The Course of History

I guess it's not easy to be fully aware of how fast things have been changing in the last 150 years. Since the times of the Industrial Revolution changes of all sorts have been occurring faster and faster every year. The growth of the megacities, the development of technologies that heal and technologies that kill, ideologies that free and ideologies that oppress, ways to communicate and ways to isolate... I'm not going to talk about transistor's size, storage Terabytes or bandwidth Gigabits... most people with a certain interest in technology are relatively aware of those changes... on the contrary, people with an interest in history and politics are not that fully aware (at least that was my case) of some of the U-turns that the political map has experienced in the last century.

Two weeks ago I was lucky enough to spend a few days in Lisbon, and I did not feel surprised to come across with tons of political posters and political slogans painted all over the city. The country's economy has partially collapsed since the start of the economical crisis, forcing the government to ask for a bailout in 2011. Social spending has undergone deep cuts, and unemployment has risen sharply (well, 15% sounds almost like a joke to someone living in Asturies, where we are at an astonishing 25%...). So, the people are utterly suffering this fucking crisis, and this is expressed on the walls, mainly near the University Campus. I could see tons of slogans against the cuts, the Troika (IMF, EC, ECB), the Banks... but among them there was one that deeply caught my attention:

It reads: "Death to French-German Imperialism"

If you know a little bit of European history and read that slogan twice you should be shocked to the bone. I'm not going elaborate here as to whether the 2 European powerhouses are planning to dominate the rest of Europe (though indeed, as someone living in a Southern European shit country whose corrupt politicians have been wasting enormous amounts of money given to us by Northern European countries... I would probably appreciate some kind of external control over our kleptomaniac politicians).
What I want to say here is that this idea of a French-German "imperialism", alliance, or whatever you want to call it... has some really beautiful components, let me explain:

For centuries the whole soil of this continent has been soaked in the blood of its citizens. Stupid wars orchestrated by the same usual suspects: kings, politicians and priests.
It would not be easy to choose 2 European countries that in one way or another have never been in conflict, but it's easy to select France and Germany as 2 of the countries that more wars have waged against each other:
the Napoleonic wars, the Franco Prussian Wars, WWI, WWII...
Look at Alsace and Lorraine and think how many times it has shifted from one flag to another.
And also, think how after the WWII the French intended to blow Berlin's Victory Column as it commemorates (among others) the Prussian victory over France. Hopefully, the English stopped them from committing such an act of vandalism (I wonder if they would also consider blowing the monument in VictoriaPark)

So, after so much blood spill, the idea of a French-German bloc, sounds more like an achievement than like a tragedy. It helps you to realize what a long way we have gone since the end of the WWII to get to this Europe that we have now. For someone like me, with such a deep feeling (and why not to say it, pride) of being European, the current pseudo Europen state is not enough, and sure I'd like to see a real European State, a union of old different nations which common culture leads them to a common welfare state, common laws, common rights and common duties. We're far from that, and with the dismantling of the welfare state that we're undergoing right now and the rise of euroscepticism, it sadly seems to be moving away instead of getting closer... but if we look at the almost 70 years of peace inside our borders or the weakening of those internal borders granting us free transit... we should still cherish some hope.

This reminds me of the nice feeling that I had in summer 2010 when freely crossing the modern pedestrian bridge that joins Strasburg (France since the end of the WWII) and Keil (Germany). An Asturian freely walking from France to Germany and from Germany to France, no borders, no passports, no mistrust... that's the way to go if Europe, and all the values that I think it stands for, want to survive.