France
France the French Republic, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean, it is bordered by Belgium and Germany to the northeast and Italy to the east, Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic and Indian oceans; the country's 18 integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres and a total population of 67.3 million. France, a sovereign state, is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nice. During the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by a Celtic people. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, holding it until the arrival of Germanic Franks in 476, who formed the Kingdom of Francia.
The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned Francia into Middle Francia and West Francia. West Francia which became the Kingdom of France in 987 emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages following its victory in the Hundred Years' War. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a global colonial empire was established, which by the 20th century would become the second largest in the world; the 16th century was dominated by religious civil wars between Protestants. France became Europe's dominant cultural and military power in the 17th century under Louis XIV. In the late 18th century, the French Revolution overthrew the absolute monarchy, established one of modern history's earliest republics, saw the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day. In the 19th century, Napoleon established the First French Empire, his subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a tumultuous succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870.
France was a major participant in World War I, from which it emerged victorious, was one of the Allies in World War II, but came under occupation by the Axis powers in 1940. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and dissolved in the course of the Algerian War; the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, remains today. Algeria and nearly all the other colonies became independent in the 1960s and retained close economic and military connections with France. France has long been a global centre of art and philosophy, it hosts the world's fourth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the leading tourist destination, receiving around 83 million foreign visitors annually. France is a developed country with the world's sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP, tenth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of aggregate household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, human development.
France is considered a great power in global affairs, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a leading member state of the European Union and the Eurozone, a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, La Francophonie. Applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name "France" comes from the Latin "Francia", or "country of the Franks". Modern France is still named today "Francia" in Italian and Spanish, "Frankreich" in German and "Frankrijk" in Dutch, all of which have more or less the same historical meaning. There are various theories as to the origin of the name Frank. Following the precedents of Edward Gibbon and Jacob Grimm, the name of the Franks has been linked with the word frank in English, it has been suggested that the meaning of "free" was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation.
Another theory is that it is derived from the Proto-Germanic word frankon, which translates as javelin or lance as the throwing axe of the Franks was known as a francisca. However, it has been determined that these weapons were named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around; the oldest traces of human life in what is now France date from 1.8 million years ago. Over the ensuing millennia, Humans were confronted by a harsh and variable climate, marked by several glacial eras. Early hominids led a nomadic hunter-gatherer life. France has a large number of decorated caves from the upper Palaeolithic era, including one of the most famous and best preserved, Lascaux. At the end of the last glacial period, the climate became milder. After strong demographic and agricultural development between the 4th and 3rd millennia, metallurgy appeared at the end of the 3rd millennium working gold and bronze, iron. France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic period, including the exceptiona
Marquess
A marquess is a nobleman of high hereditary rank in various European peerages and in those of some of their former colonies. The term is used to translate equivalent Asian styles, as in Imperial China and Imperial Japan. In the German lands, a margrave was a ruler of an immediate Imperial territory, not a nobleman like a marquess or marquis in Western and Southern Europe. German rulers did not confer the title of marquis; the word marquess entered the English language from the Old French marchis in the late 13th or early 14th century. The French word was derived from marche, itself descended from the Middle Latin marca, from which the modern English words march and mark descend; the distinction between governors of frontier territories and interior territories was made as early as the founding of the Roman Empire when some provinces were set aside for administration by the senate and more unpacified or vulnerable provinces were administered by the emperor. The titles "duke" and "count" were distinguished as ranks in the late empire, with dux being used for a provincial military governor and the rank of comes given to the leader of an active army along the frontier.
Several marquesses lived in Belgium, still today this title exists. The Marquis of Beauffort; the Marquis of la Boëssière-Thiennes the Marquis of Trazegnies d'Ittre the Marquis du Parc. the Marquis Imperiali. The Marquis of Radiguès; the Marquis of Ruffo de Bonneval de la Fare the Marquis of Spontin the Marquis of Assche the Marquis of Yve. the Marquis of Saint-Floris the Marquis of Becelaere the Marquis of Wemmel the Marquis of Bergen op Zoom the Marquis of Rode the Marquis of Lede Currently in Spain the rank of Marquess/Marchioness still exists. 142 of them are Spanish grandees. A'marqués is addressed as "Illustrious Lord", or if he/she is a grandee as "Your Excellency". Examples include 10th Marquis of Villaverde; the honorific prefix "The Most Honourable" is an honorific that precedes the name of a marquess or marchioness in the United Kingdom. In Great Britain and in Ireland, the correct spelling of the aristocratic title of this rank is marquess. In Scotland the French spelling is sometimes used.
In Great Britain and in Ireland, the title ranks below a duke and above an earl. A woman with the rank of a marquess, or the wife of a marquess, is called a marchioness in Great Britain and Ireland, or a marquise elsewhere in Europe; the dignity, rank or position of the title is referred to as a marquessate. The theoretical distinction between a marquess and other titles has, since the Middle Ages, faded into obscurity. In times past, the distinction between a count and a marquess was that the land of a marquess, called a march, was on the border of the country, while a count's land, called a county was not; as a result of this, a marquess was trusted to defend and fortify against hostile neighbours and was thus more important and ranked higher than a count. The title is ranked below that of a duke, largely restricted to the royal family; the rank of marquess was a late introduction to the British peerage: no marcher lords had the rank of marquess, though some were earls. On the evening of the Coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838, the Prime Minister Lord Melbourne explained to her why: I spoke to Ld M. about the numbers of Peers present at the Coronation, & he said it was quite unprecedented.
I observed that there were few Viscounts, to which he replied "There are few Viscounts," that they were an old sort of title & not English. Like other major Western noble titles, marquess is sometimes used to render certain titles in non-Western languages with their own traditions though they are, as a rule unrelated and thus hard to compare. However, they are considered "equivalent" in relative rank; this is the case with: In ancient China, 侯 was the second of five noble ranks 爵 created by King Wu of Zhou and is translated as marquess or marquis. In imperial China, 侯 is but not always, a middle-to-high ranking hereditary nobility title, its exact rank varies from dynasty to dynasty, within a dynasty. It is created with different sub-ranks. In Meiji Japan, 侯爵, a hereditary peerage rank, was introduced in 1884, granting a hereditary seat in the upper house of the imperial diet just as a British peerage did, with the ranks rendered as baron, count and duke/prince. In Korea, the title of 현후, of which the meaning is "marquess of district", existed for the hereditary nobility in the Goryeo dynasty.
It was equivalent to the upper fifth rank of nine bureaucratic orders, was in the third rank of six nobility orders. In the Joseon dynasty, there was no title equivalent to marquess. In Vietnam's Annamite realm / empire, hầu
Reconquista
The Reconquista is a name used in English to describe the period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula of about 780 years between the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in 711 and the fall of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada to the expanding Christian kingdoms in 1492. The completed conquest of Granada was the context of the Spanish voyages of discovery and conquest, the Americas—the "New World"—ushered in the era of the Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires. Traditional historiography has marked the beginning of the Reconquista with the Battle of Covadonga, the first known victory in Iberia by Christian military forces since the 711 military invasion of Iberia by combined Arab-Berber forces. In that small battle, a group led by the nobleman Pelagius defeated a Muslim patrol in the mountains of northern Iberia and established the independent Christian Kingdom of Asturias. In the late 10th century, the Umayyad vizier Almanzor waged military campaigns for 30 years to subjugate the northern Christian kingdoms.
His armies composed of Slavic and African Mamluks, ravaged the north sacking the great shrine of Santiago de Compostela. When the government of Córdoba disintegrated in the early 11th century, a series of petty successor states known as taifas emerged; the northern kingdoms struck deep into Al-Andalus. After a Muslim resurgence in the 12th century the great Moorish strongholds in the south fell to Christian forces in the 13th century—Córdoba in 1236 and Seville in 1248—leaving only the Muslim enclave of Granada as a tributary state in the south. After 1491, the entire peninsula was controlled by Christian rulers; the conquest was followed by the Alhambra Decree which expelled Jews who would not convert to Christianity from Castile and Aragon, a series of edicts which forced the conversions of the Muslims in Spain, although a significant part of them was expelled from the Iberian Peninsula. The concept of Reconquista, consolidated in Spanish historiography in the second half of the 19th century, was associated with the development of a Spanish national identity, emphasizing nationalistic and romantic, colonialist, aspects.
Since the 19th century traditional historiography has stressed the existence of the Reconquista, a continuous phenomenon by which the Christian Iberian kingdoms opposed and conquered the Muslim kingdoms, understood as a common enemy who had militarily seized territory from native Iberian Christians. The concept of a Christian reconquest of the peninsula first emerged, in tenuous form, at the end of the 9th century. A landmark was set by the Christian Chronica Prophetica, a document stressing the Christian and Muslim cultural and religious divide in Iberia and the necessity to drive the Muslims out. Both Christian and Muslim rulers fought amongst themselves. Alliances between Muslims and Christians were not uncommon. Blurring distinctions further were the mercenaries from both sides who fought for whoever paid the most; the period is seen today to have had long episodes of relative religious tolerance. The Crusades, which started late in the 11th century, bred the religious ideology of a Christian reconquest, confronted at that time with a staunch Muslim Jihad ideology in Al-Andalus by the Almoravids, to an greater degree by the Almohads.
In fact, previous documents from the 10th and 11th centuries are mute on any idea of "reconquest". Propaganda accounts of Muslim-Christian hostility came into being to support that idea, most notably the Chanson de Roland, a fictitious 11th-century French version of the Battle of Roncevaux Pass dealing with the Iberian Saracens, taught as historical fact in the French educational system since 1880; the modern idea of Reconquista is inextricably linked to the foundational myths of Spanish nationalism in the 19th century, consolidated by the mid-20th century during Franco's National-Catholic dictatorship, based on a strong underlying Castilian ideological element. The idea of a "liberation war" of reconquest against the Muslims, depicted as foreigners, suited well the anti-Republican rebels during the Spanish Civil War who agitated for the banner of a Spanish fatherland threatened by regional nationalisms and communism, their rebellious pursuit was thus a crusade for the restoration of the Church's unity, where Franco stood for both Pelagius of Asturias and El Cid.
The Reconquista has become a rallying call for right and far-right parties in Spain to expel from office incumbent progressive or peripheral nationalist options, as well as their values, in different political contexts as of 2018. Some contemporary authors consider it proved that the process of Christian state-building in Iberia was indeed defined by the reclamation of lands, lost to the Moors in generations past. In this way, state-building might be characterised—at least in ideological, if not practical, terms—as a process by which Iberian states were being'rebuilt'.. In turn, other recent historians dispute the whole concept of Reconquista as a concept created a posteriori in the service of political goals. A few historians point out that Spain and Portugal did not exist as nations, therefore the heirs of the Christian Visigothic Kingdom were not technically reconquering them, as the name suggests. One of the first Spanish intellectuals to question the idea of a "reconquest" that lasted for eight centuries was José Ortega y Gasset, writing in the first half of the 20th century.
However, the term is still in use
Badia Polesine
Badia Polesine is a comune in the Province of Rovigo in the Italian region Veneto, located about 70 kilometres southwest of Venice and about 25 kilometres west of Rovigo. It is part of the upper Polesine, is bounded by the Adige river, which separates the communal territory from the province of Padua. Badia Polesine borders the following municipalities: Canda, Castelbaldo, Giacciano con Baruchella, Masi, Piacenza d'Adige, Trecenta; the main sight is the abbey of Vangadizza. The town has a station on the Verona-Legnago-Rovigo railroad, it can be reached by road through the A31 motorway. Badia Polesine is twinned with: Estepa, Spain Saint-Thibault-des-Vignes, France Official website
Corrientes
Corrientes is the capital city of the province of Corrientes, located on the eastern shore of the Paraná River, about 1,000 km from Buenos Aires and 300 km from Posadas, on National Route 12. It has a population of 346,334 according to the 2010 Census, it lies opposite its twin city, Chaco. It has a mix of colonial and modern architecture, several churches and a number of lapacho, ceibo and orange trees, it is home to one of the biggest carnival celebrations in the country. The annual average temperature is 20 °C, with maximum and minimum averages of 45 and 5 °C respectively; the annual rainfall is around 1,200 millimetres. The General Belgrano Bridge crosses the Paraná River that serves as the natural border with the neighbouring Chaco Province. On the other side of the bridge is Resistencia, capital of Chaco. To the west and up the Paraná, between Paraguay and Argentina, lies the Yaciretá dam, one of the largest hydroelectric power generators in the world; the Doctor Fernando Piragine Niveyro International Airport at coordinates 27°26′20″S 58°46′03″W, 5 km away from the city, serves the city.
The Ferrocarril Económico Correntino narrow gauge railway line to Mburucuyá operated from 1912 until 1927. In 1516 Juan Díaz de Solís commanded the first expedition to reach the area populated by Guaraní aboriginals, but his expedition was attacked and Solís perished in the adventure. Sebastian Cabot established in 1527 the Sancti Spiritu fort upstream of the Paraná River, in 1536 Pedro de Mendoza reached further north into the basin of the river, searching for the Sierras of Silver. Juan Torres de Vera y Aragón founded on April 3, 1588 San Juan de Vera de las Siete Corrientes, shortened to Corrientes; the "seven currents" refer to the seven peninsulas on the shore of the river at this place, that produced wild currents that made difficult the navigation of the river through this part. Its position between Asunción - in present Paraguay - and Buenos Aires made it an important middle point because of its 55-metre-high lands that prevent flooding when the water level rises. In 1615 Jesuits settled near the Uruguay River.
In 1807 the city resisted the British invasions. During the Argentine War of Independence it was in permanent conflict with the centralist government of Buenos Aires, but the Paraguayan War united them after the city was attacked by Paraguayan forces in 1865; the annual average temperature is 21 °C, with maximum and minimum averages of 45 and 5 °C respectively. The annual rainfall is around 1,200 millimetres; the Köppen Climate Classification subtype for this climate is "Cfa". Frosts are rare; the highest temperature recorded was 42.4 °C on November 15, 1985 while the lowest temperature recorded was −2.8 °C on June 15, 1979. National University of the Northeast University of Cuenca del Plata The Graham Greene spy novel The Honorary Consul"' takes place in Corrientes. Municipality of Corrientes – official website MCC Municipal information: Municipal Affairs Federal Institute, Municipal Affairs Secretariat, Ministry of Interior, Argentina. Sights Map
Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party is a social-democratic political party in Spain. The PSOE has been in government for a longer time than any other political party in modern democratic Spain: from 1982 to 1996 under Felipe González; the PSOE was founded in 1879, which makes it the oldest party active in Spain. The PSOE played a key role during the Second Spanish Republic, being part of coalition government from 1931 to 1933 and from 1936 to 1939, when the Republic was defeated by Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. A Marxist party, it abandoned Marxism in 1979; the PSOE has had strong ties with the General Union of Workers, a Spanish trade union. For decades, UGT membership was a requirement for PSOE membership. However, since the 1980s UGT has criticized the economic policies of PSOE calling for a general strike against the PSOE government on 14 December 1988; the PSOE is a member of the Party of European Socialists, Progressive Alliance and the Socialist International. In the European Parliament, PSOE's 14 Members of the European Parliament sit in the Socialists and Democrats European parliamentary group.
PSOE was founded by Pablo Iglesias on 2 May 1879 in the Casa Labra tavern in Tetuán Street near the Puerta del Sol at the centre of Madrid. Iglesias was a typesetter who had become in contact in the past with the Spanish section of the International Working Men's Association and with Paul Lafargue; the first program of the new political party was passed in an assembly of 40 people, on 20 July of that same year. The bulk of the growth of the PSOE and its affiliated trade union, the Unión General de Trabajadores was chiefly restricted to the Madrid-Biscay-Asturias triangle up until the 1910s; the obtaining of a seat at the Congress by Pablo Iglesias at the 1910 legislative election, in which the PSOE candidates presented within the broad Republican–Socialist Conjunction, became a development of great symbolical transcendence, gave the party more publicity at the national level. The party and the UGT took a leading role in the general strike of August 1917, in the context of the events of the 1917 Crisis during the conservative government of Eduardo Dato.
The strike was crushed by the army with the result of further undermining of the constitutional order. Sent to the prison of Cartagena, they were released a year after being elected to the Cortes in the 1918 general election. During the 1919−1921 "Crisis of the Internationals" the party experienced tensions between the members endorsing the Socialist International and the advocates for joining the Third International. Two consecutive splits of dissidents willing to join the Komintern, namely the Spanish Communist Party in 1920, the Spanish Communist Workers' Party in 1921, broke away from the PSOE and soon merged to create the Communist Party of Spain; the party was a member of the Labour and Socialist International between 1923 and 1940. After the death of Pablo Iglesias in 1925, Julián Besteiro replaced the at the presidency of the PSOE and the UGT. During the 1923–1930 dictatorship of Primo de Rivera corporativist PSOE and UGT elements were willing to engage into limited collaboration with the regime, against the political stance defended by other socialists such as Indalecio Prieto and Fernando de los Ríos, who instead vouched for a closer collaboration with republican forces.
The last years of the dictatorship saw a divergence emerge among the "corporativists". The opposition of Besteiro to participate in the "Revolutionary Committee" led to his resignation as president both of the party and the trade union in February 1931, he was replaced as president of the party by Remigio Cabello. After the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic on 14 April 1931, three PSOE members were included in the cabinet of the provisional government: Indalecio Prieto, Fernando de los Ríos and Francisco Largo Caballero; the socialist presence remained in the rest of cabinets of the "Social-Azañist Biennium". After the November 1933 general election, which marked a win for the right-of-centre forces, in a climate of increasing polarization and growing unemployment along a desire to mend the mistake of not having sided along the republicans in the election against the united right, Largo Caballero adopted a revolutionary rhetoric. Indalecio Prieto had participated in the aggressive rhetoric, having condemned the heavy-hand repression of the December 1933 anarchist uprising by the government, cheered on by the CEDA parliamentary fraction leaders.
The Socialist Youth of Spain engaged into a shrilling revolutionary rhetoric, while Besteiro opposed the insurrectionary drift of the militancy. The formation of a new cabinet including CEDA ministers in October 1934 was perceived among the Left as a reaction, with the CEDA party being indistinguishable from contemporary Fascism to most workers, while CEDA leader Gil-Robles had vouched for the establishment of a corporative state in the 1933 electoral campaign. Having the UGT called for a general strike in the country for 5 October, the strike developed into a full-blown insurrection
Order of Santiago
The Order of Santiago known as The Order of St. James of the Sword, is a religious and military order founded in the 12th century, it owes its name to the Patron Saint of Spain, "Santiago". Its initial objective was to protect the pilgrim of St. James' Way, to defend Christendom and to remove the Muslim Moors from the Iberian Peninsula. Entrance was not however restricted to nobles of Spain and so many of her members have been prominent Catholic Europeans in general; the Order of Santiago is one of the most renowned military orders in the history of the world, its insignia being recognisable and abundandt in Western art. After the death of the Grand Master Alonso de Cárdenas in 1493, the Catholic Monarchs incorporated the Order into the Spanish Crown. Pope Adrian VI forever united the office of grandmaster of Santiago to the crown in 1523; the First Republic suppressed the Order in 1873 and, although it was re-established in the Restoration, it was reduced to a nobiliary institute of honorable character.
It was ruled by a Superior Council dependent on the Ministry of War, extinguished after the proclamation of the Second Republic in 1931. The Order of Santiago comforms one of the four Spanish military orders, together with those of Calatrava, Alcántara, Montesa, it was restored as a civil association with the kingship of Juan Carlos I with the character of a nobiliary and religious organization that remains as such. The Order's insignia is a red cross resembling a sword, with the shape of a fleur-de-lis on the hilt and the arms; the knights wore the cross stamped on white cape. The cross of the royal standard had a Mediterranean scallop in the center and another one at the end of each arm; the three fleurs-de-lis represent the "honor without stain", in reference to the moral features of the Apostle's character. The sword represents the chivalrous character of the apostle St. James and his martyr ways, since he was decapitated with a sword, it can symbolize taking the sword in the name of Christ, in a certain sense.
It is said that its shape originated in the era of the Crusades, when the knights took with them small crosses with sharpened bottoms to stick them in the ground and carry out their daily devotions. Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia, the centre of devotion to this Apostle, is neither the cradle nor the principal seat of the order. Two cities contend for the honour of having given it birth, León in the kingdom of that name, Uclés in Castile. At that time the royal dynasty was divided into two branches, the rivalry of which tended to obscure the beginnings of the order; the Knights of Santiago had possessions in each of the kingdoms, but Ferdinand II of León and Alfonso VIII of Castile, in bestowing them, set the condition that the seat of the order should be in their respective states. Hence arose long disputes which only ended in 1230 when Ferdinand III, the Saint, united both crowns. Thereafter, Uclés, in Cuenca Province, was regarded as the headquarters of the order; the order received its first rule in 1171 from Cardinal Jacinto legate in Iberia of Pope Alexander III.
This first Grand Master was Pedro Fernández de Castro known as Pedro Fernández de Fuentecalada, a soldier of King Ferdinand II and a former crusader. Unlike the contemporary orders of Calatrava and Alcántara, which followed the severe rule of the Benedictines of Cîteaux, Santiago adopted the milder rule of the Canons of St. Augustine. At León, they offered their services to the Canons Regular of Saint Eligius in that town for the protection of pilgrims to the shrine of St. James and the hospices on the roads leading to Compostela; this explains the mixed character of their order—hospitaller and military—like that of St. John of Jerusalem, they were recognized as religious by Pope Alexander III, whose Bull of 5 July 1175, was subsequently confirmed by more than twenty of his successors. These pontifical acts, collected in the Bullarium of the order, secured them all the privileges and exemptions of other monastic orders; the order comprised several affiliated classes: canons, charged with the administration of the sacraments.
The right to marry, which other military orders only obtained at the end of the Middle Ages, was accorded them from the beginning under certain conditions, such as the authorization of the king, the obligation of observing continence during Advent, on certain festivals of the year, which they spent at their monasteries in retreat. The mildness of this rule furthered the rapid spread of the order, which eclipsed the older orders of Calatrava and Alcántara, whose power was reputed abroad before 1200; the first Bull of confirmation, that of Pope Alexander III enumerated a large number of endowments. At its height Santiago alone had more possessions than Alcántara together. In Spain, these possessions included 83 commanderies, 2 cities, 178 boroughs and villages, 200 parishes, 5 hospitals, 5 convents, 1 college at Salamanca; the number of knights was 400 and they could muster more than 1000 lances. They had possessions in Portugal, Italy and Palestine. Abrantes, their first commandery in Portugal, dates from the reign of Afonso I in 1172, soon became a distinct order which Pope Nicholas IV released from the jurisdiction of Uclés
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Spain
Andalusia
Badia Polesine, Italy
Bédarieux, France
Corrientes, Argentina
Piera, Spain
