L'endemà de les grans epidèmies

The coronavirus has unveiled the presage that the world could be different from how we had imagined it, and we persistently wonder what this new reality will be like. José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec, with the rigor typical of a historian, invites us to examine the past to find the answers.

Following the plague that devastated the Byzantine Empire in the time of Justinian and Theodora, came the first splendour of Islam and the birth of Europe. From the dreadful Black Death of the 14th century arose the Renaissance. The contagions caused by the arrival of the Spanish to the American continent in 1492, and the smallpox that ended the Aztec Empire, propelled the economic and political frameworks of Latin America. Later, during the 17th century, the plagues pushed Europe to the brink of collapse, but the revolutionary spirit gave birth to a new enlightened world. And finally, the so-called ‘Spanish flu’, which challenged the 20th century, demanded a decisive response guided by scientific, artistic, and literary knowledge.

In all these episodes, which generated a familiar anguish today, societies knew how to offer responses commensurate with the circumstances. Will we now be able to positively confront the difficulties and overcome, once again, a major epidemic?