The post will be broken up into a rough collection of parts.
I'm not sure why certain types of history keeps my attention fully rapt and sends me off on research hunts, but I do believe that this thirst for a better understanding of the world-at-large, my own foundation for the Ganzebilde, is healthy.
Random Historical Conclusion: Germanic tribes were integral to the formation of the earliest parts of the Spanish Crown; and, different Germanic tribes were integral to the later expulsion of the Moors from Spain and the Iberian Peninsula. Those crazy Krauts.
Previous Knowledge Base of Weird Germanic Connections: Being of Germanic descent has lead me to do some digging in the machinations of the "barbarians" in the past. I always thought it was weird that both England (the Anglos) and France (the Franks) are named for Germanic tribes, even as England and France's historical disputes with the Germans and Austrians have defined much of European history since the 18th Century.
The view in certain circles is that the inability of the Germanic peoples to create a unified German-speaking country has been a tragedy that has lead to much death and carnage. It stems from the Prussians and Hapsburgs fight over the nature and character of what a unified Germany would be. While the Italic-speaking people of Umbria and Tuscany and Venice and the rest codified into Italy for example, the Prussians were able to unite Westphalia, Munich, Baden, et al, while Austria and Switzerland remained independent.
Anyway...
How it all started: I dropped Corrie and Cass off at LAX back in May for their flight to OKC. I went to El Segundo for a virtual conference and then eventually drove home in traffic. During my drives to and from work I listen to a rotation of three separate things: NPR, AM radio sports talk, and a rotation of CDs that includes Fran Zappa's "Hot Rats", James Brown's "The Payback" and Durand Jones and the Indications self-titled first album.
I listen enough to know the different shows on the sports talk radio, but at this late part of the day, after 7 pm, it was a show I didn't know exist: an LA soccer talk show. One thing I learned on this day was that LA has more Chivas fans than anywhere in the world outside of Guadalajara. There may more Chivas fans in LA than even Dodger or Laker fans, which is astounding.
The host was also very nervous that LA's soccer fans may peel away from the local MLS franchise, the LA Galaxy, and switch allegiances to the new and shiny team to start out next season, LAFC. It has star power at ownership (Magic Johnson, Mia Hamm, Will Ferrell, among others) and a snazzy new logo:
Upon Further Investigation: I keep a blog about Flags and Logos, so the idea that a logo could be so cool and with-it and help snatch up fans from a historically-good-but-currently-floundering Galaxy team caught my attention. I did some research and even posted about it over on that blog.
One thing the creator of the graphic brand mentioned was that the shield look is based on the seal of the city of Los Angeles, so I went and looked that up next:
Official seals for countries and cities and kingdoms and general zones are things I find fascinating, but in a different way than logos and flags in general. They are far too busy, because they try to contain an entire history in a single, jumbled image.
Take that seal above: grapes, olives, oranges surround the shield, I'm sure the number of circles has meaning, and then the shield itself. One corner is obviously for the US, one is a mockup of the California flag, one looks like it hearkens back to the city's history as part of Mexico, what with the eagle killing the snake on a cactus on a rock, the same image on the Mexican flag.
But then there is that last quadrant, circled below:
That's the "Crown of Castile," showing the city's original founding as part of the Spanish crown. The Crown of Castile is made up of the Kingdom of Castile and the Kingdom of Leon.
The earliest united front of what we call the Kingdom of Spain is when Leon and Castile became one, and depending on your timetable was between 600 and 800 CE.
Wasn't this about Germanic Tribes? Both Leon and Castile were in the northern section of the Iberian Peninsula, and they were the result of a couple centuries of the intermingling of the Iberian-Celts and the Visigoths, a Germanic tribe. The Gothic peoples arrived originally as Roman soldiers and workers; the Romans put plenty of barbarians to work after fighting them for centuries. By this time the Franks were already pushing the Gauls around further north and the united Anglo-Saxon tribe was pushing around the Brittons much further north. It makes sense that the Visigoths could be somewhere far away from their original homeland.
What about the Reconquista centuries later and the expulsion of the Moors? That was the Vandals, a Germanic tribe that had, it looks like, made it to the Ruins of Carthage on the African Mediterranean coast and kept heading west, eventually helping pinch the Moors from the south, dealing a definitive blow for their toehold on Europe.
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I love coming across these connections. I love having my understanding of the world enriched.
Part of my background work on the Germanic tribes stems from an as-yet unwritten post about Germany shellacking Brazil in their World Cup semifinal back in 2014. Maybe I'll get to it before the next World Cup.
Can I finish and be ready with it by next summer?
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