17th September

Hi everyone. Today has been the second day of Social Sciences, but for me, and I don’t know if for everyone else too, this lesson has been the first one, because the other one was only to meet each other and to talk a little bit about what this term is going to be like. In my opinion, the blog is a very good idea, because we can check and review every content we’ve studied, but this reply is not to say my opinion. Well, perhaps in some aspects, but I think this is not the best moment.

At the beginning of the lesson, Paqui has showed us her new friend called Andrei. Apparently, the “real” Andrei gave her his wrong email address, and Paqui has contacted with another man who’s called with the same name. It seems that this is not the first time this man appears in Paqui’s inbox, because in 2^nd ESO Andrei did the same. Well, who knows, perhaps this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship between Paqui and him.

(Mini P.D.: Andrei, don’t forget the name of your email account anymore.)

Today we’ve started with “unit 1”. In reality, “The 16^th and 17^th centuries” are units 8 and 9 from the 3^rd ESO’s book, but as we didn’t learn it in 2^nd ESO, we’re studying it now, but joined in only one unit. I prefer to study it and to go on with the 4^th ESOS’s content better than forget about it and start learning something that doesn’t connect with our knowledge of 2^nd ESO, I don’t know if you follow what I want to say.

Anyway. We’ve copied the index of this unit full of kings, reigns, territories and, naturally, history. The first part talks mostly about the 16^th century, where we can see the Hispanic Monarchy under the  Habsburg dynasty with Charles I and Philip II, and also the 17^th century decline with Charles II, Philip III and IV’s. In this first part we are going to work in groups of 3/4 people and what we have to do is a project which consists of a board game. I think we’re going to have a lot of fun, playing and learning at the same time.

In the second part of the index, there is information about the 17^th century, like its crisis, the Thirty Year’s War, the absolute monarchy, the English revolutions and some content of culture and art. In the Baroque Art, we have to prepare an individual project. I think it will be interesting.

We’ve also started talking about Charles I, his family, the territories he had and some curious things about his life. Did you know that he became king at the age of five? No? Neither did I, so don’t worry. I can’t understand why people let children govern a kingdom, even if they were oriented by his court or the people who had to make the decisions on the child king behalf.

Source: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_I_de_Espa%C3%B1a#/media/File:Titian_-_Portrait_of_Charles_V_Seated_-_WGA22964.jpg

As I’ve heard in class, Charles’ family was a little bit unlucky. Why? Well, a lot of members died, but not because of the advanced age. I mean, perhaps there was someone who did, but the rest passed away because of illnesses, or I don’t know why, but I’m sure that if Paqui’s said that they didn't have much luck; it is because there was something here that didn’t work.

Here is the Family Tree that Paqui has showed us in class.

Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dc/Herencia_del_Emperador_Carlos_V%2C_Carlos_I_como_Rey_de_Espa%C3%B1a.svg/700px-Herencia_del_Emperador_Carlos_V%2C_Carlos_I_como_Rey_de_Espa%C3%B1a.svg.png

Well, as I was saying (sorry, I go on and on very frequently), some members of Charles’ family died, so Charles I inherited a lot of territories like the Indies, Castile, some territories in the north of Africa and the Canary Islands from his mother Joanna the Mad, Aragon, Sardinia, Sicily and Naples from his grandfather Ferdinand of Aragón, Burgundy territories from his father Philip the Handsome and the Austrian territories from his other grandfather Maximilian of Habsburg.

Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Charles_I_and_V_empire.png

We’ve seen the conquest of the American territories superficially, the Aztecs, the Incas, etc. In the glossary, we’ve copied some words like hegemony and supremacy. The difference between them is that hegemony is the political, economic, or military predominance or control of one state over others and supremacy is the domination of one group over another one.

And with this, I've ended my journal. See you next time. Thanks for reading.