Who owns the past?

Many teachers don’t even bother to answer, ignoring the question arrows of the rebellious boy on duty with downright disdain.

I, on the other hand, keep thinking about the criticisms thrown in the air, of course, because I have the soul of a philosopher. This general questioning of the subject is sincere and simple, but not as naive as it might seem at first glance, it leads me to meditation.

What is history for, why should we examine things that have been lived and left behind for months, years? The rebellious student’s expression has an undoubted value: the usefulness of the discipline is raised in a radical, pristine way.

We’re more or less coming to say this: Once it’s over, it’s gone, it doesn’t matter anymore … why are we, young and vibrant, future-oriented adolescents wasting our time remembering what those gentlemen did? past?

We must use this youthful attraction to try to reflect on a fundamental question: why do we constantly strive to bring the past to the present, why do we put our lives at the service of past centuries and leave them to remember? and again?

I know many colleagues, professors and researchers who dedicate their lives to history. They spent decades studying the time-worn types of pottery or paper depicting the life of a Marquis in an unknown region of Spain.

They’re so preoccupied with a topic, they don’t know how to explain why, and they continue to write academic articles for bland journals that languish in the University’s closed circuits.

They often do research to do research because they have to justify the semester hours devoted to it because they need to earn points to become accredited in their professional careers.

In many cases, this results in them spending months analyzing matters of questionable interest, even for themselves. To me, history is losing.

And it all happens because we don’t stop to find meaning in what we do. This is acceptable and understandable on an individual level, but on a general level, considering ourselves as a society that finances these investigations in many cases, I think it is not very desirable.

Today, there is a lot of talk about the need to transfer knowledge to return what university academics have learned with great effort, and to return these clever researches to citizens who pay their taxes.

In my opinion, we need to develop this aspect a lot: Should the professional researcher consider the interests of society when choosing his subject, should he strive to be comprehensible and reach as many readers as possible?

Frankly, my answer is yes.

Now that we’ve given the university homework, let’s think a little more about the utility of history. Public institutions, professors, professorships… we should all strive to make sense of history, to help us understand our present.

The past, dear reader, who follows me and supports my games is always there. Past centuries never go away with their eternal echo, they are always here with us.

If you tune your ear, you can still hear the fights between Carthaginians and Romans in the places of our Terreta, feel our hardworking Muslim peasants improving the soil with their hydraulic skills, the Kingdom of Castile and Aragon fighting for Alicante, you hear the whistle of the last bullet from our sad civil war.

The past determines our present. Discovering how and why helps us get rid of parts of us that are harmful to us as a society if we want to.

It also allows us to be better by claiming what is good in the days we are currently living in.

The past is the only thing that exists because the present is temporary, as soon as it is noticed it is long gone and is past. The long-awaited future never comes fully, and when it does, it quickly becomes a passing present.

Let me, dear reader, respond to that accomplice smile I can throw at you with these philosophical-literary phrases and some references, I know you want to learn more about it.

I recommend reading the book “The Future and its Enemies” (Paidós publishing house) by the great philosopher Daniel Innerarity. It is highly recommended that you also take the book “Por qué la historia” (Salvat editorial) by Manuel Tuñón de Lara.

But let’s move on, life is rushed (No spelling goes without an Ortega quote, it makes sense). Now that the basic approach to the question has been made, I want to be more specific. Forward.

The past belongs to everyone, it should be in the public domain. It is clear that in a democratic society based on dialogue between different peoples, there can and should be different visions of the past.

The past should be public, historical memory is vital. As researchers and disseminators, we must work to make the past accessible and understandable, to give it meaning.

Please stop entering the classroom to post facts and dates, explain the Normandy landings for the tenth time, put up the usual video about the guillotine in the French Revolution. We can do better!

We should ask for support from the administration, but we should not be inactive when it does not come by avoiding tutelage. Who is preventing you from opening a friend blog who reads this and has his writings on your computer? You have to start.

If we want to make sense of the past, we must try to explain the causes and consequences of historical events. Dates are not studied simply because they help us enumerate events and give them meaning.

Now that we’re nearing the end of this article, let’s move on to some concrete examples affecting our province of Alicante. I think the unfortunate Elche-Alicante disconnect comes from afar.

Alicante and its imposing port have always looked to the sea and lived by trade, never ceased to belong to the domain of the king. Further inland, Elche, a farming and manufacturing country, has been subject for centuries to the power of a lord, the Marquis of Elche, whose dynamics set him apart from the rest of the region.

Here we can confirm, albeit by telegraph, that the current conflicts that are really hurting us have far and deep historical causes that need to be understood.

Then we observe how to make sense of our current societies, we must understand their past, it is vital to know where we came from in order to try to think about where we want to go.

The centuries and features of the past should be known to all citizens by the inertia that they still consider us.

The past is the key, but we should not sanctify it or become obsessed with it. Understanding this fully will allow us to get rid of the things that weigh us down and come from it, we will be able to leave behind the darkest thing that lives within us.

La Terreta, our Alicante regions, should be considered more and better historically, the past belongs to all of us. Understanding ourselves from this historical perspective will allow us to understand ourselves and be more free.

There’s a lot of work to be done.