| Celts and Iberians
were the first settlers on the Peninsula. It is said that
Hispania (the name the Romans used to describe the Peninsula)
is a word of Semitic origin from Hispalis (Seville). From
the year 1100 A.D. and until the middle of the 3rd century
A.D., commercial and cultural contact with high Mediterranean
civilisations was held with the Phoenicians and Greeks. At
the end of this era, both civilisations were taken over by
the Carthaginians and Romans
respectively. The Roman presence in Hispania lasted for seven
centuries and during this period the basic borders of the
Peninsula in relation to other European countries were set
up. In addition to territorial administration, many more institutions
were inherited from Rome such as the concept of family, Latin
as a language, religion and law.
At the beginning of the 5th century new settlers
from the North arrived and settled on the Peninsula: The Visigoths
in the interior and the Swabians on the West. This Germanic
people saw themselves as the continuators of the weakened
Imperial power. Integration between Hispanic-Germanics was
a rapid process with the exception of the North side of the
peninsula, inhabited by Basques, Cantabrians and Asturians
who resisted the infiltration of the Romans, Visigoths and
later the Muslims. The decomposition of the Visigoth state
apparatus would lead to the successive infiltration of Arab
and Berber troops from the other side of the Straits of Gibraltar
at the beginning of the 8th century.
In the middle of the 8th century the
Muslims had completed occupation and Cordova became
the centre of the flourishing Andalusian state. The Arab presence
in Spain would last for almost eight centuries and leave an
indelible mark on the Spanish cultural heritage. Following
a long period of peaceful coexistence, the small Christian
strongholds in the North of the Peninsula took on a leading
role in the Reconquest, which ended with
the capture of Granada in 1492 under the reign of
the Catholic King and Queen, Isabel and Fernando,
traditionally considered the founders of the peninsular unity
and the imperial management of the Spanish revival. Also during
the reign of the Catholic King and Queen and under their auspice,
Columbus discovered the New Continent (America), new boundary
of what would be the largest Western empire.
The 16th century represents
the zenith of Spanish hegemony in the world, a
process that would last until the middle of the 17th century.
With the Catholic King and Queen, and in particular with Phillip
II, the prototype of the absolutist modern State
in the 16th century was fully established. Following the death
of Charles III, the last of the Austrians,
who died without having had children, Phillip V
inaugurated the dynasty of the Borbons in Spain.
The Spanish Enlightenment is characterised as being an era
of exterior harmony, reformations and interior development.
The crisis of the Old Order opened the doorway to
the Napoleonic invasion. The War of Independence
was a war against the French invasion but also a revolutionary
war due to the decisive involvement of the people and the
clear formation of a national conscience that would later
shape the Constitution of 1812.
The Courts of Cadiz thereby
enacted one of the first Constitutions of the world
which ratified that sovereignty would reside in the nation.
The conflict between liberalists and absolutists or in other
words, between two different ways of perceiving the establishment
of the state, would be one of the longest Spanish conflicts
throughout the 19th century. The brief reign of Amadeo de
Saboya, the first republican experience and the subsequent
restoration of the monarchy under the rule of Alfonso
XII, took Spain to the beginning of the 20th century
with a serie of serious unresolved problems that intensify
following the definitive loss of the last strongholds of the
colonial empire: Cuba and the Philippines.
Despite the interruption of the First World
War in which Spain remained neutral and following the
dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, the monarchical
crisis returns what causes the exile of King Alfonso
XIII. The ballot box is introduced into Spain and
with it the first democratic experience of the 20th century:
The second Republic, a brief attempt to introduce
the reformations the country needed frustrated by General
Franco's military rising and the outbreak of the
Civil War in 1936. The military victory of General
Franco gave way to a long dictatorial period
that would last until 1975. It was
an era characterised by an iron control of interior politics
and isolation from the international environment, which did
not however prevent an incipient economic development in the
sixties.
Following the death of General Franco, the
Spanish people peacefully made the transition from
dictatorship to democracy in a process known
as 'the Spanish model'. Don Juan Carlos I,
as King of Spain since November 22, 1975,
became the chief of a social and democratic
state of law, fact which turned into the Constitution of 1978.
Since then, Spain is a parlamentary Monarchy. |
