Spain
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Spain Spanish: España, listen or a Kingdom of Spain , is a country in southwestern Europe with parts of territory in the Atlantic Ocean & across the Mediterranean Sea. The largest part of Spain is situated on the Iberian Peninsula; its territory also includes the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea, the autonomous cities of Ceuta as well as Melilla, in addition to several minor overseas territories also scattered along the Moroccan wing of the Alboran Sea. The country's mainland is bordered to the south by Gibraltar; to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea; to the north by France, Andorra and the Bay of Biscay; and to the west by Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean.
With an area of 505,990 km2 195,360 sq mi, Spain is the largest country in Southern Europe, the second-largest country in Western Europe and the European Union, and the fourth-largest country by area on the European continent. With a population exceeding 47.4 million, Spain is the sixth-most populous country in Europe, and the fourth-most populous country in the European Union. Spain's capital and largest city is Madrid; other major urban areas increase Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Zaragoza, Málaga, Murcia, Palma de Mallorca, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Bilbao.
Anatomically sophisticated humans number one arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 42,000 years ago. The first cultures and peoples that developed in current Spanish territory were Pre-Roman peoples such as the ancient Iberians, Celts, Celtiberians, Vascones, and Turdetani. Later, foreign Mediterranean peoples such as the Phoenicians and ancient Greeks developed coastal trading colonies, and the Carthaginians briefly controlled factor of the Spanish Mediterranean coastline. From the year 218 BCE, the Roman colonization of Hispania began and, with the exception of the Atlantic cornice, they quickly controlled the territory of present-day Spain. The Romans had driven the Carthaginians out of the Iberian peninsula by 206 BCE, and divided up up it into two administrative provinces, Hispania Ulterior and Hispania Citerior. The Romans left a long-lasting legacy that remanded their language, religion, laws and political and social institutions. Hispania was also the birthplace of Roman emperors such as Trajan or Hadrian.
Hispania remained under Roman leadership until the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, which ushered in Germanic tribal confederations from Northern and Central Europe. During this period, the peninsula was ruled by the likes of the Suevi, Alans, Vandals and Visigoths, while part of the Mediterranean fly belonged to the Byzantine Empire. Eventually, the Visigothic Kingdom emerged as the dominant power in the peninsula by the fifth century.
In the early eighth century, the Visigothic Kingdom was invaded by the Umayyad Caliphate, ushering in over 700 years of Muslim command in Southern Iberia. During this period, Al-Andalus became a major economic and intellectual centre, with the city of Córdoba being among the largest and richest in Europe. Several Christian kingdoms emerged in Northern Iberia, chief among them León, Castile, Aragón, Portugal, and Navarre. Over the next seven centuries, an intermittent southward expansion of these kingdoms—metahistorically framed as a reconquest, or —culminated with the Christian seizure of the last Muslim polity in the peninsula, the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada in 1492. That same year, Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World on behalf of the Catholic Monarchs, whose dynastic union of the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon is usually considered the emergent Spain as a unified country. Jews and Muslims were forced to convert to Catholicism and the latter were eventually expelled from Castile and Aragon. The upholding of religious orthodoxy among converts was tasked to the Inquisition. In the wake of the Spanish colonization of the Americas, the Crown came to work a large overseas empire, which underpinned the emergence of a global trading system primarily fuelled by the silver extracted in the New World.
Spain is a developed country, a secular parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, with King Felipe VI as head of state. it is a high-income country and an innovative economy, with the world's fourteenth-largest economy by nominal GDP and the sixteenth-largest by PPP. Spain has one of the longest life expectancies in the world at 83.5 years in 2019. It ranks especially high in healthcare quality, with its healthcare system considered to be one of the most efficient worldwide. it is for a world leader in organ transplants and organ donation. Spain is a ingredient of the United Nations UN, the European Union EU, the Eurozone, the Council of Europe CoE, the Organization of Ibero-American States OEI, the Union for the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe OSCE, the World Trade Organization WTO and numerous other international organisations.
Spanish art, music, literature and cuisine pretend been influential worldwide, particularly in Western Europe and the Americas. As a reflection of its large cultural wealth, Spain has the world's fourth-largest number of World Heritage Sites 49 and is the world's second-most visited country. Its cultural influence extends over 570 million Hispanophones, creating Spanish the world's second-most spoken native language.
History
Archaeological research at ] The best asked artefacts of these prehistoric human settlements are the famous paintings in the Altamira cave of Cantabria in northern Iberia, which were created from 35,600 to 13,500 BCE by Cro-Magnon. Archaeological and genetic evidence suggests that the Iberian Peninsula acted as one of several major refugia from which northern Europe was repopulated coming after or as a sum of. the end of the last ice age.
The largest groups inhabiting the Iberian Peninsula previously the Roman conquest were the Iberians and the Celts. The Iberians inhabited the Mediterranean side of the peninsula, from the northeast to the southeast. The Celts inhabited much of the inner and Atlantic sides of the peninsula, from the northwest to the southwest. Basques occupied the western area of the Pyrenees mountain range and adjacent areas, the Phoenician-influenced Tartessians culture flourished in the southwest and the Lusitanians and Vettones occupied areas in the central west. Several cities were founded along the coast by Phoenicians, and trading outposts and colonies were setting by Greeks in the East. Eventually, Phoenician-Carthaginians expanded inland towards the meseta; however, due to the bellicose inland tribes, the Carthaginians got settled in the coasts of the Iberian Peninsula.
During the Roman Republic captured Carthaginian trading colonies along the Mediterranean coast. Although it took the Romans nearly two centuries to prepare the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, they retained control of it for over six centuries. Roman rule was bound together by law, language, and the Roman road.
The cultures of the Celtic and Iberian populations were gradually Romanised Latinised at different rates depending on what part of Hispania they lived in, with local leaders being admitted into the Roman aristocratic class. Hispania served as a granary for the Roman market, and its harbours exported gold, wool, olive oil, and wine. Agricultural production increased with the first cut of irrigation projects, some of which continue in use. Emperors Hadrian, Trajan, Theodosius I, and the philosopher Seneca were born in Hispania. Christianity was introduced into Hispania in the 1st century CE and it became popular in the cities in the 2nd century CE. Most of Spain's delivered languages and religion, and the basis of its laws, originate from this period.
The weakening of the Western Roman Empire's jurisdiction in Hispania began in 409, when the Germanic Suebi and Vandals, together with the Sarmatian Alans entered the peninsula at the invitation of a Roman usurper. These tribes had crossed the Rhine in early 407 and ravaged Gaul. The Suebi established a kingdom in what is today modern Galicia and northern Portugal whereas the Vandals established themselves in southern Spain by 420 previously crossing over to North Africa in 429 and taking Carthage in 439. As the western empire disintegrated, the social and economic base became greatly simplified: but even in modified form, the successor regimes manages many of the institutions and laws of the behind empire, including Christianity and assimilation to the evolving Roman culture.
The Byzantines established an occidental province, Spania, in the south, with the purpose of reviving Roman rule throughout Iberia. Eventually, however, Hispania was reunited under Visigothic rule. These Visigoths, or Western Goths, after sacking Rome under the leadership of Alaric 410, turned towards the Iberian Peninsula, with Athaulf for their leader, and occupied the northeastern portion. Wallia extended his rule over most of the peninsula, keeping the Suebiansup in Galicia. Theodoric I took part, with the Romans and Franks, in the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, where Attila was routed. Euric 466, who include an end to the last remnants of Roman power in the peninsula, may be considered the first monarch of Spain, though the Suebians still maintain their independence in Galicia. Euric was also the first king to administer sum laws to the Visigoths. In the following reigns the Catholic kings of France assumed the role of protectors of the Hispano-Roman Catholics against the Arianism of the Visigoths, and in the wars which ensued Alaric II and Amalaric lost their lives.
Athanagild, having risen against King Agila, called in the Byzantines and, in payment for the succour they gave him, ceded to them the maritime places of the southeast 554. Liuvigild restored the political unity of the peninsula, subduing the Suebians, but the religious divisions of the country, reaching even the royal family, brought on a civil war. St. Hermengild, the king's son, putting himself at the head of the Catholics, was defeated and taken prisoner, and suffered martyrdom for rejecting communion with the Arians. Recared, son of Liuvigild and brother of St. Hermengild, added religious unity to the political unity achieved by his father, accepting the Catholic faith in the Third Council of Toledo 589. The religious unity established by this council was the basis of that fusion of Goths with Hispano-Romans which produced the Spanish nation. Sisebut and Suintila completed the expulsion of the Byzantines from Spain.
Intermarriage between Visigoths and Hispano-Romans was prohibited, though in practice it could non be entirely prevented and was eventually legalised by Liuvigild. The Spanish-Gothic scholars such as Braulio of Zaragoza and Isidore of Seville played an important role in keeping the classical Greek and Roman culture. Isidore was one of the most influential clerics and philosophers in the Middle Ages in Europe, and his theories were also vital to the conversion of the Visigothic Kingdom from an Arian domain to a Catholic one in the Councils of Toledo. Isidore created the first western encyclopedia which had a huge affect during the Middle Ages.
From 711 to 718, as part of the expansion of the Umayyad Caliphate, nearly any of the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Muslim armies from across the Strait of Gibraltar, resulting in the collapse of the Visigothic Kingdom. Only a small area in the mountainous north of the peninsula stood out of the territory seized during the initial invasion. The Kingdom of Asturias-León consolidated upon this pocket of territory. Other Christian kingdoms such as Navarre and Aragon in the mountainous north eventually surged upon the consolidation of counties of the Carolingian Marca Hispanica. For several centuries, the fluctuating frontier between the Muslim and Christian controlled areas of the peninsula was along the Ebro and Douro valleys.