The spoils of war

The Cata­lans are fa­mous for their na­tional cel­e­bra­tion of the worst de­feat in the coun­try's his­tory. Yet, there was some­thing so mo­men­tous about the fall of Barcelona in Sep­tem­ber 1714 that to allow it to just drift off into the his­tor­i­cal ether doesn't seem right. In a per­verse yet very ef­fec­tive sense, the loss of free­doms that were es­sen­tial for the func­tion­ing of an in­de­pen­dent en­tity, such as Cat­alo­nia, just served to strengthen the com­mon de­ter­mi­na­tion to get them back. In this ex­am­ple of na­tional ex­pres­sion the Cata­lans are unique. Aren't they?

Not ex­actly. The Eng­lish, too, are a na­tion that re­fuses to for­get a mo­men­tous his­tor­i­cal loss. 1066. Every­one knows this date in Eng­land, even peo­ple not sure what hap­pened that year in which the Eng­lish were ut­terly con­quered by a for­eign power. Which is just one of the rea­sons why some peo­ple still re­mem­ber back 950 years; for them it was the last time that Eng­lish free­doms would be taken away by for­eign­ers. Brexit, any­one?

But, 1066 is re­mem­bered for many rea­sons, even if it is just be­cause a 1930s hu­mor­ous book used the date for its title and suc­ceeded in fus­ing it into the mod­ern com­mon cul­tural con­scious­ness. What­ever the rea­son, it de­serves to be re­mem­bered, for it changed the coun­try and its cul­ture, for­ever. The very lan­guage I am writ­ing this col­umn in is a di­rect con­se­quence of Duke William of Nor­mandy's bold con­quest of Anglo-Saxon Eng­land.

An­other con­se­quence of the Bat­tle of Hast­ings in 1066 is a unique work of art that sits at the heart of this story of na­tional dis­as­ter and con­quest: the Bayeux Ta­pes­try. This 70-metre long hand-stitched em­broi­dery pro­vides one ver­sion of the story of William's vic­tory and, bear­ing in mind that the vic­tor gets to rewrite his­tory, the story it tells is far from a straight­for­ward cel­e­bra­tion of the Duke and his achieve­ment. In other words, ques­tions still hang over the art work, and it re­mains a key sub­ject of aca­d­e­mic study. As you can see from the ar­ti­cle on pages 42 and 43, a Cata­lan aca­d­e­mic has en­tered the fray, writ­ing a book that pro­vides a hy­poth­e­sis that sheds light on the ori­gins and pur­pose of the Ta­pes­try. What's more, Montser­rat Pagès's book comes with an Eng­lish trans­la­tion at the back, mak­ing it ac­ces­si­ble in a way that would be great to see in more Cata­lan pub­li­ca­tions.

I en­cour­age you to check out the ar­ti­cle if you haven't al­ready, it is a great start­ing point for fur­ther ex­plo­ration of this event nearly a thou­sand years ago and for piquing in­ter­est in one of the world's great his­tor­i­cal trea­sures.