Spain

Iberia enters written records as a land populated largely by the Iberians, Basques and Celts. After an arduous conquest, the peninsula came under the rule of Rome. During the early Middle Ages it came under Germanic rule but later, much of it was conquered by Moorish invaders from North Africa. In a process that took centuries, the small Christian kingdoms in the north gradually regained control of the peninsula. The last Moorish kingdom fell in the same year Columbus reached the Americas. A global empire began which saw Spain become the strongest kingdom in Europe, the leading world power for a century and a half, and the largest overseas empire for three centuries.

Continued wars and other problems eventually led to a diminished status. The Napoleonic invasions of Spain led to chaos, triggering independence movements that tore apart most of the empire and left the country politically unstable. Prior to the Second World War, Spain suffered a devastating civil war and came under the rule of an authoritarian government, whose rule oversaw a period of stagnation but that finished with a powerful economic surge. Eventually democracy was peacefully restored in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Spain joined the European Union, experiencing a cultural renaissance and steady economic growth.

Prehistory and pre-Roman peoples
Archaeological research at Atapuerca indicates the Iberian Peninsula was populated by hominids 1.2 million years ago. Modern humans first arrived in Iberia, from the north on foot, about 35,000 years ago. The best known artifacts of these prehistoric human settlements are the famous paintings in the Altamira cave of Cantabria in northern Iberia, which were created from 35,600 to 13,500 BCE by Cro-Magnon. Archaeological and genetic evidence suggests that the Iberian Peninsula acted as one of several major refugia from which northern Europe was repopulated following the end of the last ice age.

The largest groups inhabiting the Iberian Peninsula before the Roman conquest were the Iberians and the Celts. The Iberians inhabited the Mediterranean side of the peninsula, from the northeast to the southeast. The Celts inhabited much of the inner and Atlantic sides of the peninsula, from the northwest to the southwest. Basques occupied the western area of the Pyrenees mountain range and adjacent areas, the Tartessians were in the southwest and the Lusitanians and Vettones occupied areas in the central west.

Roman Empire and the Gothic Kingdom
During the Second Punic War, an expanding Roman Republic captured Carthaginian trading colonies along the Mediterranean coast from roughly 210 to 205 BCE. It took the Romans nearly two centuries to complete the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, though they had control of it for over six centuries. Roman rule was bound together by law, language, and the Roman road.

The cultures of the Celtic and Iberian populations were gradually Romanized (Latinized) at differing rates in different parts of Hispania. Local leaders were admitted into the Roman aristocratic class. Hispania served as a granary for the Roman market, and its harbours exported gold, wool, olive oil, and wine. Agricultural production increased with the introduction of irrigation projects, some of which remain in use. Emperors Hadrian, Trajan, Theodosius I, and the philosopher Seneca were born in Hispania. Christianity was introduced into Hispania in the 1st century CE and it became popular in the cities in the 2nd century CE. Most of Spain's present languages and religion, and the basis of its laws, originate from this period.

The weakening of the Western Roman Empire's jurisdiction in Hispania began in 409, when the Germanic Suebi and Vandals, together with the Sarmatian Alans crossed the Rhine and ravaged Gaul until the Visigoths drove them into Iberia that same year. The Suebi established a kingdom in what is today modern Galicia and northern Portugal. As the western empire disintegrated, the social and economic base became greatly simplified: but even in modified form, the successor regimes maintained many of the institutions and laws of the late empire, including Christianity.

The Alans' allies, the Hasdingi Vandals, established a kingdom in Gallaecia, too, occupying largely the same region but extending farther south to the Duero river. The Silingi Vandals occupied the region that still bears a form of their name –Vandalusia, modern Andalusia, in Spain. TheByzantines established an enclave, Spania, in the south, with the intention of reviving the Roman empire throughout Iberia. Eventually, however, Hispania was reunited under Visigothic rule.

Isidore of Seville, archbishop of Seville, was an influential philosopher and very studied in the Middle Ages in Europe. Also his theories were vital to the conversion of the Visigothic Kingdom to a catholic one, in the Councils of Toledo. This gothic kingdom was the first Christian kingdom ruling in the Iberian Peninsula, and in the Reconquista it was the referent for the different kingdoms fighting against the Muslim rule.

Middle Ages
In the 8th century, nearly all of the Iberian Peninsula was conquered (711–718) by largely Moorish Muslim armies from North Africa. These conquests were part of the expansion of the Umayyad Caliphate. Only a small area in the mountainous north-west of the peninsula managed to resist the initial invasion.

Under Islamic law, Christians and Jews were given the subordinate status of dhimmi. This status permitted Christians and Jews to practice their religions as People of the Book but they were required to pay a special tax and had legal and social rights inferior to those of Muslims.

Conversion to Islam proceeded at an increasing pace. The muladíes (Muslims of ethnic Iberian origin) are believed to have comprized the majority of the population of Al-Andalus by the end of the 10th century.

The Muslim community in the Iberian Peninsula was itself diverse and beset by social tensions. The Berber people of North Africa, who had provided the bulk of the invading armies, clashed with the Arab leadership from the Middle East. Over time, large Moorish populations became established, especially in the Guadalquivir River valley, the coastal plain of Valencia, the Ebro River valley and (towards the end of this period) in the mountainous region of Granada.

The death of Roland at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass

Córdoba, the capital of the caliphate, was the largest, richest and most sophisticated city in western Europe. Mediterranean trade and cultural exchange flourished. Muslims imported a rich intellectual tradition from the Middle East and North Africa. Muslim and Jewish scholars played an important part in reviving and expanding classical Greek learning in Western Europe. Two important philosophers for the time are Averroes and Maimonides. The Romanized cultures of the Iberian Peninsula interacted with Muslim and Jewish cultures in complex ways, giving the region a distinctive culture. Outside the cities, where the vast majority lived, the land ownership system from Roman times remained largely intact as Muslim leaders rarely dispossessed landowners and the introduction of new crops and techniques led to an expansion of agriculture.

In the 11th century, the Muslim holdings fractured into rival Taifa kingdoms, allowing the small Christian states the opportunity to greatly enlarge their territories. The arrival from North Africa of the Islamic ruling sects of the Almoravids and the Almohads restored unity upon the Muslim holdings, with a stricter, less tolerant application of Islam, and saw a revival in Muslim fortunes. This re-united Islamic state experienced more than a century of successes that partially reversed Christian gains.

Petronilla of Aragon andRamon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona

The Reconquista (Reconquest) was the centuries-long period in which Christian rule was re-established over the Iberian Peninsula. The Reconquista is viewed as beginning with the Battle of Covadonga in 722 and was concurrent with the period of Muslim rule on the Iberian Peninsula. The Christian army's victory over Muslim forces led to the creation of the Christian Kingdom of Asturias along the northwestern coastal mountains. Shortly after, in 739, Muslim forces were driven from Galicia, which was to eventually host one of medieval Europe's holiest sites,Santiago de Compostela and was incorporated into the new Christian kingdom.

Muslim armies had also moved north of the Pyrenees but they were defeated by Frankish forces at the Battle of Poitiers, Frankia. Later, Frankishforces established Christian counties on the southern side of the Pyrenees. These areas were to grow into the kingdoms of Navarre, Aragon and Catalonia. For several centuries, the fluctuating frontier between the Muslim and Christian controlled areas of Iberia was along the Ebro andDuero valleys.

The break-up of Al-Andalus into the competing taifa kingdoms helped the long embattled Iberian Christian kingdoms gain the initiative. The capture of the strategically central city of Toledo in 1085 marked a significant shift in the balance of power in favour of the Christian kingdoms. Following a great Muslim resurgence in the 12th century, the great Moorish strongholds in the south fell to Christian Spain in the 13th century—Córdoba in 1236 and Seville in 1248—leaving only the Muslim enclave of Granada as a tributary state in the south.

In this period literature and philosophy started to flourish again in the Christian peninsular kingdoms, based on Roman and gothic traditions. An important philosopher from this time is Ramon Llull. The king Alfonso X of Castile focused on strengthening this Roman and Gothic past, and also on linking also the Iberian Christian kingdoms with the rest of medieval European Christendom. He worked for being elected emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. The Spanish language evolved from Latin, as did other related Romance languages, and the first grammar was published (Cantar de Mio Cid and Antonio de Nebrija).

El Cid, the Castilian hero of theReconquista of the Iberian Peninsula from Muslim rule.

In the 13th and 14th centuries, the Marinid Muslim sect based in North Africa invaded and established some enclaves on the southern coast but failed in their attempt to re-establish Muslim rule in Iberia and were soon driven out. The 13th century also witnessed the Crown of Aragon, centred in Spain's north east, expand its reach across islands in the Mediterranean, to Sicily and even Athens. Around this time the universities of Palencia (1212/1263) and Salamanca (1218/1254) were established. The Black Death of 1348 and 1349 devastated Spain.

In 1469, the crowns of the Christian kingdoms of Castile and Aragon were united by the marriage of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon. 1478 commenced the completion of the conquest of the Canary Islands and in 1492, the combined forces of Castile and Aragon captured the Emirate of Granada, ending the last remnant of a 781-year presence of Islamic rule in Iberia. That same year, Spain's Jewswere ordered to convert to Catholicism or face expulsion from Spanish territories during the Spanish Inquisition. The Treaty of Granadaguaranteed religious tolerance toward Muslims, and although the toleration was only partial, it was not until the beginning of the 17th century, following the Revolt of the Alpujarras, that Muslims were finally expelled.

Imperial Spain
Christopher Colombus landing in the islands of Central AmericaThe year 1492 also marked the arrival in the New World of Christopher Columbus, during a voyage funded by Isabella. AlthoughChristopher Columbus did make it to the Central American islands he never did discover the continent itself, whilst believing himself to be in the heart of the Orient. As Renaissance New Monarchs, Isabella and Ferdinand centralized royal power at the expense of local nobility, and the word España, whose root is the ancient name Hispania, began to be commonly used to designate the whole of the two kingdoms.With their wide-ranging political, legal, religious and military reforms, Spain emerged as the first world power.

Philip II's realms circa 1598.

The unification of the crowns of Aragon and Castile by the marriage of their sovereigns laid the basis for modern Spain and the Spanish Empire, although each kingdom of Spain remained a separate country, in social, political, laws, currency and language.

Spain was Europe's leading power throughout the 16th century and most of the 17th century, a position reinforced by trade and wealth from colonial possessions. It reached its apogee during the reigns of the first two Spanish Habsburgs – Charles I (1516–1556) and Philip II(1556–1598). This period saw the Italian Wars, the Revolt of the Comuneros, the Dutch Revolt, the Morisco Revolt, clashes with theOttomans, the Anglo-Spanish War and wars with France.

The Spanish Empire expanded to include great parts of the Americas, islands in the Asia-Pacific area, areas of Italy, cities in Northern Africa, as well as parts of what are now France, Germany, Belgium,Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. It was the first empire of which it was said that the sun never set. This was an age of discovery, with daring explorations by sea and by land, the opening-up of newtrade routes across oceans, conquests and the beginnings of European colonialism. Along with the arrival of precious metals, spices, luxuries, and new agricultural plants, Spanish explorers brought back knowledge from the New World, and played a leading part in transforming the European understanding of the globe. The cultural efflorescence witnessed is now referred to as the Spanish Golden Age. The rise of humanism, the Protestant Reformation and new geographical discoveries raised issues addressed by the influential intellectual movement now known as the School of Salamanca.

Philip II and Charles V, Habsburg Spain. Charles was also Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

In the late 16th century and first half of the 17th century, Spain was confronted by unrelenting challenges from all sides. Barbary pirates, under the aegis of the rapidly growing Ottoman Empire, disrupted life in many coastal areas through their slave raids and renewed the threat of an Islamic invasion. This was at a time when Spain was often at war with France.

The Protestant Reformation schism from the Catholic Church dragged the kingdom ever more deeply into the mire of religiously charged wars. The result was a country forced into ever expanding military efforts across Europe and in the Mediterranean.

By the middle decades of a war and plague-ridden 17th-century Europe, the Spanish Habsburgs had enmeshed the country in continent-wide religious-political conflicts. These conflicts drained it of resources and undermined the economy generally. Spain managed to hold on to most of the scattered Habsburg empire, and help the imperial forces of the Holy Roman Empire reverse a large part of the advances made by Protestant forces, but it was finally forced to recognise the separation of Portugal (with whom it had been united in a personal union of the crowns from 1580 to 1640) and the Netherlands, and eventually suffered some serious military reverses to France in the latter stages of the immensely destructive, Europe-wide Thirty Years War.

The Family of Philip V (1743). During the Enlightenment in Spain a new royal family reigned, the House of Bourbon.

In the latter half of the 17th century, Spain went into a gradual decline, during which it surrendered several small territories to France and the Netherlands; however, it maintained and enlarged its vast overseas empire, which remained intact until the beginning of the 19th century.

The decline culminated in a controversy over succession to the throne which consumed the first years of the 18th century. The War of Spanish Succession was a wide-ranging international conflict combined with a civil war, and was to cost the kingdom its European possessions and its position as one of the leading powers on the Continent. During this war, a new dynasty originating in France, the Bourbons, was installed. Long united only by the Crown, a true Spanish state was established when the first Bourbon king, Philip V, united the crowns of Castile and Aragon into a single state, abolishing many of the old regional privileges and laws.

The 18th century saw a gradual recovery and an increase in prosperity through much of the empire. The new Bourbon monarchy drew on the French system of modernising the administration and the economy. Enlightenment ideas began to gain ground among some of the kingdom's elite and monarchy. Military assistance for the rebellious British colonies in the American War of Independence improved the kingdom's international standing.

Isabella; A New Reign
Following the coming of the 19th century, and the reign of Joseph I of the House of Bonaparte, the House of Bourbon was quickly restored in Spain in 1813. Ferdinand VII would rule until 1833 and then Isabella would come to power after he died. Isabella II was not the most liked of Queens, and some hated her purely for the name Isabella held in Spain from Isabella I. Unfortunately Isabella's rule would only last so long, as she would go through a brutal downspiral before her execution in 1851. She would be the last Monarch of the House of Bourbon to rule in Spain, and the most hated of them all to this day.

In 1838, Catalonia rebelled against Isabella and forced the Spanish out. This which was seen by Spanish Nationalists as a terrorist attack and a bad choice of judgement by Catalonia, as well as a sign the Bourbon Military was ineffective and a blatant signal that the Bourbon Monarchy could not last. As such, several revisionist leaders, both Democratic and Monarchist, attempted to overthrow Isabella. These were turned down quickly, and with another blatant use of authority. Isabella survived these rebellions, and strengthened the Monarchy as much as possible. In 1844, an open rebellion once again was made against Isabella, and reforms she had made involving taxes and welfare, which gave these to the nobility and less to the common citizen. People openly protested in Madrid and Sevilla, as well as Zaragoza, but these were all put down with authority just as quick as they sprung up.

In 1851, with the granting of independence to Vasconia, this was the final step revisionists needed to secure the throne. Several rival monarchist parties used it as propaganda, stating that the Queen was trying to sell away all of Spain to "3rd World Pig Dogs, Drunken Spanish Liberals, and Terrorists. For the majority of the population, this seemed to work, as few ventured between the two independent nations attached to Spain afterwards. The movement sparked open riots in almost every street, and the Monarchists were able to win favoritism with the military as well. The Monarchist Rebellions finally made their way to Madrid, where what was left of the Bourbon Military surrendered and was partially executed. The Queen was arrested after the storming of the Palace of Madrid. She was put on trial, sentenced, and executed to death by beheaded. She was executed in private in the Palace Dungeon, old and misused since the Middle Ages, and her body was buried in an unmarked site.

In 1852, an interim government was established with both Democrats and Monarchists. The Monarchists soon won favoritism yet again when they made the Democrats out to be sly, disguised Liberals, as you may have found out the majority of the Spanish population did not like Liberals. As such, the Democrats were expelled from Spain unless they conformed to the ways of a Monarchy. Several fled to Portugal, to the CSA, and even to France, where they were more well treated. An open sacking of Democratic buildings and centers of conventions in Madrid and across Spain went on for two years. In 1854, a now structured Monarchist House; the House of Granada, made their mark. They were classic Spaniards from Granada, and they were going to make their mark on the government. The first to rule the thrown was Enrique Capello, who was the "Grandfather" of the family. He ruled until his death in 1861. During his reign, he made policies which banished and made Liberalism illegal, and made isolationist moves to keep away from Catalonia, and Vasconia. As such, no major cities were continued near the borders, and had to be within a certain distance away. No one could establish a settlement near the borders either.

In 1861, Miguel Capello began his reign. He was the son of Enrique, and the father of Neo-Monarchism. He made the newest and most harsh laws for a Monarchy up to that date. He made sure Law & Order were firmly established. The Military was improved. And the House was made sure corruption and infiltration was a minimum. The people, generally shocked at the struggles around the world as of late, and countless rebellions, were given a false impression of these independence movements, and they were labeled: "Illegal Terrorist Actions". Most did not figure out they were living under a more Dictatorship than Monarchy. But in 1888, everything changed. Miguel died. His younger brother; Fernando, claimed the throne for himself, and he made sure everyone knew even with harsh punishments for stepping out of line, that the Monarchy was still the friend and supporter of the people as well as its protector. He made the government more stable, reducing poverty in the South, and making Madrid an economically sound city, as well as putting influence on Granada, the home of the House important as well. Now, he rules a strong, well-balanced Monarchist Government, with people who are generally happy, but view the independent states of Catalonia, and Vasconia as partially terrorists, and despise Liberalism, for the sure fact that they have been feeling that way for generations, since 1838.

The Capello dynasty would last well into the 20th century, with Fernando having 3 legitimate heirs to the throne, all males. One of his sons, the eldest and first to take the thrown following Fernando's death already had a son by 1891, when his father was still alive. The Capello Family would splinter though, with Catherine Balizar, wife of Alonza Capello executed by Fernando after he was double crossed by the couple's daughter, Audrey who lied about her father's plans to rebel in Morocco against Fernando to get his authorization to execute his brother. This splintered the lines in the family, and Audrey would later successfully establish her own successive line to her lineage in her Republic of Nuevo in Southern Morocco, whether it be threw adoption or surogate mothers. Audrey had, from her activities in active sexual intercourse and doing such unprotected with total strangers who were normally captives of her armies, she had acquired several sexual diseases and she herself could not fathom an unaffected child.