Spain History

Rule Hispania (prehistory-ad 711). Spain played host to a succession of civilizations—Basque, Celtiberian, and Greek—before the Romans came for an extended visit in the 3rd century BC. Over the next seven centuries, the Romans infused Spanish culture with their langauge, architecture, roads, and food (particularly grapes, olives, and wheat). Following the Romans, a slew of Germanic tribes swept through Iberia, and the Visigoths--newly converted Christians--emerged victorious. In AD 419 they established their court at Barcelona and ruled Spain for the next 300 years.

Please, Sir, May I Have Some Moors? (711-1492). A small force of Arabs, Berbers, and Syrians invaded Spain in AD 711 following Muslim unification. The Moors encountered little resistance from the divided Visigoths, and the peninsula fell to the caliph of Damascus, the spiritual leader of Islam. The Moors established their Iberian capital at Córdoba, which by the 10th century was the largest city in Western Europe with over 500,000 inhabitants. During Abderramán III’s rule (929-961), many considered Spain the wealthiest and most cultivated country in the world. Abderramán III’s successor, Al-Mansur, snuffed out opposition in his court and undertook a series of military campaigns that culminated with the destruction of Santiago de Compostela in AD 997 and the kidnapping of its bells. It took the Christians 240 years to get them back, and centuries more to retake Spain.

Los Reyes CatÓlicos (1469-1516). The marriage of Fernando de Aragón and Isabel de Castilla in 1469 joined Iberia’s two mightiest Christian kingdoms. During their half-century rule, these Catholic monarchs established Spain as the prime European exponent of Catholicism, and as an international power. They introduced the brutal Inquisition in 1478, which mandated execution or burning of heretics, principally Jews. The policy prompted a mass exodus, as Jews and Muslims who stayed faced conversion to Christianity or imprisonment and death. In 1492, the royal couple captured Granada from the Moors, victoriously ending the centuries-long Reconquista and uniting Spain under Catholic rule. This dominance continued to flourish with lucrative conquests in the Americas, beginning in 1492 when they agreed to finance Christopher Columbus’s first adventure.

Habsburgs Take The Stage (1516-1713). The daughter of Fernando and Isabel, Juana la Loca (the Mad) married Felipe el Hermoso (the Fair) of the powerful Habsburg family. When the young king died, La Loca, a possible schizophrenic, walked his coffin to Granada, opening it occasionally to kiss his corpse. Juana and Felipe secured their genetic legacy with the birth of Carlos I, better known as Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1516-1556).

Under Carlos, the Spanish empire grew exponentially. Royal marriages placed the country in control of European territories in Sicily and Naples, while in the New World conquistadors plundered Mexico, Peru, and Chile, destroying the vast empires of the Aztec and Inca civilizations. They brought their booty back to Spain by the galleon, providing Carlos with funds for his battles and conquests. Gold and silver were complemented by the potatoes, corn, and exotic fruits that were introduced as new crops in Europe.

When Carlos retired to a monastery, Felipe II (1556-1598) inherited simmering rebellion in the Protestant Netherlands. His marriage to Mary Tudor, Queen of England, in 1554 created an international Catholic alliance, and Felipe made it his life’s mission to create a true Catholic empire. In 1581, a year after Felipe II annexed Portugal, the Dutch declared their independence from Spain, starting a war and becoming embroiled with England’s Elizabeth I. The conflict ground to a halt when Sir Francis Drake defeated Spain’s “invincible” Armada in 1588. With much of his European empire lost and his wealth from the Americas sapped, Felipe retreated to El Escorial and sulked in its monastery until his death.

In 1609, Felipe III (1598-1621) expelled nearly 300,000 of Spain’s remaining Moors. Felipe IV (1621-1665) painstakingly held the country together through his long, tumultuous reign while patronizing the arts (painter Diego Velázquez and playwright Lope de Vega both graced his court) and architecture (he commissioned the Parque del Buen Retiro in Madrid). Defending Catholicism began to drain Spain’s resources after the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), which ended with the marriage of Felipe IV’s daughter María Teresa to Louis XIV of France. Felipe’s successor Carlos II el Hechizado (the bewitched; 1665-1700), the product of generations of inbreeding, was known to fly into fits of rage and epileptic seizures. From then on, little went right: Carlos II left no heirs, Spain fell into an economic depression, and cultural bankruptcy ensued. Rulers from all over, particularly Habsburg Vienna, battled for the crown, and the War of Spanish Succession began.

The Reign In Spain (1713-1931). The 1713 Treaty of Utrecht ended the ordeal (and Spain’s possession of Gibraltar, which went to the English) and landed Felipe V (1713-1746), a Bourbon grandson of Louis XIV, on the Spanish throne. Though the new king cultivated a flamboyant, debaucherous court, he competently administered the Empire, at last regaining control of Spanish-American trade. The next century was dominated by the Bourbon effort to create a modern state, as the crown centralized power and stripped the different regions of their historical privileges. Finally, in 1808, Napoleon invaded Spain as part of his bid for world domination, inaugurating an occupation as short as the general himself. In the midst of the upheaval, most of Spain’s Latin American empire threw off the colonial yoke, and those still beyond Napoleon’s reach penned the progressive Constitution of 1812, which established Spain as a parliamentary monarchy. The violence ended when the Protestant Brits defeated the Corsican troops at Waterloo (1815), placing the reactionary Fernando VII (1814-1833) on the throne.

Parliamentary liberalism was restored in 1833 upon Fernando VII’s death, and survived the conservative challenge of the first Carlist War (1833-1839), a dispute over the monarchy of Queen Isabel II (1843-1868). Her successor, King Amadeo I (1870-1873), enjoyed a short reign before the First Spanish Republic was proclaimed. After a coup d’etat in 1875, the monarchy was restored under King Alfonso XII (1875-1885), and the last two decades of the 19th century were marked by rapid industrialization. However, Spain’s 1898 loss to the US in the Spanish-American War cost it the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and any remaining dreams of colonial wealth.

Closer to home, Moroccan tribesmen rebelled against Spanish troops in northern Africa beginning in 1917, resulting in a series of embarrassing military defeats. These events further weakened Spanish morale and culminated in the massacre of 14,000 royal troops in 1921, threatening the very survival of the monarchy. The search for someone to blame for the disaster occupied aristocrats, bureaucrats, and generals for the next decade, throwing the country into chaos. In 1923, General Miguel Primo de Rivera sought to bring order to the situation in the form of Spain’s first dictatorship.

Republic And Rebellion (1931-1939).  King Alfonso XIII (1902-1931) abdicated the throne in April 1931, giving rise to the Second Spanish Republic (1931-1939). Republican Liberals and Socialists established safeguards for farmers and industrial workers, granted women’s suffrage, assured religious tolerance, and chipped away at traditional military dominance. National euphoria, however, faded fast. The 1933 elections split the Republican-Socialist coalition, increasing the power of right-wing and Catholic parties in parliament. Military dissatisfaction led to a heightened profile of the Fascist Falange (founded by Primo de Rivera’s son José Antonio), which further polarized national politics. By 1936, radicals, anarchists, Socialists, and Republicans had formed a Popular Front coalition to win the February elections. Their victory, however, was short lived. After increasing polarization, Generalísimo Francisco Franco led a militarist uprising and the nation plunged into war, as the infectious ideology of La Guerra Civil (The Spanish Civil War; 1936-1939) diffused across the globe. Germany and Italy readily supplied Franco with troops and munitions, while the US and liberal European states instituted the Non-Intervention Treaty. The Soviet Union organized the International Brigades, an amalgamation of Communists and other leftist volunteers from all over Europe and the US, to battle Franco’s fascism. Foreign aid waned as Stalin began to see the benefits of an alliance with Hitler. Bombings, executions, combat, starvation, and disease took nearly 600,000 lives and forced almost one million Spaniards to emigrate. In April 1939, Franco bid a “farewell to arms,” marching into Madrid and ending the War.

Franco And The National Tragedy (1939-1975). Franco’s dictatorship was largely centered around the church, the army, and the Falange. Thousands of scientists, artists, intellectuals, and sympathizers were exiled, imprisoned, or executed in the name of order and purity. Franco initially pursued an isolationist economic policy, but stagnant conditions eventually forced him to adopt a more open policy. With prosperity came unrest. Dissatisfied workers and students engaged in protests, hoping to draw attention to the dark underside of Franco’s reign. Groups like the Basque ETA also provided resistance throughout the dictatorship, often via terrorist acts, producing turmoil that undermined the legitimacy of the regime. In his old age, the general tried to smooth international relations by joining NATO, courting the Pope, and encouraging tourism. However, the “national tragedy,” as the tense period under Franco was later called, did not officially end until Franco’s death in 1975. King Juan Carlos I (1975-), grandson of Alfonso XIII and nominally a Franco protégé, carefully set out to undo Franco’s damage.

Democracy Rises (1975-2005). In 1978, under centrist Prime Minister Adolfo Suárez, Spain adopted a new constitution and restored parliamentary government and regional autonomy. The post-Franco years have been marked by progressive social change in the economic and political arenas. The period was also characterized by a movement known in Madrid as “La Movida,” which saw an unprecedented outburst of artistic, cultural, and social expression after decades of censorship and inhibition. Suárez’s resignation in early 1981 left the country ripe for an attempted coup on February 23rd of that year, when a group of rebels took over parliament in an effort to impose a military-backed government. King Juan Carlos I used his personal influence to convince the rebels to stand down, paving the way for the charismatic Felipe González to lead the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party) to victory in the 1982 elections. González opened the Spanish economy and championed consensus policies, overseeing Spain’s integration into the European Community (now the EU) four years later. Despite unpopular economic policies, González was reelected in 1986 and continued a program of massive public investment to rejuvenate the nation’s economy. By the end of 1993, however, recession and revelations of large-scale corruption led to a resounding Socialist defeat at the hands of the Popular Party (PP) in the 1994 European parliamentary elections. The leader of the PP, José María Aznar, managed to maintain a fragile coalition with the support of the Catalan and Islas Canarias regional parties. He won an absolute majority in 2000. Since then Spain has moved in a more liberal direction. On July 1, 2005 it legalized gay marriage, eliminating all legal distinctions between same sex and heterosexual couples

Global Terrorism. Under the conservative Aznar, Spain became one of the US’s most prominent allies in the war on terror, but the relationship has since been strained. On March 11, 2004, days before the national elections, the country suffered its own grievous attack, often referred to as 11-M (el once eme). In an attack linked to Al-Qaeda, 10 bombs exploded on four trains heading to Madrid from the suburbs, killing 191 passengers and injuring more than 1800. Immediately thereafter, the conservatives lost the election to José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of the PSOE. Many attributed the loss to the popular reaction against Aznar’s attempt to shirk responsibility for the attacks. Under the new government, Spain withdrew its troops from Iraq in 2004.