Poll on wether Spain was a Civ3-able superpower.

[Jay Bee]

P.S.: 'These' discussions are what this forum is for, and can be quite enjoyable as long as people refrain from making nasty personal remarks.

So says the one who just wrote: "freedom of thought (Greece; something Spain is apparently still struggling with"

You don't give enough credit to yourself, dear. And I agree with Marquis, ignorance and arrogance aside, you seem to be a bit smarter than the average poster, but get carried away too easily to be just a troll. What is your game, dear? Are you a psychologist in the middle of a key experiment?

[Shaka Naldur]

Originally posted by Ribannah
(Btw Shaka, I'm not a USA citizen. )

whatever,
tell me a problem with freedom of speech in spain and i´ll tell you three from whereever you are,
I bet you won´t be able to say one

[Ribannah]

Originally posted by jasev
This haven't been proven.

Actually it has. The remnants of an entire Viking village have been dug up along the coast of NE America and were dated to around 1000 AD if memory serves.

There was no foot shortage in Spain at the end of the 15th century.

What about the Flamenco, the singing of the hungry field workers?

And Spain never used its american colonies to produce food. We preferred to import seeds to plant them here (potatoes, sugar, tomatoes).

That is true, and it could have had more success had Spain invested more in agricultural industry like eg Britain did.

What did you expect? Spain sustained wars against the half of the known world and part of the unknown. A lot of people went outseas seeking fortune and nobody stayed in the fields to produce food. Food shortage was not a cause but a consequence of the Spanish America colonization.

This seems at odds with what you said above. With the new crops, and specialization especially in Catalonia, Spain did fine for a while.

Spain incorporated the new advances in agriculture even sooner than many other european countries, because of the moorish legacy (we introduced the arab plough in Europe, much better than old roman one).
Spain was slow to incorporate the new advances in agriculture in the second half of the 17th century,

That's what I was talking about. Especially the importance of crop mixing, which gave the Dutch their Golden Age, was not recognized in Spain.

Are you talking about somebody in special?

You can find two prime examples right above this post

Oh, it seems I offended you when I said that the "food shortage" argument was stupid. Sorry, It wasn't my intention. But if you want to avoid that, you should inform yourself about what you're talking about before.

Apologies accepted.
But informing oneself, which I did, only brings one so far. The power, and the attraction I might add, of the internet lies in combining the knowledge, the creativity and the vision of the many - which requires sharing your thoughts, at the risk of being wrong. Only logic can sort things out, in the end. Even then we might end up agreeing that we disagree. As long as we respect each other, we have the opportunity to grow.
Those who cannot bring themselves to that will simply be left behind in this new age.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Shaka Naldur
tell you three from whereever you are,

IIRC a former Spanish territory.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ribannah

All fine and interesting, and some of my favorite painters are Spanish, but I think you should be looking for another order of magnitude, things that are in the same category as the ideas behind the French revolution, or compulsory education (Germany, or Prussia rather), or freedom of thought (Greece; something Spain is apparently still struggling with) etc. Major developments in human civilization.

Ignoring the cheap and inaccurate comment about the struggle for free thought in modern Spain, a potted history of Spanish philiosophy and thought:

The emblematic year for Spain is 1492: the year of complete political unification as well as the date of the discovery of America, which gave Spain a worldly empire upon which 'the sun never set'. It marks also an extraordinary flourishing of Spanish culture, spreading over the whole sixteenth century, known as the Golden Century of Spanish culture. Philosophy was not alien to this flourishing and there were good reasons for that, mainly the heritage of tolerance and the exchange of philosophical ideas among members of the three big religions that characterized the medieval period. This facilitated the arrival in the Occident of Greek culture (through Arabic culture), and produced such remarkable thinkers as Averroës, Maimonides, and Llull, among many others.

Thus, most philosophical movements are well represented in sixteenth-century Spain. Scholasticism found a renewed impulse at the University of Salamanca. Vitoria, Suárez, and Soto developed a metaphysics separate from theology, offered new solutions to the problem of free will, and proposed valuable doctrines in logic. Their main contribution, though, was their argument for a right of peoples, which later became the basis for our current international law. Challenged by the problems of legitimacy that the Conquest and colonization of the recently discovered territories raised, Vitoria and Suárez argued against the legitimacy of war to impose a faith, and contended that native American peoples, as humans, had rights to property and self-government.

Humanism and Neoplatonism were also well represented. The humanist J. L. Vives (1492-1540), a close friend of Erasmus, defended the importance of human subjectivity as the ground of human dignity and religious life. Moreover, during turbulent years, he argued in favour of peace and concord. And Spanish Neoplatonism finds perfect expression in the Dialogues on Love of Leon Hebreo, culminating in the thoughts of the great Spanish mystics Teresa de Jesús (1515-1582) and Juan de la Cruz (1542-1591), whose central idea was of Love as the path to an intimate knowledge of God.

Finally, there was a pre-rationalist group of philosopher-physicians. F. Sánchez (1550-1623) proposed the idea 'that nothing is known', distrusting authority and tradition as foundations for knowledge, and adopted the principle of 'methodical doubt' as the right way of inquiry: an important influence on Descartes.

But 1492 had also been the year of the expulsion of the Jews: an early sign of official Spanish commitment to doctrinal purity and orthodox Catholicism. This trend culminated in the Counter-Reformation, with the rise of the powerful and infamous Inquisition and the suppression of intellectual advance. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, study abroad was forbidden and Augustine and Aquinas were the only authorized philosophers.

Three hundred years later, at the end of the nineteenth century, a new flourishing of Spanish culture took place, the Silver Age, which was dramatically interrupted by the Civil War (1936-9). In philosophy, two outstanding figures emerged, Unamuno and Ortega y Gasset, together with an important group of recognized scholars. The dominant themes of this period, which were highly influenced by German philosophy, are the questions of the bounds of reason and the human existential situation, and different versions of irrationalism were proposed.

The defeat of Spanish democracy drove into exile most intellectuals - writers, scientists, and professors. In philosophy, Ferrater Mora is perhaps the most interesting figure amongst them. Once again Augustine and Aquinas became the official philosophers in Spain.

In recent years, the new climate of political and intellectual freedom has brought a resurgence of philosophical activity. Lacking a continuous tradition, interests are plural, and sometimes combine different traditions. The most promising areas are history of philosophy, especially ancient, and moral philosophy.

A.GOM.
Bibliography J. L. Abellán, Historia crÃtica del pensamiento español (Madrid, 1979-1990).
M. Menéndez-Pelayo, Historia de los heterodoxos españoles (Madrid, 1978).

The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, © Oxford University Press 1995


and Ramon Llull, an influence on Leibniz:

http://cedar.evansville.edu/~ecoleweb/glossary/llull.html

Your comment that the Vikings have not been proved to be the first Europeans to reach (North) America is interesting- the site at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland would however seem to prove conclusively (even without the oral and written documentary evidence) that they did in fact do so:

http://www.parkscanada.gc.ca/parks/newfoundland/anse_meadows/anse_meadows_e.htm

Unless of course, you're suggesting you know better than Parks Canada, international archaeologists and Unesco...

As for Cervantes and the novel- it has been asserted by many literary authorities that all the ingredients for the modern novel exist in 'Don Quixote'. It is difficult to see how Cervantes could have ensured he would create a whole genre, but I think writing his novel is feat enough in itself. As we were discussing culture, I hardly think that the Spanish contribution to Baroque and Mannerism isn't enough in itself. I don't understand why you feel the need to shift the goalposts all the time with Spain. Mention Spanish mathematicians and philiosophers, and you want Spain to have invented the wheel, or Marxian economics, or the Jacquard loom....

[jasev]

Originally posted by Ribannah
What about the Flamenco, the singing of the hungry field workers?

I'll suppose you're joking .

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Originally posted by molly bloom
...I don't understand why you feel the need to shift the goalposts all the time with Spain. Mention Spanish mathematicians and philiosophers, and you want Spain to have invented the wheel, or Marxian economics, or the Jacquard loom....

I'm afraid you've hit upon the very reason others have given up on trying to have a sensible discussion with her. If you counter her point too well, the discussion quickly shifts to something related, but not quite there. Very tiring. Hints of TROLL, imho.

[XarXo]

In a few words

If in Civ3 we've "English", we must have "Castillians" in the place of "Spanish" or "Spaniards". Castillians created the spanish language, also they dominated the court, the diplomacy, etc...

Ok, you can say me "Spain is most known than Castilla", but we also know more "United Kingdom" than "England" and everybody know that the correct name for the tribe is the second one.

Please respect this, and yes, like with "English" and "British" the origin of this is a political reason.

Thanks for your patiente.

EDIT: About Ramon Llull

Ramon Llull wrote in Arabic, Latin and Catalan. He lived during the Crown of Aragon period, also he (as I said) doesn't wrote in castillian, so he is not spanish. If we consider that people that lived before a state formation are from this nation Slavian Makedonjan are truly equals to the Greek Macedonian. Ask this to Markos Giannopoulos and read the answer.

And please, no more "Raimundo Lulio", is like to read "Francisco Sinatra" (Frank Siantra), "Jorge Buch" (George Bush) or "Melchor Hijodegib" (Mel Gibson).

[XarXo]

Originally posted by Ribannah


What is widely accepted is that he wrote the first (and very beautiful) modern novel (El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (1605)). To claim that he created an entire genre all by himself is an unnecessary exaggeration - Cervantes is great enough as it is - and denies the contributions made by other important authors who followed up and further defined what constitutes the modern novel.

Or went before. Long before Cervantes, Japanese authors wrote novels that fit the genre, like The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Sikibu.

But don't let that stop you guessing the color of my shirt.

Skennen!

P.S.: 'These' discussions are what this forum is for, and can be quite enjoyable as long as people refrain from making nasty personal remarks.

The first one is "Tirant lo Blanch", written in catalan. Sorry

[Ribannah]

Originally posted by molly bloom
Ignoring the cheap and inaccurate comment about the struggle for free thought in modern Spain, a potted history of Spanish philiosophy and thought:

Which was obviously not directed at you, your contributions in this thread (and others) are excellent and honorable.

But 1492 had also been the year of the expulsion of the Jews:

And the Moslims that still lived in Spain. The Gypsies didn't have a great time either, but what else in new.

I don't understand why you feel the need to shift the goalposts all the time with Spain. Mention Spanish mathematicians and philiosophers, and you want Spain to have invented the wheel, or Marxian economics, or the Jacquard loom....

Yes, the same point that I have tried to get across in various discussions, but so far in vain. Spain is a beautiful country with a rich and impressive history, there is absolutely no need to make it look another two sizes bigger.

[Ribannah]

Originally posted by jasev

I'll suppose you're joking .

Music, and art in general, can give a lot of historical information. Maybe you forgot that while the guitar and the dance are a much later development, the cante originates from the 15th century.

"Flamenco is full of this, of pain, of sorrow, of the persecution of the gypsy people, the condion of being left out, Andalucia and poverty, and of hunger."

http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/1192/luzia2.html

http://es.geocities.com/guitarraespanola/chapters/theflamenco.htm

(Plenty more where these came from.)

[sargon2]

Originally posted by Marquis de Sodaq

...

Why the urge of certain germanic types to spend so much effort trying to make Spain out to be less important/influential that she really was?
...

Please don't take me representativ. I'm really an exception. In Germany Spain got a very good position. If I remember right there is a German poster in this thread who was one of my hardest opponents. He allways held the spanish flag high.
And deep in my hard I'm a Spain-lover too. I just wanted to provoke to get a base for informnation towards Spain.

Now I take all wrong back and only support the correct.

Special thanks to jasev:
"Oh, please leave Sargon2 in peace by the moment. After all, he haven't written anything else here since the thread started. "Qui tacet, favet", isn't it? "

And that brings me to another point. The Spanish culture holds the roman heiritage and dialectivly the Roman language high.
To me even closer than Italy. Pardon me Italians.

I hope I could wipe out all intercultural tensions

[jasev]

Originally posted by sargon2
And that brings me to another point. The Spanish culture holds the roman heiritage and dialectivly the Roman language high.
To me even closer than Italy. Pardon me Italians.

Well, if we're talking about roman language inheritance, I think german is a non-despictable example. Of course, I'm talking about Grammatik: dammly complicated declinations and cases (akkusativ, dativ, genitiv usw....).

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Originally posted by sargon2
Please don't take me representativ. I'm really an exception. In Germany Spain got a very good position...

No offence! Whenever threads like this start, it ends up being some northern europeans or americans trying to discredit spain's importance, and los hispanicos trying to defend it. In the end, it usually shows that ignorance of history, not facts, were what drove the urge to discredit spain. Good to see that you are willing to accept new information!

[sargon2]

That is right. And we got thousands of latin words that are some seperated as foreign-words (Fremdwörter) that can be everywhere used especially in sciences They are not integrated but got a high regardness.
But our gramma is not of roman inheritanc it's of indoeuropean inheritance. All languages of that origin got once many cases German got 5 Latin 6 and the older versions even up to 10 or 12.
But its a law of historical development that languages become more simple our Genitiv and Dativ looses ground everyday. But we got a lot of inheritance or influence in worldview exressed by wordmeaning-extensions and idioms.

I'm just learning Latin. It's hard for a non-romanic speaker but its usefull. Again my respect for the Spanish language. If everything goes right in my life I will wind up one day in a spanisch-speaking country, but not in europe. So next language I'm gonne learnh is Spanish. And that is usefull all the same.

------------------
I have taken back my 'tirades' against Jay Bee. It doesn't count anymore. It's been just a cultural misunderstanding of temper.