the figures. They are fine for a conversation down the pub but not detailed enough to form the basis of your specialist subject on Mastermind.

• About 4,500,000,000 years ago the Earth was formed
• About 3,700,000,000 years ago microbes pop up
• About 500,000,000 years ago jellyfish are doing just fine
• About 2,500,000 years ago and there are eight (and probably more to be unearthed) human species like the Neanderthals and Denisovans kicking about
• About 300,000 years ago we appear - Homo Sapiens. Time will prove that sapiens was a bad choice of name. Total human population about 30,000
• About 73,000 years ago the Toba catastrophe (a volcanic eruption in Indonesia) reduces the human population to below 10,000. We hang on by the skin of our teeth
• About 11,000 years ago, maybe a bit before, we moved out of caves and started to do a bit of farming
• About 5,000 years ago we began to tool up with bronze, we invented ploughs and social organisation. The Egyptians were way out in front. They could organise legions of workers and knew how to build pyramids. They had a system for writing too so that we have names and dates for them
• About 3,300 years ago there are villages and people are forging iron. Maybe 3 million people in the world
• About 250 years ago the Industrial Revolution began. Populations began to increase and we started to impact our environment. 770 million people in the World. About 8 million on the Spanish Peninsula and 9 million in the British Isles.

So, back to that archaeological museum. Almost every one I've been to in Spain is organised so that the rooms represent time periods. The first section will be prehistory. There'll be axe heads and flint arrows and maybe small skeletons, some pots and pictures of people in skins carrying spears and pictures of men with beards and women cooking. Prehistory; the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age with no personalities and no specific history but already with stereotypes.

The next room will be about the Iberos. It's possible that this is a bit of a Valencia/Murcia thing because this bunch turned up and settled this area about 2,600 years ago. They also have a name that sounds Spanish - like the ham and the airline. They left behind plenty of pottery and jewellery and, of course, the famous Dama de Elche bust (like the one in the photo). In this same room the Phoenicians, who were from Lebanon way and had a few trading settlements here and there in Spain, will get a mention. The Celts, who had settled in the North of the peninsula will also get a nod. In fact, at the time, there were lots of groups on the peninsula (Iberians, Celtiberians, Tartessians, Lusitanians, and Vascones) but their populations were so tiny that they are largely forgotten. Like the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians and Greeks had small trading settlements on the Mediterranean coast. Only a couple of hundred years before the start of the modern era (the old BC/AD divide) the Carthaginians came in force from North Africa, and settled in Cartagena. By now the rich and powerful have names and dates for their births and deaths. Battles have dates too.

Passing to the following room we're with the Romans. The Romans were all over large parts of what is now Spain. They took their time about conquering it all, a couple of hundred years in fact, but by twenty years before the modern era they controlled all the peninsula, Portugal included. And they stayed for a long time leaving lots of bridges and mosaics, theatres, statues without heads and forums (fora?). There were also three Roman Emperors who were Spanish (well they were Roman but they were born in Spain, well, what would, one day, be Spain) - Trajan, Hadrian (he of the wall) and Theodosius I. As the Germanic tribes sacked Rome the Roman settlements in Spain were overrun by tribes like Visigoths, Suevi and Vandals. 

The Visigoths were the big winners in the new order in Spain after decline of the Roman Empire but they usually get hardly a mention in the archaeological museums - sometimes they are popped in with the Romans and sometimes they're in the next room. We're now at about year 400. The Visigoths were in charge for a few hundred years. When there was a bit of a problem about the succession to the crown within the ruling Visigothic elite one of the pretenders invited some North African troops over to Spain, to give him a hand. It was a bad move. The Berbers came, liked what they saw and decided to stay. As they were warriors and Muslims they saw it as their duty to conquer the lands for Islam. These are the Moors, los Moros, the ones who have the better costumes in the Moors and Christians celebrations. 

It's the Moors and the Christians who get the next room. From the Moorish Invasion in 711 to the time that they lost their last foothold in Granada in 1492 they were a big part of Spanish history. The years from the invasion to the "reconquest" is the stuff of Spanish legend. The idea is that a few brave (white, Christian) souls, Asturians, led by Pelayo stopped the Moorish armies at Covadonga. The Moors had had very little trouble conquering Spain to that point so the Asturians claim to have stopped the Muslim hordes and so saved Europe. This is the stuff of Spanish myth, the bedraggled Christians fighting back and eventually turfing out those nasty (black, Islamic) invaders. It's not really true of course. Christian propaganda. The Moors were actually stopped, militarily, by Charles Martel (at least that's his British name) at the battle of Tours. But let's not be disloyal, we'll stick with Pelayo at Covadonga. From there there is a gentle but persistent pushing back of the Moors. There is also a lot of living side by side and interbreeding and farming and learning maths and everything else. Mind you, where you get a line of castles, like we have around here in Petrer, Sax, Villena, Castilla etc., it's usually the sign of a long lasting frontier between one side and the other. Again it's a huge oversimplification but it will do for now.

So, it's 1492 and the Catholic Monarchs, an alliance through marriage of the powerful "kingdoms" of Spain, have accepted the surrender the last of the Moorish rulers based in Granada and they're getting on with turfing all the Jewish people out. That's when they turn their eyes to broader horizons and pay Columbus or Colón, or whatever he was called, to go and bring back some spices from the Indies. Along the way, completely lost, he bumped into some Caribbean islands and so began the European invasion of the New World. 

And from then on the individual museum curators seem to do as they wish.

Keep on truckin'

I don't remember the film title but I do remember the little gasp of horror from the audience as Michael Douglas padded across the room in half light heading for the bathroom. The reason for the concern was that he had a sunken, old man, bottom and, though I haven't dared to look recently, I suppose mine is too.

So far as I know I have no chronic illnesses though I know from people around me that your luck can change in seconds. I do often feel old though. Old as I feel the pain in my knees. Old as I realise that I'm gasping for breath after climbing a few stairs. Old as my arms ache after a bit of sawing. My feet hurt all the time, and the tinnitus is really loud. And so on and so forth. I'm getting old. No, let's be right about it, I am old. I know that people around me refer to 45 year olds as middle aged but all I can suppose is that they failed their "O" level sums.

Covid, and the responses to it, have kept us all quite hemmed in for a while now. Of course it has done much more. It has killed people, destroyed businesses, overpowered health services, left people penniless, challenged basic democratic rights and much more but, in our case, it has mainly hemmed us in. Lots of normal activity has stopped. Spain, a country where the smallest centre of population has a fiesta to celebrate its patron saint has cancelled them all. Covid is going to do to Christmas what the Grinch failed to do. 

On the cultural side the few concerts and sports events that have found a way to continue have been severely limited or have no spectators. In like manner the big museums may still be putting on new exhibitions but the the visitor numbers are scandalously low. Book fairs have been cancelled left right and centre. It's true that he cinemas are open but there are almost no big budget Hollywood films to see and even the domestic releases have been scant. Who wants to waste all that effort in releasing their film for paltry attendances? Of the five cinemas we most usually go to one has closed, probably for good, and one is running on a five day week. Current travel restrictions mean we can't use three of them; they are out of bounds. I went to a 4.15pm film screening last Wednesday and I was the only person, in the whole of the 11 screen cinema, apart from staff. Last night we went to a theatre in Elche and there were six of us in the dress circle. Down in the stalls half of the seats were taped over but occupancy of the remaining half couldn't have been more than a third. It was all a bit lifeless and depressing. You're living it too. You can add hundreds of similar examples and we're not even particularly confined at the moment.

Despite the fact that I keep doing it, wandering around yet another cathedral or a town centre hasn't really interested me for a while. But for the captions on my photos I often can't tell one from the other. Much better, in my opinion, to go to somewhere when something's happening. So I remember the community opera performance in Peterborough Cathedral much better than I remember Peterborough Cathedral. It's fine popping out to a local town, going to the coast or eating out but for me it's better when there is a twist to that. When the town has a food fair or there's a tapas trail, when something out of the ordinary is happening in the streets, when you've gone because you want to see the latest blockbuster exhibition or maybe something less obvious. Sports events, film festivals and the rest are, to me, great reasons for going somewhere.

It's not that my heart and nerve and sinew won't hold on for a while longer yet but it is all a bit wearying.