Spain's story is one of Europe's grand epics. It is a story shaped by ancient and not-so-ancient civilisations sweeping down through the Iberian Peninsula, and by the great ideological battles between Muslims and Christians of the Middle Ages. Later it became the tale of an empire upon which the sun never set and of near endemic conflict over the spoils. And the 20th century was a match for anything that went before with Civil War, dictatorship and a stunning return to democracy.
Spain can make a convincing claim to be the cradle of European humanity – in 2007, Europe’s oldest human remains (a mere 1.2 million years old) were discovered at Atapuerca, near the northern city of Burgos. But it was not until around 3000 years ago that Spain finally entered history's mainstream.
The Phoenician Empire (1500–300 BC) was the first of the grand civilisations of the Ancient World to set their sights on Spain. From their base along what is now the southern Lebanese coast, the Phoenicians may have been the world’s first rulers of the sea. They were essentially traders rather than conquerors, and it was indeed commerce that first brought them to Spain around 1000 BC. They arrived on Spanish shores bearing perfumes, ivory, jewellery, oil, wine and textiles, which they exchanged for Spanish silver and bronze.
Conquest may not have been the Phoenicians' aim, but as their reach expanded, so too did their need for safe ports around the Mediterranean rim. One of these was Carthage in modern-day Tunisia, founded in 814 BC, and in Iberia they established coastal trading colonies at Almuñécar (which they called Ex or Sex), Huelva (Onuba) and Cádiz (Gadir). Cádiz, that breezy and thoroughly Andalucian city in Spain's deep south, can as a result make a pretty strong claim to be the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in Europe.
While the Phoenicians were setting up shop around Spain's southern coastline, Ancient Greek traders were arriving further north. In the 7th century BC the Greeks began to establish trading settlements mainly along the Mediterranean coast – the biggest was Emporion (Empúries) at L'Escala in Catalonia.
The most important gifts of the Phoenicians and Greeks to Spain were not cities, only fragments of which remain today, but rather the things they brought with them, such as iron and several things now considered quintessentially Spanish – the olive tree, the grapevine and the donkey – along with other useful skills and items such as writing, coins, the potter's wheel and poultry.
They might have been here first, but the hold of the Phoenicians and Greeks over their Spanish 'territories' was always rather tenuous and never destined to last.
From about the 6th century BC the Phoenicians and Greeks were pushed out of the western Mediterranean by newly independent Carthage, a former Phoenician colony that established a flourishing settlement on Ibiza. For a brief period during the third century BC, during the so-called Punic Wars in which Rome and Carthage battled for control over the Mediterranean, Carthage conquered southern Spain. The Second Punic War (218–201 BC) saw Carthaginian general Hannibal march his elephants on from here and over the Alps to threaten Rome, but Rome's victory at Ilipa, near Seville, in 206 BC, ultimately gave it control over the Iberian Peninsula. The first Roman town in Spain, Itálica, was founded near the battlefield soon afterwards.
The Romans held sway on the Iberian Peninsula for 600 years. It took them 200 years to subdue the fiercest of local tribes, but by AD 50 most of Hispania (as the Romans called the peninsula) had adopted the Roman way of life.
Rome's legacy to Spain was huge, giving Hispania a road system, aqueducts, temples, theatres, amphitheatres and bathhouses, along with the religion that still predominates today – Christianity – and a Jewish population who were to play a big part in Spanish life for over 1000 years. The main languages still spoken on the Iberian Peninsula – Castilian Spanish, Catalan, Galician and Portuguese – are all versions of the colloquial Latin spoken by Roman legionaries and colonists, filtered through 2000 years of linguistic mutation; the Basques, though defeated, were never Romanised like the rest and hence their language never came within the Latin orbit.
It was also the Romans who first began to cut (for timber, fuel and weapons) the extensive forests that in their time covered half the meseta. In return, Hispania gave Rome gold, silver, grain, wine, fish, soldiers, emperors (Trajan, Hadrian, Theodosius) and the literature of Seneca, Martial, Quintilian and Lucan.
The Roman centuries were something of a golden age for Spain, but the Pax Romana (Roman Peace; the long, prosperous period of stability under the Romans) in Spain began to crumble in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD when Germanic tribes began to sweep down across the Pyrenees. The Visigoths, another Germanic people, sacked Rome itself in 410, but later became Roman allies. When the Germanic Franks pushed the Visigoths out of Gaul in the 6th century, they settled in the Iberian Peninsula, making Toledo their capital.
The roughly 200,000 Visigoths maintained a precarious hold over the millions of more-sophisticated Hispano-Romans, and culturally, the Visigoths tended to ape Roman ways. Nonetheless, the Roman era had come to an end.
The Visigoths left little mark on the Spanish landscape – they were better conquerors than they were builders of monuments meant to last. Of what remains, the most noteworthy structure is the modest Visigothic church at Baños de Cerrato, near Palencia, which dates from 661, and is reckoned to be Spain's oldest surviving church. Otherwise, archaeological fragments are all that remain in archaeological museums around the country, and in Mérida's Museo de Arte Visigodo.
Aside from their meagre contribution to Spanish architecture, the Visigoths' principal lasting impact on Spanish history lies in the fact that Visigothic nobility headed the small Christian kingdoms that survived the Muslim conquest of 711 and began the eight-century Reconquista, which eventually reasserted Christianity in the Iberian Peninsula. Common names of Visigothic origin, such as Fernando, Rodrigo, Fernández and Rodríguez, are still reminders of the Visigoths' role in the Spanish story.
A recurring theme in early Spanish history is Spain's susceptibility to foreign invasion, to empires that rose and fell on Spanish soil but which invariably came from elsewhere. And so it would prove again, although that would slowly change over the next eight centuries, during an epic struggle for the soul of Spain.
The death of the Prophet Mohammed in far-off Arabia in 632 would send shockwaves across the known world. Under Mohammed’s successors, known as caliphs (from the Arabic word for ‘follower’), the new religion spread with extraordinary speed. Much of the Middle East was theirs by 656 and by 682 Islam had reached the shores of the Atlantic in Morocco. Spain, and with it Europe, now lay within sight and within reach.
They had chosen a good moment to arrive: with the disintegration of the Visigothic kingdom through famine, disease and strife among the aristocracy, the Iberian Peninsula was in disarray and ripe for invasion.
For all its significance, there is an element of farce to what happened next. If you believe the myth, the Muslims were ushered into Spain by the sexual misadventures of the last Visigoth king, Roderic, who reputedly seduced Florinda, the daughter of the governor of Ceuta on the Moroccan coast. The governor, Julian, sought revenge by approaching the Muslims with a plan to invade Spain, and in 711 Tariq ibn Ziyad, the Muslim governor of Tangier, landed at Gibraltar with around 10,000 men, mostly Berbers (indigenous North Africans).
Roderic's army was decimated, probably near Río Guadalete or Río Barbate in western Andalucía, and he is thought to have drowned while fleeing the scene. Visigothic survivors fled north and within a few years the Muslims had conquered the whole Iberian Peninsula, except for small areas behind the mountains of the Cordillera Cantábrica in the north. Their advance into Europe was only checked by the Franks at the Battle of Poitiers in 732.
The enlightened Islamic civilisation that would rule much of the Iberian Peninsula for centuries would be called Al-Andalus.
Initially Al-Andalus was part of the Caliphate of Damascus, which ruled the Islamic world. Once again, Spain was a distant outpost of someone else's empire. In 750, however, the Umayyads were overthrown in Damascus by a rival clan, the Abbasids, who shifted the caliphate to Baghdad. One aristocratic Umayyad survivor made his way to Spain and established himself in Córdoba in 756 as the independent emir of Al-Andalus, Abd ar-Rahman I. It was he who began construction of Córdoba's Mezquita, one of the world's greatest Islamic buildings. Just as importantly, Córdoba was the capital of an empire that relied on no foreign powers. For almost the first time in Spanish history, Spain (in this case, Al-Andalus) was both powerful and answerable only to itself.
From the middle of the eighth century to the mid-11th century, the frontier between Muslim and Christian territory lay across the north of the peninsula, roughly from southern Catalonia to northern Portugal, with a protrusion up to the central Pyrenees. South of this line, Islamic cities such as Córdoba, Seville and Granada boasted beautiful palaces, mosques and gardens, universities, public baths and bustling zocos (markets). Al-Andalus' rulers allowed freedom of worship to Jews and Christians (known as Mozárabes and Mozarabs respectively). Jews mostly flourished, but Christians had to pay a special tax, so most either converted to Islam (to be known as muladíes or muwallad) or left for the Christian north.
In 929 the ruler Abd ar-Rahman III gave himself the title caliph, launching the Caliphate of Córdoba (929–1031), during which Al-Andalus reached its peak of power and lustre. Córdoba in this period was the biggest and most dazzling city in Western Europe. Astronomy, medicine, mathematics and botany flourished and one of the great Muslim libraries was established in the city.
Later in the 10th century the fearsome Cordoban general Al-Mansour (or Almanzor) terrorised the Christian north with 50-odd forays in 20 years. He destroyed the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain in 997 and forced Christian slaves to carry its doors and bells to Córdoba, where they were incorporated into the great mosque. There was, it seemed, no limit to Córdoba's powers.
Just when it seemed that Córdoba's golden age would last forever, Al-Andalus turned the corner into a long, slow decline.
After Al-Mansour's death the caliphate collapsed in a devastating civil war, ending Umayyad rule. Córdoba remained powerful but in 1031, the emirate finally broke up into dozens of taifas (small kingdoms).
Political unity was restored to Al-Andalus by the invasion of a strict Muslim sect of Saharan or Berber nomads, the Almoravids, in 1091. The Almoravids had conquered North Africa and were initially invited to the Iberian Peninsula to support Seville, one of the strongest taifas, against the growing Christian threat from the north. Sixty years later a second Berber sect, the Almohads, invaded the peninsula after overthrowing the Almoravids in Morocco. Both sects roundly defeated the Christian armies they encountered in Spain, and maintained the Muslim stranglehold over the southern half of the peninsula.
The near-constant infighting of Muslim versus Muslim was, however, starting to take its toll. While the Almohad’s successors, the Nasrids, retreated to Granada and contributed to the splendours of the Alhambra, the Christian armies of the Reconquista were closing in.
Muslim rule left an indelible imprint upon the country. Great architectural monuments such as the Alhambra in Granada and the Mezquita in Córdoba are the stars of the Moorish legacy, but thousands of other buildings large and small are Moorish in origin (including the many churches that began life as mosques). The tangled, narrow street plans of many a Spanish town and village, especially in the south, date back to Moorish times, and the Muslims also developed the Hispano-Roman agricultural base by improving irrigation and introducing new fruits and crops, many of which are still widely grown today. The Spanish language contains many common words of Arabic origin, including the names of some of those new crops – naranja (orange), azúcar (sugar) and arroz (rice). Flamenco, though brought to its modern form by Roma people in post-Moorish times, has clear Moorish roots. It was also through Al-Andalus that much of the learning of ancient Greece and Rome – picked up by the Arabs in the eastern Mediterranean – was transmitted to Christian Europe, where it would exert a profound influence on the Renaissance.
The Christian Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula began in about 722 at Covadonga, Asturias, and ended with the fall of Granada in 1492. In between these two dates lay almost eight centuries of misadventures, stirring victories and missed opportunities.
An essential ingredient in the Reconquista was the cult of Santiago (St James), one of the 12 apostles. In 813 the saint's supposed tomb was discovered in Galicia. The city of Santiago de Compostela grew around the site, to become the third-most-popular medieval Christian pilgrimage goal after Rome and Jerusalem. Christian generals experienced visions of Santiago before forays against the Muslims, and Santiago became the inspiration and special protector of soldiers in the Reconquista, earning the sobriquet Matamoros (Moor-slayer). Today he is the patron saint of Spain.
Covadonga lies in the Picos de Europa mountains, where some Visigothic nobles took refuge after the Muslim conquest. Christian versions of the 722 battle there tell of a small band of fighters under their leader, Pelayo, defeating an enormous force of Muslims; Muslim accounts make it a rather less important skirmish. Whatever the facts of Covadonga, by 757 Christians had clawed back nearly a quarter of the Iberian Peninsula.
The Asturian kingdom eventually moved its capital south to León and became the Kingdom of León, which spearheaded the Reconquista until the Christians were set on the defensive by Al-Mansour in the 10th century. Castilla, initially a small principality within León, developed into the dominant Reconquista force as hardy adventurers set up towns in the no-man's-land of the Duero basin. The capture of Toledo in 1085, by Alfonso VI of Castilla, led the Seville Muslims to call in the Almoravids from North Africa.
In 1212 the combined armies of the Christian kingdoms routed a large Almohad force at Las Navas de Tolosa in Andalucía. This was the beginning of the end for Al-Andalus: León took key towns in Extremadura in 1229 and 1230; Aragón took Valencia in the 1230s; Castilla's Fernando III El Santo (Ferdinand the Saint) took Córdoba in 1236 and Seville in 1248; and Portugal expelled the Muslims in 1249. The sole surviving Muslim state on the peninsula was now the Emirate of Granada.
In 1476 Emir Abu al-Hasan of Granada refused to pay any more tribute to Castilla, spurring Isabel (queen of Castilla) and Fernando (king of Aragón) to launch the Reconquista's final crusade against Granada, with an army largely funded by Jewish loans and the Catholic Church. The Christians took full advantage of a civil war within the Granada emirate, and on 2 January 1492 Isabel and Fernando entered the city of Granada at the beginning of what turned out to be the most momentous year in Spanish history.
The surrender terms were fairly generous to Boabdil, the last emir, who got the Alpujarras valleys south of Granada and 30,000 gold coins. History has been less kind. Whether true or not, it is often recounted how Boabdil turned for one last tearful look at his beloved Granada as he headed into exile, whereupon his mother scolded him by saying: 'Do not weep like a woman for that which you were unable to defend like a man!' The remaining Muslims were promised respect for their religion, culture and property, but this didn't last long.
Eight centuries after it began, Al-Andalus was no more.
Spain's new Catholic rulers made it clear from the beginning that Islam's enlightened policies of religious coexistence were a thing of the past.
Not content with territorial conquest, the Catholic Monarchs' Christian zeal led to the founding of the Spanish Inquisition to root out those believed to be threatening the Catholic Church. The Inquisition's leading figure was Grand Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada, who was appointed Queen Isabel's personal confessor in 1479. He was, centuries later, immortalised by Dostoevsky as the articulate Grand Inquisitor who puts Jesus himself on trial in The Brothers Karamazov, and satirised by Monty Python in the Flying Circus.
The Inquisition focused first on conversos (Jews converted to Christianity), accusing many of continuing to practise Judaism in secret; in an interesting footnote to history, Torquemada was himself born to converso parents.
During the Inquisition, the ‘lucky’ sinners had their property confiscated, which had, prior to the fall of Granada, served as a convenient fund-raiser for the war of Reconquista against the Muslims. The condemned were then paraded through towns wearing the sambenito, a yellow shirt emblazoned with crosses that was short enough to expose their genitals, then marched to the doors of the local church and flogged.
If you were unlucky, you underwent unimaginable tortures before going through an auto-da-fé, a public burning at the stake. Those that recanted and kissed the cross were garrotted before the fire was set, while those that recanted only were burnt quickly with dry wood. If you stayed firm and didn't recant, the wood used for the fire was green and slow-burning.
In the 15 years Torquemada was Inquisitor General of the Castilian Inquisition, he ran some 100,000 trials and sent about 2000 people to burn at the stake. On 31 March 1492, Fernando and Isabel, on Torquemada's insistence, issued their Edict of Expulsion, as a result of which all Jews who refused Christian baptism were forced to leave Spain within two months on pain of death. Up to 100,000 converted, but some 200,000 – the first Sephardic Jews – left Spain for other Mediterranean destinations. The bankrupt monarchy seized all unsold Jewish property. A talented middle class was gone.
Cardinal Cisneros, Torquemada's successor as overseer of the Inquisition, tried to eradicate Muslim culture too. In the former Granada emirate he carried out forced mass baptisms, burnt Islamic books and banned the Arabic language. After a revolt in Andalucía in 1500, Muslims were ordered to convert to Christianity or leave. Most (around 300,000) underwent baptism and stayed, becoming known as moriscos (converted Muslims), but their conversion was barely skin deep and they never assimilated. The moriscos were finally expelled between 1609 and 1614.
Having secured the Iberian Peninsula as their own, the Catholic monarchs turned their attention elsewhere. The conquest of Granada coincided neatly with the opening up of a whole new world of opportunity for a confident Christian Spain. Columbus' voyage to the Americas, in the very same year as Granada fell, presented an entire new continent in which the militaristic and crusading elements of Spanish society could continue their efforts.
In April 1492 the Catholic Monarchs granted the Genoese sailor Christopher Columbus (Cristobel Colón in Spanish) funds for his long-desired voyage across the Atlantic in search of a new trade route to the Orient.
Columbus sailed from the Andalucian port of Palos de la Frontera on 3 August 1492, with three small ships and 120 men. After a near mutiny as the crew despaired of sighting land, they finally arrived on the island of Guanahaní, in the Bahamas, and went on to find Cuba and Hispaniola. Columbus returned to a hero's reception from the Catholic Monarchs in Barcelona, eight months after his departure. Columbus made three more voyages, founding the city of Santo Domingo on Hispaniola, finding Jamaica, Trinidad and other Caribbean islands, and reaching the mouth of the Orinoco and the coast of Central America. But he died impoverished in Valladolid in 1506, still believing he had reached Asia.
Brilliant but ruthless conquistadors such as Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro followed Columbus' trail, seizing vast tracts of the American mainland for Spain. By 1600 Spain controlled Florida, all the biggest Caribbean islands, nearly all of present-day Mexico and Central America, and a large strip of South America. The new colonies sent huge cargoes of silver, gold and other riches back to Spain, where the crown was entitled to one-fifth of the bullion (the quintoreal, or royal fifth). Seville enjoyed a monopoly on this trade and grew into one of Europe's richest cities.
Few individuals in any time or place have had such an impact on their country's history as Spain's Reyes Católicos, Isabel of Castilla and Fernando of Aragón. Indeed, Spain owes its very existence to their marriage in 1469 (which effectively united the Iberian Peninsula's two biggest Christian kingdoms) and to their conquest of Granada (1492) and annexation of Navarra (1512).
Isabel, by all accounts, was pious, honest, virtuous and very determined, while Fernando was an astute political operator – a formidable team. Isabel resisted her family's efforts to marry her off to half a dozen other European royals before her semi-clandestine wedding to Fernando at Valladolid – the first time the pair had set eyes on each other. They were second cousins; she was 18 and he 17. Isabel succeeded to the Castilian throne in 1474, and Fernando to Aragón's in 1479. By the time Isabel died in 1504, the pair had achieved the following:
Today Isabel and Fernando lie side by side in the beautiful Gothic church they commissioned as their own mausoleum, Granada's Capilla Real.
It wasn't just the Americas that the monarchs thought should be theirs. Ever scheming, Isabel and Fernando embroiled Spain in European affairs by marrying their five children into the royal families of Portugal, the Holy Roman Empire and England. After Isabel's death in 1504 and Fernando's in 1516, their thrones passed to their grandson Carlos I (Charles I), who arrived in Spain from Flanders in 1517, aged 17. In 1519 Carlos also succeeded to the Habsburg lands in Austria and was elected Holy Roman Emperor (as Charles V) – meaning he now ruled all of Spain, the Low Countries, Austria, several Italian states, parts of France and Germany, and the expanding Spanish colonies in the Americas.
For all Spain's apparent power, European conflicts soaked up the bulk of the monarchy's new American wealth, and a war-weary Carlos abdicated shortly before his death in 1556, retiring to the Monasterio de Yuste in Extremadura and dividing his many territories between his son Felipe II (Philip II; r 1556–98) and his brother Fernando.
Felipe got the lion's share, including Spain, the Low Countries and the American possessions, and presided over the zenith of Spanish power, though his reign is a study in contradictions. He enlarged the American empire and claimed Portugal on its king's death in 1580, but lost Holland after a long drawn-out rebellion. His navy defeated the Ottoman Turks at Lepanto in 1571, but the Spanish Armada of 1588 was routed by England. He was a fanatical Catholic, who spurred the Inquisition to new persecutions, yet readily allied Spain with Protestant England against Catholic France. He received greater flows of silver than ever from the Americas, but went bankrupt.
Felipe too died in a monastery – the immense one at San Lorenzo de El Escorial, which he himself had commissioned, and which stands as a sombre monument to his reign and to the follies of Spain's colonial era.
In the moment of Spain's finest hour, at a time when it ruled large swaths of the known world, the country's rulers sowed the seeds for the country's disintegration. So much of the fabulous wealth that accrued from Spain's American and other colonies was squandered on lavish royal lifestyles and on indulgences that did little to better the lives of ordinary Spaniards. The result was a deeply divided country that would for centuries face almost constant battles of royal succession and its fair share of external wars.
At one level, a flourishing arts scene in 17th-century Spain created the illusion of a modern European nation. It was at this time that Spain was immortalised on canvas by great artists such as Velázquez, El Greco, Zurbarán and Murillo, and in print by the likes of Miguel de Cervantes (author of Don Quixote) and the prolific playwright Lope de Vega.
And yet weak, backward-looking monarchs, a highly conservative Church and an idle nobility allowed the economy to stagnate, leading to food shortages in a country where there were gross inequalities between the haves and the have-nots. Spain lost Portugal and faced revolts in Catalonia, Sicily and Naples. Silver shipments from the Americas shrank disastrously. And the sickly Carlos II (Charles II; r 1665–1700), known as El Hechizado (the Bewitched), failed to produce children, a situation that led to the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–13).
During the war, things got even worse – Spain lost its last possessions in the Low Countries to Austria, and Gibraltar and Menorca to Britain. Felipe V (Philip V; r 1700–46), to whom Carlos II had bequeathed the Spanish throne, renounced his right to the French throne but held on to Spain. He was the first of the Bourbon dynasty, still in place today.
This was Europe's Age of Enlightenment, but Spain's powerful Church and Inquisition were at odds with the rationalism that trickled in from France. Two-thirds of the land was in the hands of the nobility and Church, and inequality and unrest were rife.
When France's Louis XVI, cousin to Spain's Carlos IV (Charles IV; r 1788–1808), was guillotined in 1793 in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789, Spain declared war on France, only for Spain to make peace with the French Republic two years later. In 1805 a combined Spanish–French navy was beaten by the British fleet, under Admiral Nelson, off the Cabo de Trafalgar, putting an end to Spanish sea power.
In 1807, French forces poured into Spain, supposedly on the way to Portugal, but by 1808 this had become a French occupation of Spain, and Carlos IV was forced to abdicate in favour of Napoleon's brother Joseph Bonaparte (José I).
In Madrid crowds revolted, as immortalised by Goya in his paintings El dos de mayo and el tres de mayo, which now hang in Madrid's Museo del Prado. Across the country Spaniards took up arms guerrilla-style, reinforced by British and Portuguese forces led by the Duke of Wellington. A national Cortes (Parliament) meeting at Cádiz in 1812 drew up a new liberal constitution, incorporating many of the principles of the American and French prototypes. The French were finally driven out after their defeat at Vitoria in 1813.
Although momentarily united to see off the French, Spain was deeply divided, not to mention increasingly backward and insular. For much of the 19th century, internal conflicts raged between liberals (who wanted vaguely democratic reforms) and conservatives (the Church, the nobility and others who preferred the earlier status quo).
Uncertainties over royal succession resulted in the First Carlist War (1833–39). During the war, violent anticlericalism emerged, religious orders were closed and, in the Disentailment of 1836, church property and lands were seized and auctioned off by the government. It was the army alone that emerged victorious from the fighting. Another Carlist War (1872–76) followed, again between different claimants to the throne.
In 1873 the liberal-dominated Cortes proclaimed the country a federal republic. But this First Republic had lost control of the regions and the army put Isabel II's son Alfonso on the throne as Alfonso XII (r 1874–85), in a coalition with the Church and landowners.
Barely able to hold itself together, Spain had little chance of maintaining its few remaining colonies. In 1898, Spain lost Cuba, the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico.
For a country that had ruled one of the greatest empires of the age, this sealed an ignominious fall from grace.
Spain's Civil War (1936–39) was a long time coming. In many ways, the seeds of division were sown centuries before in the profound inequalities that flowed from Spain's colonial riches, and in the equally profound divisions that began to surface in the 19th century.
Spain was by the early years of the 20th century locked in an unending power struggle between liberal and conservative forces, with neither able to maintain the upper hand for long.
For a time, the left seemed ascendant. In the 1890s and the 1900s anarchists bombed Barcelona's Liceu opera house, assassinated two prime ministers and killed 24 people with a bomb at King Alfonso XIII's wedding to Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg in May 1906. Along with the rise of the left came the growth of Basque and Catalan separatism. In the Basque country, nationalism emerged in the 1890s in response to a flood of Castilian workers into Basque industries: some Basques considered these migrants a threat to their identity. In 1909 a contingent of Spanish troops was wiped out by Berbers in Spanish Morocco. The government’s decision to call up Catalan reservists sparked the so-called Semana Trágica (Tragic Week) in Barcelona, which began with a general strike and turned into a frenzy of violence. The government responded by executing many workers.
Spain stayed neutral during WWI, but it remained a deeply troubled nation. In 1921, 10,000 Spanish soldiers were killed by Berbers at Anual in Morocco, and two years later General Miguel Primo de Rivera, an eccentric Andalucian aristocrat established his own mild dictatorship.
National elections in 1931 brought in a government composed of socialists, republicans and centrists. A new constitution gave women the vote, granted autonomy-minded Catalonia its own parliament, legalised divorce, stripped Catholicism of its status as official religion, and banned priests from teaching. But Spain lurched back to the right in the 1933 elections. One new force on the right was the fascist Falange, led by José Antonio Primo de Rivera, son of the 1920s dictator.
By 1934 violence was spiralling out of control. Catalonia declared itself independent (within a putative federal Spanish republic), and workers' committees took over the northern mining region of Asturias. A violent campaign against the Asturian workers by the Spanish Legion (set up to fight Moroccan tribes in the 1920s), led by generals Francisco Franco and José Millán Astray, split the country firmly into left and right.
In the February 1936 elections the right-wing National Front was narrowly defeated by the left-wing Popular Front, with communists at the fore.
Something had to give.
On 17 July 1936 the Spanish army garrison in Melilla, North Africa, rose up against the Popular Front government, followed the next day by garrisons on the mainland. The leaders of the plot were five generals, among them Francisco Franco. The civil war had begun.
The civil war split communities, families and friends, killed an estimated 350,000 Spaniards (some writers say 500,000), and caused untold damage and misery. Both sides committed atrocious massacres and reprisals. The rebels, who called themselves Nationalists because they believed they were fighting for Spain, shot or hanged tens of thousands of supporters of the republic. Republicans did likewise to Nationalist sympathisers, including some 7000 priests, monks and nuns.
At the start of the war many of the military and the Guardia Civil police force went over to the Nationalists, whose campaign quickly took on overtones of a crusade against the enemies of God. In Republican areas, anarchists, communists or socialists ended up running many towns and cities, and social revolution followed.
Most cities with military garrisons fell immediately into Nationalist hands – this meant almost everywhere north of Madrid except Catalonia and the north coast, as well as parts of Andalucía. Franco's force of legionnaires and Moroccan mercenaries was airlifted to Seville by German warplanes in August. Essential to the success of the revolt, they moved northward through Extremadura towards Madrid, wiping out fierce resistance in some cities. At Salamanca in October, Franco pulled all the Nationalists into line behind him.
Madrid, reinforced by the first battalions of the International Brigades (armed foreign idealists and adventurers organised by the communists), repulsed Franco's first assault in November and then endured, under communist inspiration, over two years' siege. But the International Brigades never numbered more than 20,000 and couldn't turn the tide against the better armed and organised Nationalist forces.
Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy supported the Nationalists with planes, weapons and men (75,000 from Italy, 17,000 from Germany), turning the war into a testing ground for what was to come during WWII. The Republicans had some Soviet planes, tanks, artillery and advisers, but other countries refused to become involved (although some 25,000 French fought on the Republican side).
With Madrid besieged, the Republican government moved to Valencia in late 1936 to continue trying to preside over the quarrelsome factions on its side, which encompassed anarchists, communists, moderate democrats and regional separatists.
In April 1937 German planes bombed the Basque town of Guernica (Gernika), causing terrible casualties; this became the subject of Picasso's famous pacifist painting, which now hangs in Madrid’s Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. All the north coast fell to the Nationalists that year, while Republican counter-attacks near Madrid and in Aragón failed. Meanwhile divisions among the Republicans erupted into fierce street fighting in Barcelona, with the Soviet-influenced communists completely crushing the anarchists and Trotskyites who had run the city for almost a year. The Republican government moved to Barcelona in autumn 1937.
In early 1938 Franco repulsed a Republican offensive at Teruel in Aragón, then swept eastward with 100,000 troops, 1000 planes and 150 tanks, isolating Barcelona from Valencia. In July the Republicans launched a last offensive in the Ebro Valley. This bloody encounter, won by the Nationalists, cost 20,000 lives. The USSR withdrew from the war in September 1938, and in January 1939 the Nationalists took Barcelona unopposed. The Republican government and hundreds of thousands of supporters fled to France. The Republicans still held Valencia and Madrid, and had 500,000 people under arms, but in the end their army simply evaporated. The Nationalists entered Madrid on 28 March 1939 and Franco declared the war over on 1 April.
Bloodied and battered Spain may have been, but there was no peace dividend: Spain's new ruler, General Francisco Franco, began as he meant to continue.
An estimated 100,000 people were killed or died in prison in the years immediately following the war. The hundreds of thousands imprisoned included many intellectuals and teachers; others fled abroad, depriving Spain of a generation of scientists, artists, writers, educators and more.
Despite Franco’s overtures to Hitler, Spain remained on the sidelines of WWII. In 1944 Spanish leftists launched a failed attack on Franco's Spain from France; small leftist guerrilla units continued a hopeless struggle in parts of the north, Extremadura and Andalucía until the 1950s.
After WWII Franco's Spain was excluded from the UN and NATO, and suffered a UN-sponsored trade boycott that helped turn the late 1940s into Spain's años de hambre (years of hunger). But the onset of the Cold War saved Franco: the US wanted bases in Spain, and Franco agreed to the establishment of four, in return for large sums of aid. In 1955 Spain was admitted to the UN.
By the late 1950s, the essential elements of Franco's rule were in place. Regional autonomy aspirations were simply not tolerated. The army provided many government ministers and enjoyed a most generous budget. And Catholic supremacy was fully restored.
In 1959 a new breed of technocrats in government, linked to the Catholic group Opus Dei, engineered a Stabilisation Plan, which brought an economic upswing. Spanish industry boomed, modern machinery, technology and marketing were introduced, transport was modernised and new dams provided irrigation and hydropower.
The recovery was funded in part by US aid, and remittances from more than a million Spaniards who had gone to work abroad, but above all by tourism, which was developed initially along Andalucía's Costa del Sol and Catalonia's Costa Brava. By 1965 the number of tourists arriving in Spain was 14 million a year. These were the so-called años de desarollo (years of development). Industry took off, foreign investment poured in and the services and banking sector blossomed. In 1960 fewer than 70,000 cars were on the road in Madrid. Ten years later more than half a million clogged the capital's streets.
Spaniards' standard of living was improving, but the jails were full of political prisoners and large garrisons were still maintained outside every major city. From 1965 opposition to Franco's regime became steadily more vocal. The universities were repeatedly the scene of confrontation and clandestine trade unions also began to make themselves heard again. The waves of protest were not restricted to Madrid. In the Basque Country the terrorist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA; Basque Homeland and Freedom) began to fight for Basque independence. Their first important action outside the Basque Country was the assassination in Madrid in 1973 of Admiral Carrero Blanco, Franco's prime minister and designated successor.
In what seemed like a safe bet, Franco chose as his successor Prince Juan Carlos, the Spanish-educated grandson of Alfonso XIII. In 1969 Juan Carlos swore loyalty to Franco and the Movimiento Nacional. Cautious reforms by Franco's last prime minister, Carlos Arias Navarro, provoked violent opposition from right-wing extremists.
Franco finally died on 20 November 1975.
Spain appeared destined to sink into chaos without Franco: the country remained as divided as ever and at its helm was an as-yet-untested Franco protégé. But not for the first time in Spanish history, not all was as it seemed.
Juan Carlos I, aged 37, took the throne two days after Franco died. The new king's links with the dictator inspired little confidence in a Spain now clamouring for democracy, but Juan Carlos had kept his cards close to his chest. In July 1976 he appointed Adolfo Suárez, a 43-year-old former Franco apparatchik with film-star looks, as prime minister. To general surprise, Suárez got the Cortes to approve a new, two-chamber parliamentary system, and in 1977 political parties, trade unions and strikes were all legalised. Franco's Movimiento Nacional was abolished.
Suárez's centrist party, the Unión de Centro Democrático (UCD; Central Democratic Union), won nearly half the seats in the new Cortes in 1977. A new constitution in 1978 made Spain a parliamentary monarchy with no official religion. In response to the fever for local autonomy, by 1983 the country was divided into 17 'autonomous communities' with their own regional governments controlling a range of policy areas. Personal and social life enjoyed a rapid liberation after Franco. Contraceptives, homosexuality and divorce were legalised, and the Madrid party and arts scene known as la movida madrileña formed the epicentre of a newly unleashed hedonism that still reverberates through Spanish life.
The Suárez government granted a general amnesty for deeds committed in the civil war and under the Franco dictatorship. There were no truth commissions or trials for the perpetrators of atrocities. For the next three decades Spain cast barely a backward glance.
The main left-of-centre party, the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE; Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), led by a charismatic young lawyer from Seville, Felipe González, came second in the 1977 election and then won power with a big majority in 1982. González was to be prime minister for 14 years. The PSOE's young and educated leadership came from the generation that had opened the cracks in the Franco regime in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Unemployment rose from 16% to 22% by 1986. But that same year Spain joined the European Community (now the EU), bringing on a five-year economic boom. The middle class grew ever bigger, the PSOE established a national health system and improved public education, and Spain's women streamed into higher education and jobs.
Spaniards got the fright of their lives in February 1981 when a pistol-brandishing, low-ranking Guardia Civil (Civil Guard) officer, Antonio Tejero Molina, marched into the Cortes in Madrid with an armed detachment and held parliament captive for 24 hours. Throughout a day of high drama the country held its breath. With the nation glued to their TV sets, King Juan Carlos I made a live broadcast denouncing Tejero and calling on the soldiers to return to their barracks. The coup fizzled out.
In 1992 – the 500th anniversary of the fall of Granada and Columbus' first voyage to the Americas – Spain celebrated its arrival in the modern world by staging the Barcelona Olympics and the Expo 92 world fair in Seville. But the economy was in a slump and the PSOE was mired in scandals. It came as no surprise when the PSOE lost the 1996 general election.
The party that won the 1996 election was the centre-right Partido Popular (PP; People's Party), led by José María Aznar, a former tax inspector from Castilla y León. Aznar promised to make politics dull, and he did, but he presided over eight years of solid economic progress, winning the 2000 election as well. The PP cut public investment, sold off state enterprises and liberalised sectors such as telecommunications, and during the Aznar years Spain's economy grew a lot faster than the EU average, while unemployment fell dramatically.
Perhaps just as importantly, Spain's changes of government were orderly, electoral affairs, the economic graphs moved in a general upward direction and the improvement in ordinary people's lives was steady.
On 11 March 2004, just three days before the national elections, Madrid was rocked by 10 bombs on four rush-hour commuter trains heading into the capital's Atocha station. When the dust cleared, 191 people had died and 1755 were wounded, many of them seriously. It was the biggest such terror attack in the nation's history.
In a stunning reversal of pre-poll predictions, the PP, who insisted that ETA was responsible despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, was defeated by the PSOE in elections three days after the attack.
The new Socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero gave Spain a makeover by introducing a raft of liberalising social reforms. Gay marriage was legalised, Spain's arcane divorce laws were overhauled, almost a million illegal immigrants were granted residence, and a law seeking to apportion blame for the crimes of the Civil War and Franco dictatorship entered the statute books. Although Spain's powerful Catholic Church cried foul over many of the reforms, the changes played well with most Spaniards. Spain's economy was booming, the envy of Europe.
And then it all fell apart.
Spain's economy went into freefall in late 2008 and remains in desperate straits. Zapatero's government waited painfully long to recognise that a crisis was looming and was replaced, in November 2011, with a right-of-centre one promoting a deep austerity drive that threatens the generous welfare state on which Spaniards have come to depend. The conservative government also turned back the liberalising reforms of the Socialists, introducing some of Europe's strictest anti-abortion laws and restoring the role of the Catholic Church in education.
That the country remains firmly democratic, however, suggests that modern Spaniards have, for the first time in Spain's tumultuous history, found means other than war for resolving the many differences that divide them. And perhaps that is the strongest sign of just how far Spain has come.
c 1.2 million BC
Europe's earliest-known humans leave their fossilised remains in the Sima del Elefante at Atapuerca, near the northern city of Burgos.
c 22,000 BC
Neanderthal humans die out on the Iberian Peninsula – possibly due to climatic changes during the last Ice Age, or possibly because they were displaced by Homo sapiens arriving from Africa.
c 15,000–10,000 BC
Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) hunters of the Magdalenian culture paint beautiful, sophisticated animal images in caves at Altamira and other sites along Spain's northern coastal strip.
6th century BC
Carthage, a former Phoenician colony in North Africa, supplants the Phoenicians and Greeks as the major trading power in the western Mediterranean.
218 BC
Roman legions arrive in Spain during the Second Punic War against Carthage, initiating the 600-year Roman occupation of the Iberian Peninsula; it takes two centuries to subdue all local resistance.
1st to 3rd centuries AD
Pax Romana (Roman Peace), a period of stability and prosperity. The Iberian Peninsula is divided into three provinces: Baetica (capital: Córdoba); Lusitania (Mérida) and Tarraconensis (Tarragona).
AD 53
Future Roman Emperor Trajan is born in Itálica to a wealthy senator. His imperial rule will begin in 98 and see the Roman Empire reach its greatest extent.
4th to 7th centuries AD
Germanic tribes enter the Iberian Peninsula, ending the Pax Romana. The Visigoths establish control and bring 200 years of relative stability in which Hispano-Roman culture survives.
711
Muslims invade Iberia from North Africa, overrunning it within a few years, becoming the dominant force on the peninsula for nearly four centuries, and then a potent one for four centuries more.
718
Christian nobleman Pelayo establishes the Kingdom of Asturias in northern Spain. With his victory over a Muslim force at the Battle of Covadonga around 722, the Reconquista begins.
756
Abd ar-Rahman I establishes himself in Córdoba as the emir of Al-Andalus (the Islamic areas of the peninsula) and launches nearly three centuries of Cordoban supremacy.
929
Abd ar-Rahman III inaugurates the Córdoba Caliphate, under which Al-Andalus reaches its zenith and Córdoba, with up to half a million people, becomes Europe's biggest and most cultured city.
1031
The Córdoba Caliphate disintegrates into dozens of taifas (small kingdoms) after a devastating civil war. The most powerful taifas include Seville, Granada, Toledo and Zaragoza.
1035
Castilla, a county of the northern Christian kingdom of León (successor to the kingdom of Asturias), becomes an independent kingdom and goes on to become the leading force of the Reconquista.
1085
Castilla captures the major Muslim city of Toledo in central Spain after infighting among the taifas leaves them vulnerable to attack.
1091
North African Muslim Almoravids invade the peninsula, unifying Al-Andalus, ruling it from Marrakesh and halting Christian expansion. Almoravid rule crumbles in the 1140s; Al-Andalus splits into taifas.
1160–73
The Almohads, another strict Muslim sect from North Africa, conquer Al-Andalus. They make Seville their capital and revive arts and learning.
1195
The Almohads inflict a devastating defeat on Alfonso VIII of Castilla at the Battle of Alarcos, near Ciudad Real – the last major Christian reverse of the Reconquista.
1212
Combined armies of the northern Christian kingdoms defeat the Almohads at Las Navas de Tolosa in Andalucía, and the momentum of the Christian–Muslim struggle swings decisively in favour of the Christians.
1218
The University of Salamanca is founded by Alfonso IX, King of León, making it the oldest – and still the most prestigious – university in the country.
1229–38
Catalonia enjoys its golden age under King Jaume I of Aragón, who takes the Balearic Islands and Valencia from the Muslims and makes Catalonia the major power in the western Mediterranean.
1248
Having captured Córdoba 12 years earlier, Castilla's Fernando III takes Seville after a two-year siege, making the Nasrid Emirate of Granada the last surviving Muslim state on the peninsula.
1469
Isabel, the 18-year-old heir to Castilla, marries Fernando, heir to Aragón and one year her junior, uniting Spain's two most powerful Christian states.
1478
Isabel and Fernando, the Reyes Católicos (Catholic Monarchs), stir up religious bigotry and establish the Spanish Inquisition that will see thousands killed between now and its abolition in 1834.
January 1492
Isabel and Fernando capture Granada, completing the Reconquista. Boabdil, the last Muslim ruler, is scorned by his mother for weeping 'like a woman for what you could not defend like a man'.
April 1492
Isabel and Fernando expel Jews who refuse Christian baptism. Some 200,000 leave, establishing Jewish communities around the Mediterranean; Spain's economy suffers from the loss of their knowledge.
October 1492
Christopher Columbus, funded by Isabel and Fernando, lands in the Bahamas, opening up the Americas to Spanish colonisation. The bulk of Spanish maritime trade shifts from Mediterranean to Atlantic ports.
1494
The Treaty of Tordesillas (near Valladolid) divides recently discovered lands west of Europe between Spain and Portugal, giving the Spanish the right to claim vast territories in the Americas.
1512
Fernando, ruling as regent after Isabel's death in 1504, annexes Navarra, bringing all of Spain under one rule for the first time since Roman days.
1517–56
Reign of Carlos I, Spain's first Habsburg monarch, who comes to rule more of Europe than anyone since the 9th century, plus rapidly expanding areas of South and Central America.
1521
Hernán Cortés, from Medellín, Extremadura, conquers the Aztec empire in present-day Mexico and Guatemala with a small band of conquistadors, in the name of the Spanish crown.
1533
Francisco Pizarro, from Trujillo, Extremadura, conquers the Inca empire in South America with a small band of conquistadors, in the name of the Spanish crown.
1556–98
Reign of Felipe II, the zenith of Spanish power. The American territories expand into the modern United States and enormous wealth arriving from the colonies is used for grandiose architectural projects.
1561
The king makes the minor country town of Madrid capital of his empire. Despite many new noble residences, the overwhelming impression of the new capital is one of squalor.
1571
The Holy League fleet, led by Spain and Venice and commanded by Felipe II's half-brother Don Juan de Austria, defeats the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto, ending Ottoman expansion into Europe.
c 1600–1660
Spain enjoys a cultural golden age with the literature of Cervantes and the paintings of Velázquez, Zurbarán and El Greco scaling new heights of artistic excellence as the empire declines.
1609–14
The moriscos (converted Muslims) are expelled from Spain in a final purge of non-Christians that undermines an already faltering economy.
1676
The devastation caused by the third great plague to hit Spain in a century is compounded by poor harvests. In all, more than 1.25 million Spaniards die through plague and starvation during the 17th century.
1701
Felipe V, first of the Bourbon dynasty, takes the throne after the Habsburg line dies out with Carlos II. Felipe being second in line to the French throne causes concern across Europe.
1702–13
Rival European powers support Charles of Austria against Felipe V in the War of the Spanish Succession: Felipe survives as king but Spain loses Gibraltar and the Low Countries.
1793
Spain declares war on France after Louis XVI is beheaded, but within a couple of years the country is supporting the French in their struggles against the British.
1805
A combined Spanish–French fleet is defeated by British ships under Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar. Spanish sea power is effectively destroyed, and discontent against the king's pro-French policies grows.
1808–13
French forces occupy Spain; Carlos IV abdicates in favour of Napoleon's brother, José I. The ensuing Peninsular War sees British forces helping the Spanish defeat the French.
1809–24
Most of Spain's American colonies win independence as Spain is beset by problems at home. By 1824 only Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines are under Spanish rule.
1814
Fernando VII becomes king and revokes the 1812 Cádiz Constitution (an attempt by Spanish liberals to introduce constitutional reforms) just weeks after agreeing to uphold its principles.
1833–39
The First Carlist War, triggered by disputes over the succession between backers of Fernando VII's infant daughter, Isabel, and his brother, Carlos. Isabel will eventually become queen.
1872–76
The Second Carlist War, between three different monarchist factions, brings Isabel II's son, Alfonso XII, to the throne after the brief, chaotic First Republic of 1873.
1898
Spain loses Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, its last remaining colonies, after being defeated in the Spanish–American War by the US, which declared war in support of Cuban independence.
1909
The Semana Trágica (Tragic Week) in Barcelona begins after Catalan reservists are called up to fight in Morocco; a general strike becomes a violent riot and dozens of civilians are killed.
1923–30
General Miguel Primo de Rivera launches an army rising in support of King Alfonso XIII and then establishes himself as dictator. He retires and dies in 1930.
1931
Alfonso XIII goes into exile after Republicans score sweeping gains in local elections. Spain's Second Republic is launched, left-wing parties win a national election, and a new constitution enfranchises women.
1933–35
Right-wing parties win a new election; political violence spirals and a ruthless army operation against workers in Asturias irrevocably polarises Spain into left- and right-wing camps.
1936
The left-wing National Front wins a national election. Right-wing 'Nationalist' rebels led by General Francisco Franco rise up against it, starting the Spanish Civil War.
1936–39
The Spanish Civil War: the Nationalist rebels, under Franco, supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, defeat the USSR-supported Republicans. About 350,000 people die in fighting and atrocities.
1938
The Nationalists defeat the Republicans' last major offensive, in the Ebro Valley, with 20,000 killed. The Soviet Union ends its support for the Republican side.
1939
The Nationalists take Barcelona in January. The Republican government flees to France, Republican forces evaporate and the Nationalists enter Madrid on 28 March. Franco declares the war over on 1 April.
1939–50
Franco establishes a right-wing dictatorship, imprisoning hundreds of thousands. Spain stays out of WWII but is later excluded from NATO and the UN and suffers a damaging international trade boycott.
1955–65
Spain is admitted to the UN after agreeing to host US bases. The economy is boosted by US aid and mass tourism on the Costa Brava and Costa del Sol.
1959
Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA; Basque Homeland and Freedom) is founded with the aim of gaining Basque independence. The terrorist group will go on to murder more than 800 people, including Franco's prime minister in 1973.
1975
Franco dies and is succeeded by King Juan Carlos I. The monarch had been schooled by Franco to continue his policies but soon demonstrates his desire for change.
1976
The king appoints Adolfo Suárez as prime minister. Suárez engineers a return to democracy. Left-wing parties are legalised, despite military opposition, and the country holds free elections in 1977.
1978
A new constitution, overwhelmingly approved by referendum, establishes Spain as a parliamentary democracy with no official religion and the monarch as official head of state.
1981
On 23 February a group of armed Guardia Civil led by Antonio Tejero attempt a coup by occupying the parliament building. The king denounces them on national TV; the coup collapses.
1982–96
Spain is governed by the centre-left Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE; Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) led by Felipe González. The country experiences an economic boom but the government becomes increasingly associated with scandals and corruption.
1986
Spain joins the European Community (now the EU). Along with its membership of NATO since 1982, this is a turning point in the country's post-Franco international reacceptance.
1992
Barcelona holds the Olympic Games, putting Spain in the international spotlight and highlighting the country's progress since 1975. Madrid is European Capital of Culture and Seville hosts a world expo.
1996
Disaffection with PSOE sleaze gives the centre-right Partido Popular (PP), led by José María Aznar, a general election victory, at the start of a decade of sustained economic growth.
11 March 2004
A terrorist bombing kills 191 people on 10 Madrid commuter trains. The following day, an estimated 11 million people take to the streets across Spain.
14 March 2004
The PSOE led by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero sweeps to power and ushers in eight years of Socialist rule, characterised by sweeping changes to social legislation.
October 2008
Spain’s unemployment rate soars from less than 6% to 12.3% in a single month. Spain’s finance minister admits that Spain has entered ‘its deepest recession in half a century’.
July 2010
After years of underachievement, Spain’s national football team wins the World Cup for the first time, two years after its maiden European Championship trophy.
November 2011
The conservative Popular Party, led by Mariano Rajoy (who had been defeated in 2004 and 2008), sweeps to power in national elections, ending eight years of Socialist Party rule.