Spain in one.

Generational cycles. Wednesday, January 24, 2018.

Thresholds.

2014 was a critical year. So many events happened, History won’t miss them easily. Let’s review:

• King Juan Carlos I abdicates; that easy.

• New political options appear threatening the main parties «turn» system.

• Catalunya makes an act breaking all State assumed consensus, by calling to a people’s non mandatory referendum. That is, apparently harmless.

• Finally, European Union is asked for a long waited petition of funds to cover the banks, not the country. Meaningful. Again, that’s not a simple bailout.

The head of State’s shift was the most notorious, because one way or another it triggers the rest and it’s a consequence of them, as well. Of course, there are no coincidences, but deliberate action. Decided in January (they tell us), informed in March, announced in June.

You only need to read the speech, to remark expressions like «a new generation demands fairly the main role, the same one attached to the generation I belong to during a critical moment of our history». Of course, this sentence was written there on purpose, to renew the scam, the same one, but using younger participants to perpetuate it. Right in the moment when population had lost confidence in the head of State to wonder wether or not he’s worthy.

Clearly, the situation could not be sustained any longer, while everything was hastier than expected. First of all, they prepare abdication for six months and then they find out there is no «succesion bill» to provide it. They had one decade to prepare a text, after the first granddaughter, but they prefered to wait to the last minute. And then, approve it in the middle of the summer, as if it had avoided any debate. The less you discuss, the more they win.

Anyway, Spain was too busy trying to make a living.

On the top of it, the heir didn’t seem to be very used to the idea. So nervous he was, his voiced craked notoriously twice. Like him, all of us thought that his father’s kingship would never end.

And here comes the best: 4 decades before, something similar happend with Franco, which explains why they extended the dictator’s life for 40 days of agony, to the point of freezing his body (hypothermia). Then Juan Carlos was also crowned in a rush.

Nevertheless, what’s interesting here is duration. That’s what this blog is all about and we are going to focus on it.

Juan Carlos’ rule has lasted for 39 years, the same as Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, and in both cases the country made a shift to a completely different era.

I couldn’t get it out of my head. Is Spain overturning? If we step back 39 more years, we find the Spanish Civil War outbreak. If we go backwards again, we finish on the verge of Spanish-American War. Precisely, summer of 1897, whose most noteworthy event is the assassination of Cánovas del Castillo, Prime Minister. As he was the architect of the second restoration of spanish monarchy (properly speaking, the first happened after the escape of Joseph Bonaparte) he left the country politically devoid of someone to face the unavoidable change, and americans were ready to take advantage of it.

That was finally the key: deliberate delay and holding on a situation already known makes stress so big, it finally releases dramatically or violently. There’s a collective problem to solve and power groups need to break their stalemate by pushing power balances to a new generation; there’s a possibility they have evoluted as a system using (unconsciously) precise terms to find out a solution to such items. No matter wether or not the new generation is better or worse than the preceding.

As a matter of fact, the king’s give up is no more than a way to ease social pressure, and make it more bearable showing new faces.

This also means new ways of living, making things or ruling the community have a limited duration or validity. So the ones involved within key occasions must jump the train because the window of opportunitty is very concrete.

We give so many explanations because there’s always somebody relating our words to esotericism. Nothing could be further from our mind, but anybody interested in looking at things that way has better options.

A view towards History.

Why stop at Cuba? Can’t we find more history before that? What prevents power balances to reset again and again? After all, everything we are, what we believe, public and private attitudes or social structures are transmitted generation after generation. What if they had been doing so since ancient times?

I had the knowledge from Deulofeu’s cyclic theory, which brings us back straight to the times of the Catholic Kings Ferdinand and Isabella. For this reason, I needed only to count leaps of 39 until I lost pace. This is what I found:

• 2014: Juan Carlos I resigns.

• 1975: Franco’s death, official end of dictatorship.

• 1936: Outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.

• 1897: Assassination of PM Cánovas del Castillo. Spanish-American War.

• 1858: Beginning of the O’Donnell’s liberal «Long Rule», the longest ever in Spain.

• 1819: Riego’s uprising (January 1820). First liberal government.

• 1780: Spain’s intervention in the American War of Independence (along with France).

• 1741: Irreversible sickness of king Phillip the Fifth. The queen «de facto» rules.

• 1702: Spanish War of Succession begins.

• 1663: Batle of Ameixial, spanish ultimate defeat against Portugal.

• 1624: Presentation of del Count Duke of Olivares «Memorial».

• 1585: War against England and The Netherlands.

• 1546: Catholic Council of Trento.

• 1507: King Phillip the First dies and gives place to Ferdinand V to come back.

• 1468: Negotiations for the Catholic Kings wedding (1469).

It’s important to remark each date is a shift in the way of living and ruling (we’ll give more details about every case). If we have been able to draw a 39-year chain of steps, maybe we found the periods to link critical points in Deulofeu’s proposal for an imperial stage. According to his cyclic theory, the spanish empire begins in 1479 and comes to an end about next 2029, but taking as a date for beginning 1469 (the wedding) is also possible. That gives a deadline next 2019, which looks probable for reasons we will disclose in this blog. Although some are quite evident.

Why 39?

As a matter of fact, Spain works this way as stated, but this number of 39 looks random. If it’s describing a single generation, the most similar seems to be a person’s working life. May be.

However, doubling the number, 78 looks more like someone’s life expectancy. Better. There are then two halfs: 39 years of dictatorship and 39 of opening-up, which makes sense. That’s what Trevijano called «pendulum’s law», and we think he’s right, but we would like to express it differently.

From fathers to sons.

Sociology hands us a concept called «social reproduction». Family, cultural, social, economic structures, and others are transmitted generation after generation. This legacy, comprising virtues and failures can be understood as a propagation of information: a signal. If we draw it as a wave, this would have a positive semiwave and a negative one, so the pendulum analogy is now seen as a polarity shift. All the steps within repeat the same one way or the opposite. «Sense and sensibility», caution and boldness (proposal of translation from the catalan «seny i rauxa»), repression and striptease… Each culture has its own dichotomy.

Brain waves.

This has just started.

See you soon.

Link of the original blog post called «Generational cycles», in Castillian (Spanish) and English:

https://timecycleblog.wordpress.com/2017/01/24/espana-en-unospain-in-one/