Spain
From The UCSC Wikipedia Trust Project
Template:SprotectedTemplate:ThisTemplate:Infobox Country or territorySpain, officially the Kingdom of Spain (Template:Lang-es, Reino de España[1]), is a country located in Southern Europe, with two small exclaves in North Africa (both bordering Morocco). Spain is a democracy which is organized as a parliamentary monarchy. It is a developed country with the ninth-largest economy in the world.[2] It is the larger of two sovereign states that make up the Iberian Peninsula — the other is Portugal.
To the west, Spain borders Portugal, to the south, it borders Gibraltar (a British overseas territory) and Morocco, through its cities in North Africa (Ceuta and Melilla). To the northeast, along the Pyrenees mountain range, it borders France and the tiny principality of Andorra. It also includes the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea, the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean and a number of uninhabited islands on the Mediterranean side of the strait of Gibraltar, known as Template:Lang, such as the Chafarine islands, the isle of Alborán, the "rocks" (Template:Lang) of Vélez and Alhucemas, and the tiny Isla Perejil. In the northeast along the Pyrenees, a small exclave town called Llívia in Catalonia is surrounded by French territory.
There are several competing hypotheses as to the origin of the Roman name "Hispania", the root of the Spanish name España and the English name Spain. These hypotheses are based on slender evidence and must be treated cautiously.
History
Prehistory and pre-Roman peoples in the Iberian Peninsula
The earliest record of hominids living in Europe has been found in the Spanish cave of Atapuerca which has become a key site for world Palaeontology. Fossils found there are dated to roughly 1,000,000 years ago.
Modern humans in the form of Cro-Magnons began arriving in the Iberian Peninsula from north of the Pyrenees some 35,000 years ago. The more conspicuous sign of prehistoric human settlements are the famous paintings in the northern Spanish Altamira (cave), which were done ca. 15,000 BCE and are regarded, along with those in Lascaux, France, as paramount instances of cave art.
The earliest urban culture documented is that of the semi-mythical southern city of Tartessos, pre- 1100 BCE. The seafaring Phoenicians, Greeks and Carthaginians successively settled along the Mediterranean coast and founded trading colonies there over a period of several centuries. Around 1100 BCE, Phoenician merchants founded the trading colony of Gadir or Gades (modern day Cádiz) near Tartessos. In the 9th century BCE the first Greek colonies, such as Emporion (modern Empúries), were founded along the Mediterranean coast on the East, leaving the south coast to the Phoenicians. The Greeks are responsible for the name Iberia, apparently after the river Iber (Ebro in Spanish). In the 6th century BCE the Carthaginians arrived in Iberia while struggling first with the Greeks and shortly after with the Romans for control of the Western Mediterranean. Their most important colony was Carthago Nova (Latin name of modern day Cartagena).
The native peoples which the Romans met at the time of their invasion in what is now known as Spain were the Iberians, inhabiting from the Southwest part of the Peninsula through the Northeast part of it, and then the Celts, mostly inhabiting the north and northwest part of the Peninsula. In the inner part of the peninsula, where both groups were in contact, a mixed, distinctive, culture was present, the one known as Celtiberian.
Roman Empire and Germanic invasions
Hispania supplied Rome with food, olive oil, wine and metal. The emperors Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius and Theodosius I, the philosopher Seneca and the poets Martial, Quintilian and Lucan were born in Spain. The Spanish Bishops held the Council at Elvira in 306. The collapse of the Western Roman empire did not lead to the same wholesale destruction of Western classical society as happened in areas like Britain, Gaul and Germania Inferior during the Dark Ages, even if the institutions, infrastructure and economy did suffer considerable degradation. Spain's present languages, its religion, and the basis of its laws originate from this period. The centuries of uninterrupted Roman rule and settlement left a deep and enduring imprint upon the culture of Spain.
The first hordes of Barbarians to invade Hispania arrived in the 5th century, as the Roman empire decayed. The tribes of Goths, Visigoths, Swebians (Suebi), Alans, Asdings and Vandals, arrived to Spain by crossing the Pyrenees mountain range. They were all of Germanic origin. This led to the establishment of the Swebian Kingdom in Gallaecia, in the northwest, and the Visigothic Kingdom elsewhere. For a while, the Germanic peoples lived under their own laws while the much larger romanized local populations continued to live under Roman-inspired law. The Visigothic Kingdom eventually encompassed the entire Iberian Peninsula with the Roman Catholic conversion of the Goth monarchs. The famous horseshoe arch, which was adapted and perfected by the later Muslim era builders was in fact originally an example of Visigothic art.
Muslim Iberia
Template:MainIn the 8th century, nearly all the Iberian peninsula was quickly conquered (711–718), by mainly Berber Muslims (see Moors), who had crossed over from North Africa. Visigothic Spain was the last of a series of lands conquered by the Islamically inspired armies of the Umayyad empire. Indeed, they continued northwards until they were defeated in central France at the Battle of Tours, 732. Astonishingly, the invasion started off as an invitation from a Visigoth faction within Spain. Only three small Christian counties in the mountains of northern Spain managed to cling to their independence: Asturias, Navarra and Aragon, which were eventually to become kingdoms.
In its first centuries the Muslim emirate was strong, stopping Charlemagne's forces at Saragossa. In the 11th century the break up of Al-Andalus led to the creation of the Taifa kingdoms, who attempted to outshine each other in art and culture and were often at war, becoming vulnerable to the consolidating power of Spain's Christian kingdoms.
Spanish society under Muslim rule became increasingly complex, partly because Islamic conquest did not involve the systematic conversion of the much larger conquered population to Islam. At the same time, Christians and Jews were recognized under Islam as "peoples of the book", and so given dhimmi status. Most importantly, the Islamic Berber and Arab invaders were a small minority, ruling over several million Christians. Thus, Christians and Jews were free to practise their religion, but faced certain restrictions and financial burdens. Conversion to Islam proceeded at a steadily increasing pace, as it offered social and economic and political advantages. By the 11th century Muslims are believed to have outnumbered Christians in Al-Andalus.
The Muslim community in Spain was itself diverse and beset by social tensions. The Berber people of North Africa had provided the bulk of the armies, clashed with the Arab leadership from the Middle East. The Berbers soon gave up attempting to settle the harsh lands in the north of the Meseta Central handed to them by the Arab rulers. Over time the relatively tiny number of Moors gradually increased with immigration and inter-marriage. Large Moorish populations grew, most notably in the south, especially in the Guadalquivir River valley, and on the Mediterranean coastal plain of Valencia. Towards the end of their reign they became concentrated in the mountains around Granada.
Cordoba, Muslim Spain's capital, was the richest and most sophisticated city of medieval Europe. It was not until the 12th century that western medieval Christendom began reaching comparable levels of sophistication, and this was due in no small part to the stimulus coming from Muslim Spain. Mediterranean trade and cultural exchange flourished. Muslims imported a rich intellectual tradition from the Middle East and North Africa. Muslim and Jewish scholars played a major part in reviving and contributing to the tradition of classical Greek philosophy, mathematics and science in Western Europe. New crops and techniques led to a remarkable expansion of agriculture. Magnificent mosques, palaces, and other monuments were constructed. Outside the cities, the mixture of large estates and small farms that existed in Roman times remained largely intact because Muslim leaders rarely dispossessed landowners.
The relative social peace broke down with the later, stricter Muslim ruling sects of Almoravids and Almohads.
Roman, Jewish, and Muslim culture interacted in complex ways, giving Spanish culture — religion, literature, music, art and architecture, and writing systems — a rich and distinctive heritage. However, as the 11th century drew to a close most of the north and centre of Spain was back under Christian control.
Fall of Muslim rule and unification
The long period of expansion of the Christian kingdoms, beginning in 722 with the Muslim defeat in the Battle of Covadonga and the creation of the Christian Kingdom of Asturias, only eleven years after the Moorish invasion, is called the Reconquista. As early as 739 Muslim forces were driven out of Galicia, which came to host one of medieval Christianity's holiest sites, Santiago de Compostela. Areas in the northern mountains and around Barcelona were soon captured by Frankish and local forces, providing a base for Spain's Christians. The 1085 conquest of the central city of Toledo largely completed the reconquest of the northern half of Spain.
By the middle of the 12th century the Almoravid empire, which had conquered territories as far north as Saragossa, had disintegrated. The great Moorish strongholds in the south fell to Christian Spain, most notably Córdoba in 1236 and Seville in 1248. Within a few years of this nearly the whole of the Iberian peninsula had been reconquered, leaving only the Muslim enclave of Granada as a small tributary state in the south. Surrounded by Christian Castile but afraid of another invasion from Muslim northern Africa, it clung tenaciously to its isolated mountain splendour for two and half centuries. It came to an end in 1492 when Isabella and Ferdinand captured the southern city of Granada, the last Moorish city in Spain. The Treaty of Granada[3] guaranteed religious tolerance toward Muslims while Spain's Jewish population of over 200,000 people was expelled that year. At Ferdinand's urging the Spanish Inquisition had been established in 1478. With a history of being invaded by three Islamic empires (Ummayad, Almoravid and Almohad), and a fourth attempt (Marinids), it was feared that local Muslims might assist yet another invasion. Also, Aragonese labourers were angered by landlords' use of Moorish workers to undercut them. A 1499 Muslim uprising, triggered by forced conversions, was crushed and was followed by the first of the expulsions of Muslims, in 1502. The year 1492 was also marked by the discovery of the New World. Isabella I funded the voyages of Christopher Columbus. Ferdinand and Isabella, as exemplars of the Renaissance New Monarchs, consolidated the reform of their respective economies that had been pursued by their predecessors and enforced reforms that weakened the position of the great magnates against the new centralized crowns. In their contests with the French army in the Italian Wars, Spanish forces under Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba eventually achieved success, against the French knights, thereby revolutionizing warfare. The combined Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, vibrant and expansive, emerged as a European great power.
The process of religious conversion which started with the arrival of the Moors was reversed from the mid 13th century as the Reconquista was advancing south: as this happened the Muslim population either fled or forcefully converted into Catholicism, mosques and synagogues were converted into churches.
With the union of Castile and Aragón in 1479 and the subsequent conquest of Granada in 1492 and Navarre in 1512, the word Spain (España, in Spanish- derived from the ancient "Hispania") began being used only to refer to the new united kingdoms (they kept their separate laws and institutions) and not to the whole of Hispania.
Rise as a World Power: From the Renaissance to the nineteenth century
Template:MainUntil the late 15th century, Castile, León, Aragón, and Navarre were four independent states, with independent languages, laws, monarchs, armies and, in the case of Aragon and Castile, two empires: the former with one in the Mediterranean and the latter with a new, rapidly growing one in the Americas. The process of political unification continued into the early 16th century. It was the unification of these separate Iberian empires that became the base of what is now referred to as the Spanish Empire. The political, social, military adaptations of the 15th century and consolidated by the development of the American silver mines from the middle of the following century, made Spain the most powerful country in Europe throughout the 16th century and the first half of the 17th century.
It was in the 16th century, during the long reigns of the first two Spanish Habsburgs (Charles I and Philip II) that Spain reached its apogee. The Spanish Empire covered most territories of South and Central America, Mexico, the south of North America (New Spain), some of Eastern Asia (including the Philippines), the Iberian peninsula (including the Portuguese empire (from 1580), southern Italy, Sicily, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. It was the first empire about which it was said that the sun did not set. It was an Age of Discovery, with daring explorations by sea and by land, the opening up of new trade routes across oceans, conquests and the beginning of European colonialism. Along with the arrival of precious metals, spices, luxuries, and new agricultural plants the explorers, soldiers, sailors, traders and missionaries also brought back with them a flood of knowledge that transformed the European understanding of the world.
Of note during the 16th and 17th centuries was the cultural efflorescence now known as the Spanish Golden Age and the intellectual movement known as the School of Salamanca.
The lingering “decline of Spain” set in during the 17th century. This stagnation was a complex phenomena involving political, social and economic factors, but the proximate cause was the strain of constant and ever expanding military efforts. For a long time these were generally very successful (with the notable exception in the north of the Low Countries) in defending the territorial and religious integrity of the scattered Habsburg’s empire. But these massive ongoing commitments ultimately bankrupted and bled Spain dry during the vast Thirty Years War that tore Europe apart, initiating Spain’s long, gradual decline. By 1640 rebellions led to the succession of Portugal and Catalonia. With forces stretched to the limit across Europe, Spain still managed to recover Catalonia and the Italian territories but not Portugal, thereby also losing those territories ruled from Lisbon, including Brazil, and strongholds in Africa and India and with it much of the lucrative oriental spice trade and the Atlantic slave trade. The growing beggary forced many to live by their wits and picaresque literature flourished.
With the death of a childless Spanish Habsburg king controversy over succession to the throne consumed much of Europe during the first years of the 18th century. The War of Spanish Succession, which combined a wide ranging international conflict with a civil war, finally cost Spain its European empire and its postion as a leading power on the Continent, although it retained its overseas territories.
A new dynasty—the French Bourbons—was installed, and with it a true Spanish state was established when the absolutist first Bourbon king Philip V of Spain in 1707 dissolved the pro-parliamentary Aragon court and unified the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon into a single, unified Kingdom of Spain, abolishing many of the regional privileges and autonomies (fueros) that had hampered Habsburg rule. The National Day of Catalonia still commemorates this defeat.
Following the wars at its commencement the 18th century saw a long, slow recovery, with an expansion of the iron and steel industries in the Basque Country, a growth in ship building, a gradual increase in trade and the growth of Castile’s population. The new Bourbon monarchy drew on the French system in trying to modernize the administration and economy, in which it was much more successful in the former than the latter. With the ending of Cadiz's royally granted trade monopoly with the American territories trade finally began to grow strongly in the last years of the century - for instance, the textile industry in Catalonia began to vigorously modernise and expand. Spain's effective military assistance to the rebellious British colonies in the American War of Independence won it renewed international standing.
Napoleonic rule and its consequences
The reform efforts of Charles III and his ministers led to a profound gap between partisans of the Enlightenment (Afrancesados) and partisans of the Old Spain. The subsequent war with France in 1793 polarized the country in an apparent reaction against the