Francisco Hernandez Marcos

Nations’ history is plenty of examples of conflicts and wars that have on the one side the people from the countryside, and on the other side the people from the urban areas. It has been so in the Spanish and USA civil wars, in the French and Russian revolutions, and -I would say, arguably- that even in the Nazi raise to power. The urban side usually had the power of  information, while the country side usually had a larger number of people.

Countryside interests were mainly those of the landowners (and slave-owners sometimes) and their workers while urban interests were mainly those of freedom and liberalism. The countryside wants to keep their model running while the urban areas yearn for reforms that trigger prosperity, inspired to a great extent by the amount of information and thought available in the cities.

In my opinion in all those conflicts the urban side was mainly right, while the country side was not. For me the French and the Americans were lucky to get the urban side winning their conflicts, whereas the Spanish, Russian and Germans were no so lucky in having the country side taking over the power.

However I feel that the pattern I am describing here no longer works. Information and communication is now the same available both in urban and rural areas so that I hope these sort of conflicts would be less and less frequent.