| Under Phoenician, Greek, Carthaginian, and Roman influence, Spain emerged from dim barbarism to be the most advanced of the Roman subject provinces. | 11th century B.C. Phoenicians establish trading centres. 6th century B.C. Greeks establish colonies. 218 B.C. Second Punic War begins Roman conquest of Spain. |
| The Visigothic kings, succeeding to the order of Rome, ruled Spain as a Christian nation for three centuries, with their capital at Toledo. | 409 Vandals and other barbarians invade Spain from the north. 414 Visigoths enter Spain, and presently become her rulers. 589 Roman Catholicism adopted as State religion of Spain. |
| The Moors captured most of Spain in two years, but for the next seven centuries engaged in desultory war against the surviving Christian kingdoms of the north, which gradually fought their way southwards in the campaigns of the Reconquest. | 711 Muslims invade Spain. 718 Battle of Covadonga, won by surviving Christians of north. 756 Establishment of Cordoba Caliphate. 1085 Toledo recaptured by Christians. |
| The end of the fifteenth century brought Spain her most spectacular moment of success. United at last under the Catholic Monarchs, she expelled the last of the Moors, sent her explorers to the New World, and reorganized her society as the champion of Catholic purity. | 1479 Castile and Aragón united under Isabel and Ferdinand. 1480 Introduction of Inquisition. 1492 Fall of Granada. Columbus sails for America. Expulsion of Jews. |
| The accession of the Hapsburgs to the Spanish thrones, together with the activities of the conquistadores in America, made Spain for a brief period the greatest Power on earth. | 1516 Charles I, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, succeeds to throne. 1519 Cortés lands in Mexico. 1532 Pizarro lands in Peru. 1556 Philip II succeeds to throne. |
| The ignominious defeat of the Armada shattered Spain’s confidence in herself, and during the next four centuries her story is one of decline: the loss of her empire, a succession of sterile wars in Europe, perpetual controversies about the succession, led at last to the ultimate catastrophe of the Spanish Civil War. | 1588 Defeat of the Armada. 1609 Expulsion of the Moriscos. 1700 War of the Spanish Succession brings Bourbons to the throne. 1808 French occupation of Spain. 1811 Venezuela declares independence followed by other South American republics. 1833 First Carlist War. 1874 Second Carlist War. 1898 Spanish-American War. 1931 Republic proclaimed. 1936 Spanish Civil War. |
| For nearly forty years Spain, half numbed still by the aftermath of the Civil War, moved tentatively, under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, towards the end of isolation and the triumph of cosmopolitan, materialist values over her old insular traditions. | 1938 General Franco becomes head of Nationalist Government. 1939 Nationalist victory in Civil War. 1953 Treaty with United States. 1955 Spain admitted to United Nations. |
| With the end of Franco’s regime, the floodgates of democracy were opened and change rushed in, leaving Spain in a condition of excited but possibly perilous uncertainty. | 1975 Franco dies, Juan Carlos becomes King, and a democratic State is established. |