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There are so many ways to lose power (military defeats, coups d’état, assassinations or revolutions, to name a few) that it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the fall can also occur through democratic means.
Napoleon. Although Napoleon was deposed twice by force – the last time, resoundingly, at Waterloo – he has become one of the most famous figures in history. Ridley Scott’s film that premieres this week reviews his life with errors that, by the way, would have delighted the emperor. Meanwhile, in France, one of his famous bicorn hats has just been auctioned for two million euros.
The Kaiser. After his fall, caused by the German defeat in the Great War, Kaiser Wilhelm was exiled to Holland where he had time to reflect on his extremely belligerent role in that conflict, but also to look for other culprits of the disaster such as the Jews, Weimar, the Americans, the British, the Freemasons, the Communists and a very long etcetera. His relationship with the Nazi regime was very complicated.
Caesar and Caligula. You could say that the Kaiser was lucky if you compare him to Julius Caesar, whom the novelist Santiago Posteguillo describes as the first populist and who ended his days stabbed in the Senate. Or with Caligula, about whom the media Mary Beard wonders “was he murdered for being evil or did he become evil for being murdered?”
The left in the Republic. When in April 1931, in the midst of republican effervescence, the left took power, it began an ambitious reform plan. However, two years later she was defeated in the elections against the right. What had happened in these two years? The responsibility was not the female vote or anarchism, but rather the errors of the progressive forces, who would have to wait until 1936 to return.
The art of fortresses. With the arrival of artillery, the old castles became obsolete and the defensive walls had to be reconsidered. Consequently, in the 17th century, a branch of military engineering specialized in the construction of fortresses was born, which had one of its greatest exponents in the Frenchman Alain Manesson Mallet. This gallery with his projects, published in 1671, is spectacular. Seen in The public domain review.
The greats of Rome. The National Archaeological Museum has posted on YouTube a summer course organized by the museum itself and by the Uned last September on the emperors who made the Roman world great, from Augustus to Constantine. Nine conferences with top-level experts.
Persistent droughts. Surely the climate crisis and the increase in temperatures are related to the lack of rain that affects certain areas of the Peninsula, but the reality is that, with or without global warming, droughts are a cyclical phenomenon with a great impact on southern Europe. Some of the most important were those of the mid-18th century or those of the postwar period, between 1944 and 1946, when, faced with the famine that spread throughout Spain, the Franco regime coined the famous concept of the “persistent drought” and which served as a screen for hide the poor management of resources by the regime.
Subsequently, other dryland periods have had a significant environmental and economic impact, such as those of the first half of the 1990s or the most recent period of 2005-2009. The presence of droughts in the peninsular context has historically been so important that some highly relevant events have been linked by specialists to the lack of rain. One of the most recent examples of research is the dry period that from the end of the 7th century caused a famine and the weakening of the Visigothic kingdom that succumbed to the arrival of the Muslims from North Africa.
Are droughts more serious today than centuries ago? It is possible, but specialists warn of two things: first, that today there are technologies that cushion the impact of the lack of rain, such as the immense network of swamps built especially during the Franco era; the second, that although the amount of rainfall today was the same as in previous times, the needs are much higher. A Peninsula populated by four million people, as in Roman times, is not the same as Spain at the end of the 19th century with less than 20 million inhabitants, or today, with more than double the population. And a huge number of tourists.
