Contemporary is called everything that happens in the present time and that belongs to the historical period of time closest to the present. As a qualifying adjective, the term contemporary serves to indicate all the facts, circumstances or phenomena that take place then in the present time and that are part of a current particular reality, opposed to the realities of other historical periods of the human being.
According to historical parameters, everything that took place after the French Revolution (1789) is considered contemporary. This particular event has been accepted as the end of the Modern Age and the beginning of the Contemporary Age that lasts to this day. In this sense, all the historical, political, social and economic events as well as the cultural, religious and mental creations of the human being that are found in this period of time will be considered contemporary.
To define the contemporary period one can resort to a number of characteristics that apply to a large extent to all the phenomena and circumstances corresponding to it. In this sense, the contemporary period can be described as a period with an increasing presence of technology, especially cellular and virtual technology, a creation of the last two or three decades that has allowed a great leap in communications. At the same time, contemporaneity is characterized by a break with pre-established traditions and assumptions, as well as by freedom of expression, the informality of many circumstances, social openness and artistic abstraction.
Finally, one of the most important and characteristic elements of the Contemporary Age is the growing and already irreversible interrelation between each and every one of the regions of the planet, a phenomenon that has seen its beginnings at the end of the 19th century and is currently reaching through processes such as globalization and multiculturalism.
