History of Spain

Etymology

The origins of the Roman name Hispania, from which the modern name España was derived, is uncertain and is possibly unknown due to the inadequate evidence. Hispania may derive from the poetic use of the term Hesperia, reflecting the Greek perception of Italy as a "western land" or "land of the setting sun" (Hesperia, Ἑσπερία in Greek) and Spain, being still further west, as Hesperia ultima.^[8]

It may also be a derivation of the Punic I-Shpania (אי שפניא), meaning "island of rabbits", "land of rabbits" or "edge", a reference to Spain's location at the end of the Mediterranean; Roman coins struck in the region from the reign of Hadrian show a female figure with a coney at her feet.^[9] There are also claims that Hispania derives from the Basque word Ezpanna meaning "edge" or "border", another reference to the fact that the Iberian peninsula constitutes the southwest of the European continent.^[8]

The Renaissance scholar Antonio de Nebrija proposed that the word Hispania evolved from the Iberian word Hispalis, meaning "city of the western world". Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the term span is the Phoenecian word spy, meaning "to forge metals". Therefore i-spn-ya would mean "the land where metals are forged".^[10]

History

Main article: History of Spain

The Iberian peninsula enters written records as a land populated largely by the Iberians, Basques and Celts. After an arduous conquest, the peninsula came under the rule of Rome. During the early Middle Ages it came under Germanic rule but later, it was conquered by Moorish invaders from North Africa. In a process that took centuries, the small Christian kingdoms in the north gradually regained control of the peninsula. The last Moorish kingdom fell in the same year Columbus reached the Americas. A global empire began which saw Spain become the strongest kingdom in Europe and the leading world power for a century and a half and the largest overseas empire for three centuries.

Continued wars and other problems eventually led to a diminished status. The Napoleonic invasions of Spain led to chaos, triggering independence movements that tore apart most of the empire and left the country politically unstable. Prior to the Second World War, Spain suffered a devastating civil war and came under the rule of an authoritarian government, whose rule oversaw a period of stagnation but that finished with a powerful economic surge. Eventually democracy was peacefully restored in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. In 1986, Spain joined the European Union, experiencing a cultural renaissance and steady economic growth.

Prehistory and pre-Roman peoples

Main article: Prehistoric Iberia

Altamira Cave paintings,^[11] in Cantabria.

Archaeological research at Atapuerca indicates the Iberian Peninsula was populated by hominids 1.2 million years ago.^[12] Modern humans first arrived in Iberia, from the north on foot, about 32,000 years ago.^[13] The best known artifacts 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 or, perhaps, by neanderthals.^[11][14]

Archaeological and genetic evidence strongly suggests that the Iberian Peninsula acted as one of several major refugia from which northern Europe was repopulated following the end of the last ice age.

The two main historical peoples of the peninsula were the Iberians and the Celts. The Iberians inhabited the Mediterranean side from the northeast to the southeast. The Celts inhabited the Atlantic side, in the north, center (Celtiberian), northwest and southwest part of the peninsula. Basques occupied the western area of the Pyrenees mountain range and adjacent areas.

In the south of the peninsula appeared the semi-mythical city of Tartessos (c.1100 BC), whose flourishing trade in items made of gold and silver with the Phoenicians and Greeks is documented by Strabo and the Book of Solomon. Between about 800 BC and 300 BC, the seafaring Phoenicians and Greeks founded trading colonies along the Mediterranean coast. The Carthaginians briefly exerted control over much of the Mediterranean side of the peninsula, until defeated in the Punic Wars by the Romans.^[15]

Roman Empire and the Gothic Kingdom

Main article: Hispania

Roman Aqueduct of Segovia.

During the Second Punic War, an expanding Roman Empire captured Carthaginian trading colonies along the Mediterranean coast from roughly 210 BC to 205 BC. It took the Romans nearly two centuries to complete the conquest of the Iberian peninsula, though they had control of it for over six centuries.

A votive crownof Recceswinth(653–672)

Roman rule was bound together by law, language, and the Roman road.^[16]

The cultures of the Celtic and Iberian populations were gradually romanised (Latinised) at differing rates in different parts of Hispania. Local leaders were admitted into the Roman aristocratic class^[d][15] Hispania served as a granary for the Roman market, and its harbours exported gold, wool, olive oil, and wine. Agricultural production increased with the introduction of irrigation projects, some of which remain in use. Emperors Hadrian, Trajan, Theodosius I, and the philosopher Seneca were born in Hispania.^[e] Christianity was introduced into Hispania in the 1st century AD and it became popular in the cities in the 2nd century AD.^[15] Most of Spain's present languages and religion, and the basis of its laws, originate from this period.^[16]

The weakening of the Western Roman Empire's jurisdiction in Hispania began in 409, when the Germanic Suevi and Vandals, together with the Sarmatian Alanscrossed the Rhine and ravaged Gaul until the Visigoths drove them into Iberia that same year. The Suevi established a kingdom in what is today modern Galicia and northern Portugal. As the western empire disintegrated, the social and economic base became greatly simplified: but even in modified form, the successor regimes maintained many of the institutions and laws of the late empire, including Christianity.

The Alans' allies, the Hasdingi Vandals, established a kingdom in Gallaecia, too, occupying largely the same region but extending farther south to the Duero river. The Silingi Vandals occupied the region that still bears a form of their name –Vandalusia, modern Andalusia, in Spain. The Byzantines established an enclave,Spania, in the south, with the intention of reviving the Roman empire throughout Iberia. Eventually, however, Hispania was reunited under Visigothic rule.

Muslim Iberia

Main article: Al-Andalus

The Alhambra, Granada.

In the 8th century, nearly all of the Iberian Peninsula was conquered (711–718) by largely Moorish Muslim armies from North Africa. These conquests were part of the expansion of the Umayyad Caliphate. Only a small area in the mountainous north-west of the peninsula managed to resist the initial invasion.

Under Islamic law, Christians and Jews were given the subordinate status of dhimmi. This status permitted Christians and Jews to practice their religions as people of the book but they were required to pay a special tax and had legal and social rights inferior to those of Muslims.^[17][18]

Conversion to Islam proceeded at a steadily increasing pace. The muladies (Muslims of ethnic Iberian origin) are believed to have comprised the majority of the population of Al-Andalus by the end of the 10th century.^[19][20]

Hypostyle hall inside of Great Mosque of Córdoba.

The Muslim community in the Iberian peninsula was itself diverse and beset by social tensions. The Berber people of North Africa, who had provided the bulk of the invading armies, clashed with the Arab leadership from the Middle East.^[f] Over time, large Moorish populations became established, especially in the Guadalquivir River valley, the coastal plain of Valencia, the Ebro River valley and (towards the end of this period) in the mountainous region of Granada.^[20]

Córdoba, the capital of the caliphate, was the largest, richest and most sophisticated city in western Europe. Mediterranean trade and cultural exchange flourished. Muslims imported a rich intellectual tradition from the Middle East and North Africa. Muslim and Jewish scholars played an important part in reviving and expanding classical Greek learning in Western Europe. The Romanised cultures of the Iberian peninsula interacted with Muslim and Jewish cultures in complex ways, thus giving the region a distinctive culture.^[20] Outside the cities, where the vast majority lived, the land ownership system from Roman times remained largely intact as Muslim leaders rarely dispossessed landowners, and the introduction of new crops and techniques led to an expansion of agriculture.^{[citation needed]}

In the 11th century, the Muslim holdings fractured into rival Taifa kingdoms