Catalonia

The territory that now constitutes the Autonomous communities of Spain Catalonia was first settled during the Middle Palaeolithic era. Like the rest of the Mediterranean side of the Iberian Peninsula, the area was occupied by the Iberians and several Greek and Carthaginian towns were established on the coast before the Roman conquest.

The area that is now Catalonia was the first area of Hispania conquered by the Romans. It then came under Visigothic rule after collapse of the western part of the Roman Empire. In 718, the area was occupied by the Moors and became a part of Muslim ruled Al-Andalus. The Frankish Empire conquered the area from the Muslims, beginning with the conquest of Rousillon in 760 and ending with the conquest of Barcelona in 801, as part or the creation of a larger buffer zone of Christians against Islamic rele counties known as the Marca Hispanica.

In time, the Christians took control of the region, thans not just to the Franks and their Spanish March but also to the Kingdom of Aragon (administrated by the Count of the Barcelona for the King of Aragon, the Crown of Aragon), which would govern those lands from that point onward.

For a considerable time, the Kingdom of Aragon, and its little county and port of Barcelona retained its own laws and languages (i.e.: Aragones and also Catalan). Catalonia was just a county of the Crown of Aragon but this came to an end when the new Bourbon dinasty secured the throne of Spain in the War of Spanish Succession (1702-1714) and made the former Crown of Aragon territories into provinces of the Crown of Castile following the war.

Economically, Catalonia experienced commercial growth in the late 18th century when the Bourbons ended Castile's trade monopoly with Spain's American colonies. The Napoleonic occupation and war in Spain in the early 19th century began a period of political and economic turmoil. In the latter half of the 19th century Catalonia became a center of industrialization.

In the first third of the 20th century, Catalonia several times enjoyed and lost varying degrees of autonomy like other parts of Spain until the Second Spanish Republic confirmed the autonomies of Spain's traditional autonomous regions, including the autonomy of Catalonia and the official use of its language.

Like Madrid, the Basque country and much of Spain, Catalonia fought hard to defend the Second Spanish Republic in the devastating civil war of 1936-1939. With the defeat of the Spanish Republic by the right wing forces of Francisco Franco, the autonomies were cancelled.

In the years after the civil war life was difficult. With Spain devastated and cut off from international trade by boycotts, Catalonia, as a commercial and industrial center, suffered severely. The economic recovery was very slow and it was not until the mid-1950s that the economy reached the prewar levels of 1936. 

In 1959-1974 Spain exerienced the second fastest economic expansion in the world in what became known as the Spanish Miracle and Catalonia prospered greatly from the expansion as Spain's most important industrial and tourist zone. In 1975 Franco died, bringing to an end his dictatorial regime, and in 1978 Catalonia voted overwhelmingly for the new democratic Spanish constitution that recognised Catalonia's autonomy and language.

On the 9 November 2015, parliament approved a Declaration to start the independence process of Catalonia asserting the start of the process to create an independent Catalan state in the form of a republic. The independence motion was passed on 27 October 2017 in the 135-strong Catalan assembly with 70 votes in favour; 10 against and 2 blank ballots, the assembly's speaker said.

Just hours after the Catalan declaration of independence, the Spanish Senate invoked Article 155 of the Spanish constitution and authorised Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government to impose direct rule over Catalonia. Rajoy declared the dissolution of the Catalan parliament and dismissed Catalonia's regional government, including its leader Carles Puigdemont. Rajoy called a snap election in the region for 21 December 2017.

Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saezde Santamaria was chosen to assume the position of President of Catalonia, as part of the actions that resulted after the activation of Article 155. Santamaria was vested total control over the Catalan administration in addition to being appointed president. Josep Lluis Trapero was also relieved of his duty as chief of the Catalan police force.

But Catalans are fiercely protective of the region's high degree of autonomy, such as direct control over education, healthcare and the police. Mossos d'Esquadra, a group of Catalonia's police favouring independence, has already said its members will not follow instructions from the central government of Spain and will not use force to remove ministers and legislators from power.

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and teachings that belong to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. It was a part of the religion in ancient Greece. Modern scholars refer to and study the myths in an attempt to shed light on the religious and political institutions of ancient Greece and its civilization, and to gain understanding of the nature of myth-making itself.

Greek mythology has had an extensive influence on the culture, arts, and literature of Western civilization and remains part of Western heritage and language. Poets and artists from ancient times to the present have derived inspiration from Greek mythology and have discovered contemporary significance and relevance in the themes. Greek mythology is explicity embodied in a large collection of narratives, and implicitly in Greek representational arts, such as ancient vase-paintings and votive gifts. 

Greek myth attempts to explain the origins of the world, and details the lives and adventures of a wide variety of gods, goddesses, heroes, heroines and mythological creatures. These accounts initially were disseminated in an oral-poetic tradition; today the Greek myths are known primarily from ancient Greek literature. The oldest known Greek literary sources, Homer's epic poems Iliad and Odyssey, focus on the Trojan War and its aftermath. 

Two poems by Homer's near contemporary Hesiod, the Theogony and the Works and Days, contain accounts of the genesis of the world, the succession of divine rulers, the succession of human ages, the origin of human woes, and the origin of sacrificial practices. Myths are also preserved in the Homeric Hymns, in fragments of epic poems of the Epic Cycle, in lyric poems, in the works of the tragedians and comedians of the fifth century BC, in writings of scholars and poets of the Hellenistic Age, and in texts from the time of the Roman Empire by writers such as Plutarch and Pausanias.

Archaelogical findings provide a principal source of detail about Greek mythology, with gods and heroes featured prominently in the decoration of many artifacts. Geometric designs on pottery of the eighth century BC depict scenes from the Trojan cycle as well as the adventures of Heracles. In the succeeding Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods, Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear supplementing the existing literary evidence.

Maya mythology

Maya mythology is part of Mesoamerican mythology and comprises all of the Maya tales in which personified forces of nature, deities, and the heroes interacting with these play the main roles. Other parts of Maya oral tradition (such as animal tales and many moralising stories) do no properly belong to the domain of mythology but rather to legend and folk tale.

The oldest written Maya myths date from the 16th century and are found in historical sources from the Guatemalan Highlands. The most important of these documents is the Popol Vuh which contains Quichean creation stories and some of the adventures of the Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque.

Yucatán is an equally important region. The Books of Chilam Balam contain mythological passages of great antiguity, and mythological fragaments are found scattered among the early-colonial Spanish chronicles and reports, chief among them Diego de Landa's Relacion, and in the dictionaries compiled by the early missionaries.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, anthropologists and local folklorists committed many stories to paper. Even though most Maya tales are the results of an historical process in which Spanish narrative traditions interacted with native ones, some of the tales reach bach well into pre-Spanish times.

Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, the transmission of traditional tales has entered its final stage. Fortunately, however, this is also a time in which the Mayas themselves have begun to salvage and pubblish the precious tales of their parents and grandparents.

Egyptian mythology

Egyptian mythology is the collection of myths from ancient Egypt, which describe the actions of the Egyptian gods as a means of understanding the world. The beliefs that these myths express are an important part of ancient Egyptian religion. Myths appear frequently in Egyptian writings and art, particularly in short stories and in religious material such as hymns, ritual texts, funerary texts, and temple decoration. These sources rarely contain a complete account of a myth and often describe only frief fragments.

Inspired by the cycles of nature, the Egyptians saw time in the present as a series of recurring patterns, whereas the earliest periods of time were linear. Myths are set in these earliest times, and myth sets the  pattern for the cycles of the present. Present events repeat the events of myth, and in doing so renew maat, the fundamental order of the universe. Amongst the most important episodes from the mythic past are the creation myths, in which the gods form the universe out of primordial chaos; the stories of the reign of the sun god Ra upon the earth; and the Osiris myth, concerning the struggles of the gods Osiris, Isis, and Horus against the disruptive god Set.

Events from the present that might be regarded as myths include Ra's daily journey through the world and its otherworldly counterpart, the Duat. Recurring themes in these  mythic episodes includ the conflict between the upholders of maat and the forces of disorder, the importance of the pharaoh in maintaining maat, and the continual death and regeneration of the gods. The details of these sacred events differ greatly from one text to another and often seem contradictory.

Egyptian myths are primarily metaphorical, translating the essence and behaviour of deities into terms that humans can understand. Mythology proundly infuenced Egyptian culture. It inspired or influenced many religious rituals and provided the ideological basis for kingship. Scenes and symbols from myth appeared in art in tombs, temples, and amulets. In literature, myths or elements of them were used in stories that range from humor to allegory, demonstrating that the Egyptians adapted mythology to serve a wide variety of purposes.

Chinese Mythology

Chinese mythology refers to those myths found in the historical geographic area of China: these include myths in Chinese and other languages, as transmitted by Han Chinese as well as other ethnic groups (of which fifty-six are officially recognized by the current administration of China).

Chinese mythology includes creation myths and legends, such as myths concerning the founding of Chinese culture and the Chinese state. As in many cultures' mythologies, Chinese mythology has in the past been believed to be, at least in part, a factual recording of history.

Thus, in the study of historical Chinese culture, many of the stories that have been told regarding characters and events which have been written or told of the distant past have a double tradition: one which presents a more historicized and one which presents a more mythological version.

The dozens of ethnic minority groups of the country of China have their own languages and their own folklore, and many have their own writing: much of which contains valuable historical and cultural information as well as many unique myths. Some myths are widely shared across multiple ethnic groups, but may exist as versions with some differences.

Brothers Grimm

Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859) Grimm  were German academics, philologists, cultural researchers, lexicographers and authors who together collected and published folklore during the 19th century. They were among the best-known storytellers of folk tales, and popularized stories such as "Cinderella", "The Frog Prince", "The Goose-Girl", "Hansel and Gretel", "Rapunzel", "Sleeping Beauty", and "Snow White". Their first collection of folk tales. Children's and Housefold Tales (Kinder und Hausmärchen), was published in 1812.

The brothers spent their formative years in the German town of Hanau. Their father's death in 1796 impoverished the family and affected the brothers for many years after. They attended the University of Marburg where they developed a curiosity about German folklore, which grew into a lifelong dedication to collecting German folk tales. The rise of Romanticism during the 19th century revived interest in traditional folk stories, which to the brothers represented a pure form of national literature and culture. 

With the goal of researching a scholarly treatise on folk tales, they established a methodology for collecting and recording folk stories that became the basis for folklore studies. Between 1812 and 1857, their first collection was revised and republished many times, growing from 86 stories to more than 200. In addition to writing and modifying folk tales, the brothers wrote collections of well-respected German and Scandinavian mythologies, and in 1838 they began writing a definitive German dictionary (Deutsches Wörterbuch), which they were unable to finish during their lifetimes.

Many of the Grimm's folk tales have enjoyed enduring popularity. The tales are available in more than 100 languages and have been adapted by filmmakers including Lotte Reiniger and Walt Disney, with films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Sleeping Beauty. During the 1930s and 40s, the tales were used as propaganda by the Third Reich: later in the 20th century psychologists such as Bruno Bettelheim reaffirmed the value of the work, in spite of the cruelty and violence in original versions of some of the tales, which the Grimms eventually sanitized.

The brothers were inspired by their law professor Friedrich von Savigny, who awakened in them an interest in history and philology, and they turned to studying medieval German lierature. They shared Savigny's desire to see unification of the 200 German principalities into a single state. Through Savigny and his circle of friends - German romantics such as Clemens Brentano and Ludwig Achim von Arnim - the Grimm were introduced to the ideas of Johann Gottfried Herder, who thought that German literature should revert to simpler forms, which he defined as Volkspoesie (natural poetry) as opposed to Kunstpoesie (artistic poetry). 

The brothers dedicated themselves with great enthusiasm to their studies, about which Wilhelm wrote in his autobiography, "the ardor with which we studied Old German helped us overcome the spiritual depression of those days". Jacob was still financially responsible for his mother, brother, and younger siblings in 1805, so he accepted a post in Paris as research assistant to von Savigny. On his return to Marburg, he was forced to abandon his studies to support the family, whose poverty was so extreme that food was often scarce. He took a job with the Hessian War Commission. In a letter written to his aunt at this time, Wilhelm wrote of their circumstances, "we five people eat only three portions and only once a day".

Jacob found full-time employment in 1808 when he was appointed court librarian to the King of Westphalia and went on to become librarian in Kassel. After their mother's death that year, he became fully resonsible for his younger siblings. He arranged and paid for his brother Ludwig's studies at art school and for Wilhelm's extended visit to Halle to seek treatment for heart and respiratory ailments, following which Wilhelm joined Jacob as librarian in Kassel. The brothers also began collecting folk tales about this time, in a cursory manner and on Brentano's request. According to Jack Zipes, at this point "the Grimms were unable to devote all their energies to their research and did not have a clear idea about the significance of collecting folk tales in this initial phase".

During their employment as librarians - which paid little but afforded them ample time for research - the brothers experienced a productive period of scholarship, publishing a number of books between 1812 and 1830. In 1812, they published their first volume of 86 folk tales, Kinder und Hausmärchen, followed quickly by two volumes of German legends and a volume or early literary history. They went on to publish works about Danish and Irish folk tales and Norse mythology, while continuing to edit the German folk tale collection. These works became so widely recognized that the brothers received honorary doctorates from universities in Marburg, Berlin, and Breslau (now Wroclaw).

Harry Potter

Harry Potter is a series of fantasy novels written by British author J.K. Rowling. The novels chronicle the life of a young wizard, Harry Potter, and his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Withcraft and Wizardry. The main story arc concerns Harry's struggle against Lord Voldemort, a dark wizard who intends to become immortal, overthrow the wizard governing body known as the Ministry of Magic, and subjugate all wizards and muggles, a reference term that means non-magical people.

Since the release of the first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, on 26 June 1997, the boods have found immense popularity, critical acclaim and commercial success worldwide. They have attracted a wide adult audience as well as younger readers, and are often considered cornerstones of modern young adult literature. The series has also had its share of criticism, incluing concern about the increasingly dark tone as the series progressed, as well as the often gruesome and graphic violence it depicts.

As of May 2013, the books have sold more than 500 million copies worldwide, making them the best-selling book series in history, and have been translated into seventy-three languages. The las four books consecutively set records as the fastest-selling books in history, with the final instalment selling roughly eleven million copies in the US within twenty-four hours or its release.

The series was originally published in English by two major publishers, Bloomsbury in the UK and Scholastic Press in the US. A play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, based on a story co-written by Rowling, premiered in London on 30 July 2016 at the Palace Theatre, and its script was published by Little, Brown as the eighth book in the series. The original seven books were adapted into an eight-part film series by Warner Bros.

Titles of the Harry Potter books:

1997 - HP and the Philosopher's Stone.

1998 - HP and the Camber of Secrets.

1999 - HP and the Prisioner of Azkaban.

2000 - HP and the Goblet of Fire.

2003 - HP and the Order of the Phoenix.

2005 - HP and the Half-Blood Prince.

2007 - HP and the Deathly Hallows.

2016 - Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.