The time

Do you remember Ronald Reagan, Leonid Brezhnev, the Union of Democratic Center (UCD), the Popular Alliance (AP), space war games, green computer screens, or vinyl records? No? Then I am afraid you do not belong to our class.

In this page I enumerate some of the events that happened in the world while we were studying the physics major. You can see that in Spain events were taking place at a frantic pace due to the transition from a dictatorship to a democracy (a period called The Transition).

1977

• Most of us start the major.

• Jimmy Carter president of the United States.

• First democratic elections in Spain after 40 years of Franco dictatorship. We were the first generation of university students that started with democracy, what gave us some peace in the classroom. Adolfo Suárez becomes Prime Minister.

• Discovery of the rings of Uranus.

• Nobel Prize in Physics to Philip W. Anderson, Sir Nevill F. Mott and John H. van Vleck.

• Apple II computer. Although it was one of the first personal computers its high price made it inaccessible to most homes. We tried our first computers at the space war machines in the pubs.

1978

• Pope Paul VI dies. John Paul I and John Paul II are elected successively.

• Approval of the Spanish Constitution.

• Nobel Prize in Physics to Pyotr L. Kapitsa, Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson.

1979

• Vietnam invades Cambodia.

• Iranian Revolution and Islamic Republic in Iran.

• The former Soviet Union invades Afghanistan.

• The Sandinista Front takes power in Nicaragua.

• Margaret Thatcher becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

• Adolfo Suárez wins again the general elections in Spain.

• First democratic local elections in Spain. Enrique Tierno Galván mayor of Madrid. Starts of the ‘movida’ in Madrid.

• Nobel Prize in Physics to Sheldon Lee Glashow, Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg.

1980

• Treaty of Rome establishing the European Economic Community.

• Iran-Iraq war.

• Burning of the Embassy of Spain in Guatemala.

• Nobel Prize in Physics to James Watson Cronin and Val Logsdon Fitch.

1981

• Ronald Reagan president of the United States.

• Adolfo Suárez quits as Prime Minister of Spain.

• Failed coup d’état in Spain (that night we studied little).

• Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo Prime Minister of Spain.

• Robbery at the Banco Central bank in Barcelona.

• Terrorist attack against Pope John Paul II.

• Anwar el-Sadat is assesinated The President of Egypt.

• First mission of the space shuttle. It was supposed to be the future of space technology.

• Nobel Prize in Physics to Nicolaas Bloembergen, Arthur Leonard Schawlow and Kai M. Siegbahn.

1982

• Statutes of Autonomy for regions of Spain.

• Falklands War between UK and Argentina.

• Felipe González (Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE)) Prime Minister of Spain.

• Football World Cup in Spain (‘Naranjito’, the mascot, misled us on the final exams).

• The compact disk (CD) appears (during the major we studied and danced with the record player and the cassette).

• Commodore 64 personal computer. Personal computers start to popularize, but their capacities were still very limited. In Spain the Sinclair ZX81 became popular but featured a RAM of only 1 KB (programs of one page maximum)!. I bought one. My first home (and work) desktop computer.

• Nobel Prize in Physics to Kenneth G. Wilson.

• Most of us finish the major.

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