Spain

Lore & Background

In early antiquity, the Iberian Peninsula was inhabited by Iberians, Celts, and other pre-Roman peoples. The Roman conquest created the province of Hispania. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Visigoths established a kingdom. In the early 8th century, most of the peninsula was conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate. The northern Christian kingdoms launched the Reconquista, culminating with the fall of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada. The dynastic union of the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon in 1479 under the Catholic Monarchs is often seen as the de facto unification of Spain.

In Their Own Story

The Johannesburg night air was thick with humidity and tension as the final whistle approached between Spain and the Netherlands. It had been a grueling ninety minutes of physical battles, yellow cards flying like confetti in a storm. Iniesta, exhausted but focused, received a pass near the sideline. The ball was played through with surgical precision. Pedro slotted it home, and the stadium erupted. For Spain, it was finally time; the shame of decades past washed away by a single moment of pure, technical perfection.

Reader's Guide

Spain is a secular parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, with King Felipe VI as head of state. It has a high nominal GDP per capita globally and an advanced economy that ranks among the largest in the world and the fourth-largest in the EU. The official language at the national level is Spanish, the world's second-most spoken native language, although other regional languages have co-official status in their respective autonomous communities.

Did You Know?

• The name Spain comes from Hispania, the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula.
• The Phoenicians may have called the region 'land of rabbits or hyraxes'.
• Roman emperors Hadrian, Trajan, and Theodosius I were born in Hispania.
• The Altamira cave paintings in northern Iberia were created from 35,600 to 13,500 BCE.