Samuel Vidal Flanagan, Grade 11
UWC Dilijan
If you had a time machine, where would you go? Which era would you visit? These are very hard questions to answer, as there is so much to see. Maybe you want to visit your favourite singer when he/she was in high school or just starting out, or you want to visit a powerful king and watch how he ruled his lands, or even just visit the world before there were any humans and just observe the landscape and animals without such obvious interference. There is just so much you could do that choosing one particular moment is complicated, so I have decided to choose two moments. Firstly, I would go back around 90 years to Spain in the 1930s, and I would jump around time till I arrived in the 1980s. Then after that, I would visit Istanbul when it was still Constantinople, the center of the world at that time.
I would like to visit Spain in the 1930s to understand from a first-person perspective what happened in Spain over the last century, from the II Republic until the 1980s, as the events that took place during this time have led the Spanish culture and way of life to what it is today. My great-grandfather fought in the 1936 Spanish Civil War on the side of the fascists’ rebels, although he was not fascist himself and was forced to do so by his regional commanders. He saw action on the front in Zaragoza and participated in the Battle of Teruel (December 1937 - February 1938). Here he was captured by the government’s troops and taken prisoner. Eventually, in 1939 with the shattered retreat towards Barcelona of the government’s forces taking place, he and some others escaped their prison and waited for the Nationalist infantry to find them. Eventually, they were found and almost charged with desertion, although luckily, a man from his village stepped in on his behalf.
After the war, life was very hard, my grandfather describes, as you didn’t know who may snitch on you or what the government may know about you. My family was especially worried as it was heavily involved with the Unions and a leftist family in general. Whispering and avoiding people became frequent, and you never knew who you could trust. Additionally, there wasn’t enough food to go around, so rationing was introduced. This lasted till 1954, with meat being the last thing to be rationed. By this point, my grandfather was born (1948), and Franco’s power was approaching its end. The work of the Unions started to gain strength, and eventually, in the 1960s, my grandfather became Union Convener. The success of the ‘Carnation Revolution’ in Portugal, which toppled Salazar’s dictatorship, also gave hope to the exiled Spanish opposition. In 1974 my dad was born, and a year later, Franco passed away in his bed. The time for a new era had begun in Spain, but it carried a lot of that way of life that was developed during the dictatorship with it. I would love to be there, to have both a historical perspective of what led one of my countries to become what it is, and to understand the trajectory that my family has taken over the last 100 years.
The second place I’d visit, as I said earlier, would be Constantinople during the reign of Justinian (530 AD). This was the peak of the Byzantine Empire and consequently, of Constantinople. It’s population is estimated to have been somewhere between 500.000 and 1.000.000, which would make it the biggest city of its time. Constantinople attracts me because of its physical location, as it is the bridge between East and West, at that point in time, it was the center of the world. It was the remnants of the western Roman Empire mixed with the Arabic way of life and influenced by the empires and kingdoms further east in India and China. Everything converged there, and from there it would go everywhere else in the world. Viking slave traders would trade with European Kings, and Asian merchants would sell silks to the gold traders coming from Mali. It must have been a sight to see, full of different cultures and languages, like New York, London, or Singapore of its time. Also, it was an impressive city in terms of its fortifications and was only overrun twice later on in time during the 4th crusade in 1200 and in 1453 when the Ottomans took control of the region—basically, an amazing city to visit.
I would like to visit Spain in the 1930s to understand from a first-person perspective what happened in Spain over the last century, from the II Republic until the 1980s, as the events that took place during this time have led the Spanish culture and way of life to what it is today. My great-grandfather fought in the 1936 Spanish Civil War on the side of the fascists’ rebels, although he was not fascist himself and was forced to do so by his regional commanders. He saw action on the front in Zaragoza and participated in the Battle of Teruel (December 1937 - February 1938). Here he was captured by the government’s troops and taken prisoner. Eventually, in 1939 with the shattered retreat towards Barcelona of the government’s forces taking place, he and some others escaped their prison and waited for the Nationalist infantry to find them. Eventually, they were found and almost charged with desertion, although luckily, a man from his village stepped in on his behalf.
After the war, life was very hard, my grandfather describes, as you didn’t know who may snitch on you or what the government may know about you. My family was especially worried as it was heavily involved with the Unions and a leftist family in general. Whispering and avoiding people became frequent, and you never knew who you could trust. Additionally, there wasn’t enough food to go around, so rationing was introduced. This lasted till 1954, with meat being the last thing to be rationed. By this point, my grandfather was born (1948), and Franco’s power was approaching its end. The work of the Unions started to gain strength, and eventually, in the 1960s, my grandfather became Union Convener. The success of the ‘Carnation Revolution’ in Portugal, which toppled Salazar’s dictatorship, also gave hope to the exiled Spanish opposition. In 1974 my dad was born, and a year later, Franco passed away in his bed. The time for a new era had begun in Spain, but it carried a lot of that way of life that was developed during the dictatorship with it. I would love to be there, to have both a historical perspective of what led one of my countries to become what it is, and to understand the trajectory that my family has taken over the last 100 years.
The second place I’d visit, as I said earlier, would be Constantinople during the reign of Justinian (530 AD). This was the peak of the Byzantine Empire and consequently, of Constantinople. It’s population is estimated to have been somewhere between 500.000 and 1.000.000, which would make it the biggest city of its time. Constantinople attracts me because of its physical location, as it is the bridge between East and West, at that point in time, it was the center of the world. It was the remnants of the western Roman Empire mixed with the Arabic way of life and influenced by the empires and kingdoms further east in India and China. Everything converged there, and from there it would go everywhere else in the world. Viking slave traders would trade with European Kings, and Asian merchants would sell silks to the gold traders coming from Mali. It must have been a sight to see, full of different cultures and languages, like New York, London, or Singapore of its time. Also, it was an impressive city in terms of its fortifications and was only overrun twice later on in time during the 4th crusade in 1200 and in 1453 when the Ottomans took control of the region—basically, an amazing city to visit.
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