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3 January 2016 2.00 h

Lest we forget

This year is 12 months packed full of anniversaries and commemorations both internationally and at home

A new year brings an­tic­i­pa­tion about the 12 months ahead. Whether it be the World Cup in Brazil this sum­mer, or the US pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in No­vem­ber, every­one has events they are look­ing for­ward to, or dread­ing. A new year also re­sets the an­niver­sary but­ton and, as al­ways, there are nu­mer­ous dates to cel­e­brate or com­mem­o­rate, from the births of fa­mous fig­ures to the end of wars. This 2016 is no dif­fer­ent, and what fol­lows is a taster of some of the an­niver­saries com­ing up over the next 12 months.

IN­TER­NA­TIONAL

400 years since Shake­speare's death

Whether you read much or not, every­one has heard of William Shake­speare, and 2016 marks the 400th an­niver­sary of the great play­wright's death, on April 23, 1616. As Shake­speare is ar­guably the most fa­mous writer ever, there will be no es­cap­ing this one as the Bard is re­mem­bered all over the world. In­ter­est­ingly, this year is also the 400th an­niver­sary of the death of that other great Eu­ro­pean writer, Miguel de Cer­vantes. In fact, the au­thor of Don Qui­jote died only 24 hours be­fore his Eng­lish coun­ter­part.

100 years since pub­li­ca­tion of the gen­eral the­ory of rel­a­tiv­ity.

E=MC2. Few of us know the sig­nif­i­cance of the equa­tion, but all of us are aware of its im­por­tance. This year is the cen­te­nary of the pub­li­ca­tion of Al­bert Ein­stein's gen­eral the­ory of rel­a­tiv­ity, which rev­o­lu­tionised the world of New­ton­ian sci­ence and made us aware of such things as black holes, time travel and quan­tum physics. In fact, so in­flu­en­tial was the physi­cist's work that his name has be­come syn­ony­mous with the word 'ge­nius'.

75 years since at­tack on Pearl Har­bor

World War II was on such a mas­sive scale that it throws up an­niver­saries on a reg­u­lar basis. How­ever, one worth men­tion­ing for 2016 is the 75th an­niver­sary of the at­tack on Pearl Har­bor. On De­cem­ber 7, 1941, Japan­ese forces as­saulted the US naval base in Hawaii. The event drew the US into the war, turn­ing the tide against the Axis pow­ers. One in­ter­est­ing as­pect is that some claim the Al­lied pow­ers knew of the at­tack in ad­vance, but did noth­ing to stop it to pro­vide the US with an ex­cuse to enter the war. Con­spir­acy the­ory or hid­den truth?

70 years since first Cannes film fes­ti­val.

If there's one an­nual event syn­ony­mous with glam­our and celebrity it is the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, which takes place in the swanky French re­sort of the same name every spring. Eu­rope's fore­most award cer­e­mony show­cases up­com­ing films, and the Palme d'Or award is the fes­ti­val's high­est dis­tinc­tion. The list of for­mer award win­ners reads like a who's who of mod­ern cin­ema and in­cludes such names as Buñuel, Lean, Welles, Fellini, Alt­man, Cop­pola, Wen­ders, Von Trier, Loach,... Cannes also un­leashes the world's pa­parazzi on the large num­bers of film stars who at­tend every year.

15 years since Wikipedia began

Most of us grew up with­out mo­bile phones or com­put­ers, while today most of us live half our lives on­line. Both time and tech­nol­ogy move fast and this year Wikipedia, the non-profit on­line col­lab­o­ra­tive en­cy­clo­pe­dia, is al­ready 15 years old. For many, Wikipedia, which cov­ers just about every sub­ject under the sun, is a life­line when it comes to find­ing out facts quickly. This ar­ti­cle, for ex­am­ple, would have been twice as hard to write with­out the web­site founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on Jan­u­ary 15, 2001, ac­cord­ing to Wikipedia, that is.

DO­MES­TIC

700 years since the death of Ramon Llull

If there is a his­tor­i­cal fig­ure worth re­mem­ber­ing it has to be the per­son who wrote a lan­guage's first major work of lit­er­a­ture. Such is the case of Ramon Llull, writer, poet, the­olo­gian, mys­tic, math­e­mati­cian and lo­gi­cian. Llull was a Re­nais­sance man be­fore the Re­nais­sance. Llull's im­por­tance to Cata­lan cul­ture should not be un­der­es­ti­mated, and it is fit­ting that the en­tity charged with pro­mot­ing Cata­lan lit­er­a­ture and cul­ture abroad, the In­sti­tut Ramon Llull, is named after him. This year is of­fi­cially Llull Year in Cat­alo­nia, and a host of events and ac­tiv­i­ties are planned to cel­e­brate the great man.

300 years since the Nova Planta de­crees

The Cata­lans are fa­mous for cel­e­brat­ing their great­est de­feat on their na­tional day on Sep­tem­ber 11, when Barcelona fell in the War of the Span­ish Suc­ces­sion in 1714. Two years later, the Cata­lans lost their au­tonomous rights when the vic­to­ri­ous Bour­bon monar­chy began a pro­ject of cen­tral­i­sa­tion with the is­su­ing of the Nova Planta de­crees. The new rules wiped the slate clean and im­posed a new order on Spain in which the Crown of Aragon (which in­cluded Cat­alo­nia) would be­come sub­or­di­nate to Madrid. We are still liv­ing with the after-ef­fects, and now that Cat­alo­nia is mak­ing a bid for self-gov­ern­ment, it is time to re­mem­ber how the coun­try got where it is today.

150 years since birth of Ramon Casas

Cat­alo­nia has no short­age of in­flu­en­tial artists, and one of the most cel­e­brated is Ramon Casas. The Barcelona-born painter's ca­reer co­in­cided with the birth of Mod­ernism, the legacy of which still serves Cat­alo­nia and its cap­i­tal well to this day. Casas is pri­mar­ily known as a por­traitist of the Barcelona elite, but he was also a dab-hand at crowd scenes, while his work in graphic de­sign (posters and post­cards) is in­tri­cately bound up with the evo­lu­tion of Mod­ernism.

100 years since Els pa­s­torets by Folch i Tor­res

Every year at Christ­mas­time Cat­alo­nia gets into a sea­sonal mood with coun­try­wide per­for­mances of the na­tiv­ity play, Els pa­s­torets. While the play's ori­gins go back to Me­dieval re­li­gious plays, it is in the mod­ern era that the work has be­come es­tab­lished as an an­nual na­tional event. There are a num­ber of ver­sions of the story that mixes the birth of Jesus with tales of demons, an­gels and shep­herds, but one of the most pop­u­lar is Els pa­s­torets o l'ad­ven­i­ment de l'In­fant Jesús, pub­lished by Josep Maria Folch i Tor­res in 1916.

80 years since the Span­ish Civil War

Con­flict is ideal for com­mem­o­ra­tion and this year marks the 80th an­niver­sary of the start of the Span­ish Civil War. In 1936, Fas­cism and Com­mu­nism were on the rise, World War II was com­ing, and the Civil War be­came a cur­tain-raiser for the global con­flict. When the war ended three years later, every­thing had changed. Spain was a dif­fer­ent coun­try, des­tined to spend the next four decades under a dic­ta­tor­ship and on the side­lines of in­ter­na­tional pol­i­tics. The war may have been a life­time ago, but every­one in Spain is still liv­ing with its con­se­quences.

25 years since Cir­cuit de Catalunya opened

Sport is an area the Cata­lans excel at and, like all con­ti­nen­tal Eu­ro­peans, motor sports are very pop­u­lar. A coun­try like Cat­alo­nia needs its own rac­ing cir­cuit, and it got one 25 years ago, when the Cir­cuit de Catalunya opened in Mont­meló. Since then, the race­track has be­come a fix­ture in the For­mula 1 and Mo­toGP cal­en­dars, and it is also a favourite place for teams to test out their new en­gines.

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