LAND BRIDGE between continent and cultures, the Iberian Peninsula forms the closest link between Europe and Africa while overlooking the water route between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. As a crossroads, it has witnessed centuries of invasions, both peaceable and military. A succession of peoples, beginning with the Iberians – the first known inhabitants – who were followed by Phoenicians, Celts, Greeks, and Carthaginians, colonized the peninsula. After 218 B.C., when the Carthaginians leader Hannibal provoked Roman general Scipio to invade, Rome swept the peninsula, gradually unifying it as the province of Hispania.
The Romans introduced the Latin language, irrigation networks, paved roads, and urban planning – a lasting legacy of achievements. During the fifth century A.D. the Visigoths, a Germanic tribe, crossed the Pyrenees and ended Roman rule.
In 711 the Moors – Arabs who had spread the Islamic faith across North Africa and intermingled with their Moroccan Berber convert– invaded the peninsula, penetrating every corner but Asturias, a Christian redoubt in the mountainous northwest. In the south during the next several centuries the Moors created one of the medieval world's premier cultural centers. Under Muslim rule, the Arab and Jewish cultures flourished. The Moors introduced fine crafts, more advanced agricultural techniques, and superior knowledge of medicine, science, geography, and philosophy.
Meanwhile, the Christians in the north created a military society dedicated to religious crusades and territorial reconquest. By the 13th century they had pushed the Moors back to the extreme south. With the fall of Granada in 1492, the reconquest was complete, although the Moors' final expulsion would not occur until 1613.
Castile and Aragon were now established as the principal kingdoms, united through the marriage of their Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. The rulers forced many Jews to convert to Catholicism; the dread religious court known as the Inquisition ruled on sincerity of compliance. Jews who refused to convert were expelled.
With Spain's home territory secured, the monarchs turned to exploration to enrich and enlarge their domain. Queen Isabella supported Christopher Columbus's expeditions to the Indies. After the discovery of the New World the Spanish Empire embraced dozens of colonial settlements in North and South America and the Caribbean.
In the early 1500s Spain could boast the largest European empire since Rome. King Charles I had inherited the Habsburg domain and was elected the Holy Roman Emperor. This alliance drew Spain into battles to defend Catholicism against the Protestant Reformation in the north. The Islamic Ottoman Empire encroached in the east. Although colonial wealth flowed in, military debts, domestic inflation, and an exodus of people and capital to the colonies soon crippled the country. Yet as Spain declined politically, it saw the culmination of its cultural golden age, with the early 17th century producing notable contributions in philosophy, literature, and the fine arts.
Foreign wars, including almost continuous conflicts with France, eroded Spain's power through the 17th and into the 18th century. Famine and pestilence wracked the country. In 1713, after the War of the Spanish Succession, the crown was forced to relinquish extensive holdings in Europe.
A people's war of independence ultimately quashed Napoleon's invasion of 1808, one of a series of civil and foreign conflicts that ravaged Spain throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. By 1825 it had lost most of its American colonies. Defeat in the Spanish-American War of 1898 stripped the nation of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam.
In 1936 an army revolt set off a civil war that ended with the victory of Gen. Francisco Franco in 1939. War torn, Spain gave only tacit support to the Axis powers, but the result was ostracism by the Allies. Finally in 1955 the country gained admission to the United Nations. During dictator Franco's last years, Spain participated increasingly in the economy of the West and enjoyed a soical and cultural transformation. With the death of Franco in 1975, Juan Carlos I of the Bourbon Dynasty became king and installed a democratically elected cortes, or parliament, which wrote the Constitution of 1978, quicly ratified by the people in a national referendum.
Today, although Spain is primarily an agricultural country, industries – textiles, automobiles, and metallurgy – have developed in Catalonia, the Basque Country, and around Madrid. Spain rivals Italy as the world's top olive-oil producer and is the sixth largest shipbuilder. Tourism supplies much of its foreign exchange.
Although industry is transforming portions of Spain, people retain a loyalty to its traditional regions.
Andalusia - Extremadura - Asturias - Castile & León - Aragon - Galicia - Basque – Cantabria - Navarre - Aragon - Catalonia - Murcia - Valencia - Balearic Islands - Canary Islands
The traits of Andalusia, distinctly her own, are often taken as archetypal of Spain by outsiders. Here the Spanish raise their fiercest bulls and train their outstanding matadors. Flamenco performers, usually Gypsies, dressed in ruffles and clicking castanets, dance to the guitar. Whitewashed villages dot the country side, and vineyards and olive groves thrive. Literature's Don Juan and opera's Figaro and Carmen portray regional images.
During the nearly 800 years of Muslim rule the region excelled in the arts. Córdoba became one of Europe's richest cities, a cultural center with an institution of highter learning that attracted scholars from throughout Europe. The Moors in Granada, their greatest capital and final stronghold, built numerous religious and secular monuments, culminating in the great palace of the Alhambra. The Moorish influence is still reflected in Andalusian customs and vocabulary and the physical features of the people.
Pastoralists tending merino sheep wander the arid plain of Extremadura. For centuries the law as protected their migrations. To ensure efficient passage, 75 meters of pastureland borders each side of main roads. Limited resources have encouraged many residents to leave. Among the earliest of them were the famous conquistadores Pizarro, Cortés, de Soto, and Balboa. Their achievements enlarged Spain's empire, while at home their fortunes built family mansions and made the shrine of the region's patron saint, Our Lady of Guadalupe, among Christendom's wealthiest.
For two centuries following the Moorish invasion, Asturias persisted as the only independent Christian kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula. Led by Visigoth nobles, the Asturians initiated the reconquest from their mountain refuge. Tody's residents subsist on coal mining and steel, as well as livestock farming and fishing. Herdsmen converse through a centuries-old form of yodeling.
Christians pushed the border of Asturias south to the Duero River in 910 and extablished the Kingdom of León. Under King Alfonso VI and his vassal El Cid the kingdom gained power nd eventually united with Castile. Harsh weather and poor soils have for generatons limited livelihoods to stock farming, causing many young people to emigrate.
Most of Spain's 1,400 castles are concentrated in Castile – from Spanish Castilla, meaning “castle.” During he reconquest these Christian fortresses were build to defend recaptured territories. Old Castile formed the nucleus of the kingom that unified Spain in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, and Castilian eventually became the national language. Through Spain's overseas settlers, the Castilian tongue and culture were transmitted to Hispanic America. Today the people of Burgos and Valladolid claim to speak Castilian in its purest form.
After Toledo was recaptured from the Muslims in 1085, the Christians created new Castile. The Moors who were permitted to stay, called Mudejares, created a uniques art style that blended Spanish and Islamic motifs seen in Mudejar crafts. In Toledo, dubbed the Jerusalem of Spanish Jews, King Alfonso X gathered Jewish, Muslim, and Christian scholars to form the School of Translators, which made the works of Plato and Aristotle accessible to all Europe.
Castilian history has been marked by the fanatical fusion of state and church, epitomized by the monastic orders of knights who defended the borders of Christian Spain during the reconquest. Non-Spaniards know New Castile for the region called La Mancha, home of Don Quixote. Sheephearding and grain dominate today's rural economy.
Galicia's jettied coast and emerald meadowlands resemble those of the British Isles. By the eighth century B.C. the Celts had arrived here and implanted enduring customs: the bagpipes that accompany moonlit dances, the cross symbols that ward off evil spiritis, and the rituals of ancestor worship. Feudal laws of inheritance have subdividied most of the land, forcing many emigrate. Fishing and agriculture are the major livelihoods.
Spain's oldest ethnic group, the people of the Basque Country consider themselves, along wit the French Basques, a separate nation. Jealously guarding special rights first granted them in the mid-1300s, the Basques have preserved their distinctive language in rural regions. Although the Spanish Parliament granted autonomy in 1979, some Basques still harbor separatist sentiments.
Rolling hills covered with orchards and pastures resemble the landscape of central Europe. Iron, steel, ship building, and chemicals, as well as farming and fishing, are the main occupations. The Basques' competitive nature is tested in contests of skill and strength such as jai alai, one of the world's fastest games. The smuggling of goods between Basque territories in France and Spain is also considered a sport.
Controlling the main passages through the Pyrenees, medieval Navarre accumulated power and wealth, its sovereignty extending throughout northern Spain and into France. Fortified mansions and extensive armories still dominate local villages. As the first stop in Spain along the Way of St. James, Navarre was enriched by an unending procession of pilgrims. The Benedictines introduced the Romanesque style of architecture in their churches and monasteries.
In Aragon, Muslim Mudejar architecture dominated south from the 13th to the 16th centuries, while in the Pyrenees the Christian Romanesque style held fast. Today the sheepherding life of northern Aragon parallels that of Navarre.
Charlemagne liberated Catalonia from the Moors in the late 700s, establishing the Spanish March to protect his frontier. The region gained autonomous status in 1979, and the Catalan language was made oficial along with Spanish. Barcelona has emerged as Spain's cneter of commerce, industry, and progress. Attracting many of the nation's unemployed, Catalonia now surpasses all other regions of the Iberian Peninsula in population density.
Murcia ranks among Spain's most prosperous farming areas, despite low rainfall. Canals, built by the Romans and improved by the Moors, irrigate lemons, oranges, dates, and other crops introduced from North Africa and the Middle East. Arab influence also persists in the local vocabulary, domestic architecture, and traditional songs and dances.
A geologic extension of the Andalusian mountains, the Balearic Island lie in the Mediterranean off Spain's eastern coast. Outdoor museums, Majorca and Minorca are covered with megalithic monuments erected about 1500 B.C. As a convenient entropôt the archipelago attracted Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, and Moors. Under the Kingdom of Aragon the islands became a center of Mediterranean trade. Prosperity encouraged scholars, who excelled in cartography and navigation. In the 16th century the Barbary pirates and Turks repeatedly looted the region. Now, especially i nthe summer, the islands are inundated with tourists.
Situated in the North Atlantic just north of the Tropic of Cancer, the 13 Canary Islands constitute Spain's most distant offshore region. The volcanic archipelago dispays an assortment of landscapes from moonlike craters to snow-covered peaks and palm groves. Awed by the lushness, the Greeks and Romans equated the archipelago with paradise. An explorer named one of the islands Canaria, after the local wild dogs, about 40 B.C. By A.D 1000 the Arabs were trading with the natives, known as Guanches. In the 1400s the Castilian crown annexed the Canaries, which became an important layover between the Old and New Worlds. After a stop here, Columbus sailed on the discover America. As a free port, the Canaries market a global array of merchandise to tourists.
Herzegovina
