The history topics that bore people to tears: from the Banu Qasi to the 23F

Which history topics cause maximum boredom: from the 23F to the Cathars

What happens when a history buff admits that certain eras put them into an unstoppable doze? A long, varied and rather revealing list appears. The Banu Qasi and the taifas of Muslim Spain top the rejection list, trinc by the Cathars, Tartessos, the Iberians, Numantia and Viriatus. The underlying complaint is not the topic itself: it is the school rehash, the repetition every two or three years of the same four blocks —pre-Roman Hispania, the Romans, Muslim Spain, the Renaissance— until the school year runs out and someone bolts for the Industrial Revolution.

There is a recurring pattern: the further back in time, the harder it gets. Ancient Egypt is "cool" but becomes a slog because of the tangle of dynasties and pharaohs with repeated names. Something similar happens with China, although there the problem is the names. The Neolithic falls flat for lack of writing: without sources, everything is hypothesis and interest collapses compared with the Paleolithic and human evolution. Visigothic Spain, the Minoans and prehistory with vague labels —Middle Iron Age, Late Bronze Age— complete the boredom catalogue.

World War II and the 23F: overexposure and fatigue

If there is one topic that provokes rejection through saturation, it is World War II. "It's sheer exhaustion," one participant sums up, and another adds that it is "in everything, everywhere, and very mainstream." It is not disinterest in the events: it is tiredness of finding it in every book, documentary, film and miniseries. Something similar happens with the 23F, Spain's 1981 coup attempt. When young, discovering that barely a decade earlier there had been an armed uprising in Spain was fascinating; as an adult, the topic "has nothing more to give" amid conspiracy theories and volumes philosophizing about a single moment.

The Spanish Civil War comes with a different diagnosis: not boring because it is overdone, but because it is impossible. "Zero objectivity, everyone sweeps toward their own side," notes one participant who calls it a topic that "is still not available." Spain's 18th century receives an even harsher accusation: intellectual decline, a bad copy of France, the castration of the national genius. And the history of Spain after 1714, as a whole block, also gathers its share of yawners.

The problem is not the topic, it's how it's told

The most repeated thesis is that no period is boring by nature. "If the communicator is good, any period of history turns out to be stimulating," argues one participant who, nevertheless, admits to choking on periods with an excess of actors: the Thirty Years' War, Rome's third-century crisis, the Balkans since the late 19th century. Others point to the format: endless lists of names and dates, war stories without context, EGYPT reduced to a rosary of pharaohs and dynasties.

The education system bears much of the blame. The proposal circulating is radical: no history until age twelve, a general rough sketch of eras, then four blocks per year in secondary school. The underlying complaint is that young children are fed the same rehash of ancient things they don't understand, while older students are served the 19th century over and over again.

Invented history, regionalism and historical fiction

A recurring focus is distrust of the received narrative. Some argue that much of what predates the 19th century rests on dubious sources and that history "is written by the victors." Criticism also targets invented national histories, with Catalonia and the Basque Country cited as examples. And commercial historical fiction: five pages in and the 21st-century mindsets embedded in the 13th start to grate, full of empowerment and assorted anachronisms.

The counterargument also appears: that European prehistory is not just a few pebbles, but 150 years of accumulated Celtic hillforts, settlements, walls, cemeteries and coins. The discussion drifts toward whether fiction —Middle-earth, Harry Potter— displaces real history as a textbook psyop, with the rejoinder that in Poland, Hungary or Russia children grow up steeped in national history without giving up fantasy.

In the end, it is not the past that produces the boredom. It is the way it has been served up to us: repeated, decontextualized and with too many proper names per square centimeter.