Page 53 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Spain

INTRODUCING SP AIN  51

THE HISTORY

OF SPAIN

The Iberian Peninsula, first inhabited around 800,000 BC, has long been subject to
foreign influences – from the Phoenicians to the Romans, the Moors to the Christians.
Spain itself has a colourful, dramatic history, from the Discovery of the Americas in
the 15th century to the Spanish Civil War in the 20th century. Today, tourism is a key
industry and the country is the third most visited in the world.

From the 11th century BC, Iberia was From the 11th century, northern Christian
colonized by eastern Mediterranean civil i­ kingdoms initiated a military reconquest of Al
zations, starting with the Phoenicians, then Andalus. The marriage, in 1469, of Fernando
the Greeks and Carthaginians. The Romans of Aragón and Isabel of Castile led to unity.
arrived in 218 BC to fight the Carthaginians, They took Granada, the last Moorish king­
thus sparking off the Second Punic War. dom in 1492, and Columbus discovered the
They harvested the peninsula’s agricultural Americas in the same year, opening the way
and mineral wealth and established cities for the Spanish conquistadors. The succ­
with aque ducts, temples and theatres. eeding Habsburg dynasty spent the riches
With the fall of the Roman Empire in the from the New World on endless foreign wars
early 5th century AD, Visigothic invaders and Spain’s misfortunes cont inued into the
from the north took power but their poor next century with Napoleon’s invasion and
political organization made them easy prey the loss of American colo nies. Later, the pol i­
to the Moors from North Africa. In the tical instability of the 19th and early 20th
8th century, the pen in sula came almost centuries led to dictator ship in the 1920s and
entirely under Moorish rule. Europe’s only a republic in the 1930s, which was destroyed
major Muslim territory, the civilization of by the Civil War. General Franco ruled by
Al Andalus excelled in mathematics, repression until his death in 1975, and Spain
geography, astronomy and poetry. has been a constitutional monarchy since.

Bullfighting in Madrid’s Plaza Mayor in the 17th century
The Virgin of the Catholic Monarchs, a 15th-century painting kept in Madrid’s Museo del Prado

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