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Prehistory of the Iberian Peninsula The indigenous peoples of the Iberian peninsula, consisting of a number of separate tribes, are given the generic name of Iberians. This may have included the Basques, as one of the pre-Celtic people. The most important culture of this period is that of the city of Tartessos. Beginning in the 8th century BCE, Celtic tribes entered the Iberian peninsula through the Pyrenees and settled throughout the peninsula, becoming the Celtiberians. The seafaring Phoenicians, Greeks and Carthaginians successively settled along the Mediterranean coast and founded trading colonies there over a period of several centuries. Around 1100 BCE, Phoenician merchants founded the trading colony of Gadir or Gades (modern day Cádiz) near Tartessos. In the 9th century BCE the first Greek colonies, such as Emporion (modern Empúries), were founded along the Mediterranean coast on the East, leaving the south coast to the Phoenicians. The Greeks are responsible for the name Iberia, after the river Iber (Ebro in Spanish). In the 6th century BCE the Carthaginians arrived in Iberia while struggling with the Greeks for control of the Western Mediterranean. Their most important colony was Carthago Nova (Latin name of modern day Cartagena). |
The Romans arrived in the Iberian peninsula during the Second Punic war in the 2nd century BCE, and annexed it under Augustus after two centuries of war with the tenacious Celtic and Iberian tribes (from whom they copied the short sword) along with the Phoenician, Greek and Carthaginian coastal colonies becoming the province of Hispania. It was divided into Hispania Ulterior and Hispania Citerior during the late Roman Republic; and, during the Roman Empire, Hispania Taraconensis in the northeast, Hispania Baetica in the south and Lusitania (province with capital in the city of Emerita Augusta) in the southwest. Hispania supplied Rome with food, olive oil, wine and metal. The emperors Trajan, Hadrian and Theodosius I, the philosopher Seneca and the poets Martial, Quintilian and Lucan were born in Spain. The Spanish Bishops held the Council at Elvira in 306. The collapse of the Western Roman empire did not lead to the same wholesale destruction of Western classical society as happened in areas like Britain, Gaul and Germania Inferior during the Dark Ages, even if the institutions, infrastructure and economy did suffer considerable degradation. Spain's present languages, its religion, and the basis of its laws originate from this period. The centuries of uninterrupted Roman rule and settlement left a deep and enduring imprint upon the culture of Spain.
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In the 8th century, nearly all the Iberian peninsula, which had been under Visigothic rule, was quickly conquered (711–718), by Muslims, who had crossed over from North Africa. Visigothic Spain was the last of a series of Christian and pagan lands conquered in a great westward charge from the Middle East and across north Africa by the religiously inspired armies of the Umayyad empire. Indeed this onslaught continued northwards until it was decisively defeated in central France at the Battle of Tours in 732. Astonishingly the invasion started off as an invitation from a Visigoth faction within Spain for support. But instead the Berber army, having defeated King Roderic, with its superior tactics and the help of constant infighting among the Visigoths, proceeded to conquer the entire peninsula for itself. The Roman Catholic populace, unimpressed with the crude and neglectful Arian Christian leadership of the Visigoths, stood apart from most of the fighting and often welcomed the new rulers, thereby forging the basis of the distinctly Spanish-Muslim culture of Al-Andalus. This distinctive identity soon led to its independence from the Ummayyad empire. Only three small counties in the mountains of the north of Spain managed to cling to their independence: Asturias, Navarra and Aragon, which eventually became kingdoms. Despite internal discord, the Muslim emirate proved strong in its first three centuries — was able to stop Charlemagne's massive forces at Saragossa and, after suffering from a serious Viking surprise attack in the south, was able to quickly establish effective defenses at a time when they were the terror of Europe. Indeed it became a terror in its own right to Christian neighbors with its own "al-jihad fil-bahr" (holy war at sea), raiding shipping and coastal settlements for the purposes of looting and enslavement. The Christian kingdoms were able to seize the lands north of the Duero river from their mountain redoubts, and the Franks were able to seize Barcelona (801) and nearby areas (Spanish Marches), but save for these and some other small incursions in the north, the Christians were unable to make headway against the superior forces of Al-Andalus for several centuries. War settled into a pattern of raids and retaliations, with Christian Spain on the defensive. It was only in the 11th century, when Muslim Spain split into small warring kingdoms that the gradually consolidating Christian kingdoms were able to make large, sustained advances southward. By this stage the Christian kingdoms had attained such power that they were much more afraid of each other than of the Muslim kingdoms, and so a free-for-all fight, involving alliances and divisions which often ignored religious affiliations, developed among the Muslim and Christian kingdoms. In trying to increase their status, the Muslim taifa kings competed in patronage of the arts, and the Jewish population of Iberia set the basis of Sephardic culture. The distinctiveness of much Spanish art originates from the Muslim influence of this period, and many Arabic words made their way into Castilian (Spanish) and Catalan, and from them to other European languages. Later, even as Muslim Spain retreated southward, Mozarabs (Christians who spoke an Iberian tongue but used Arabic script to write it) and converts to Christianity brought with them the art and architecture of Muslim Spain into the Christian north. The Moorish capital was Córdoba, in the southern portion of Spain known as Andalucía. During the time of Arab-Berber occupation, large populations of Jews, Christians and Muslims lived in close quarters, and at its peak some non-Muslims were appointed to high offices. At its best it produced exquisite architecture and art, and Muslim and Jewish scholars played a great part in reviving the study of ancient Greek and Roman culture and philosophy. However, there were also restrictions and prohibitions on non-Muslims, which tended to grow after the death of Al-Hakam II in 976. Later invasions of stricter Muslim groups from north Africa led to persecutions of non-Muslims, forcing some (including Muslim scholars) to seek safety in the then still relatively tolerant city of Toledo after its Christian re conquest in 1085. Spanish society under Muslim rule became increasingly complex, partly because Islamic conquest did not involve the systematic conversion of the conquered population to Islam. At the same time, Christians and Jews were recognized under Islam as "peoples of the book", and so given dhimmi status. Christianity and Judaism shared with Islam the tradition of the Old Testament, and Islam considered Jesus Christ a major prophet. Most importantly, the Islamic Berber and Arab invaders were a small minority, ruling over a few million Christians. Thus, Christians and Jews were free to practice their religion, but they had to pay a prescribed poll tax. They were not permitted to build new churches or synagogues, and clothing conventions were used to mark them out. Conversion to Islam proceeded slowly at first but then at a steadily increasing pace, as it offered social and economic advantages and an escape from the humiliations of dhimmi status. Merchants, nobles, large landowners, and other local elites were usually the first to convert. By the eleventh century Muslims outnumbered Christians in Al-Andalus. The Roman Catholic Church in Muslim Spain continued to function, although it lost contact with religious reforms in Rome. Muslim Spain came to include a growing number of Mozarabic Christians, people who adopted Arabic script and culture and preserved the old Christian rites from Visigothic times, that differed from the newer rites in Rome. Under some Muslim rulers, many Jews held prominent positions in commerce and the professions, and sometimes even positions in government. The Muslim community in Spain was itself diverse and beset by social tensions. From the beginning, the Berber tribes people of North Africa, who had provided the bulk of the soldiers, clashed with the Arabs of the Middle East, who formed the ruling elite. The Berbers, who were comparatively recent converts to Islam, accounted for the majority of Moors in Spain and they resented the sophistication and aristocratic pretensions of the Arab elite. They soon gave up attempting to settle the harsh lands of the northern reaches of the Meseta Central handed to them by the Arab elite, and, complaining of Arab duplicity, many returned to Africa during a Berber uprising against Arab rule. Over time the relatively tiny number of Moors gradually increased with immigration and cross marriages. Large Moorish populations grew in the south, especially in the Quadalquivir river valley, the narrow but fertile Mediterranean coastal plain and in the Ebro river valley, south of Barcelona. Muslim Spain was wealthy and sophisticated under Islamic rule. Cordoba was the richest and most sophisticated city in all of western Europe. It was not until the 12th century that western medieval Christiandom began to reach comparable levels of sophistication, and this was due in part to the intellectual and commercial stimulus coming from Muslim Spain. Mediterranean trade and cultural exchange flourished. Muslims imported a rich intellectual tradition from the Middle East and North Africa, including knowledge of mathematics and science, and they helped revive in Europe the Greek philosophical tradition, which they continued to build upon in Spain. Crops and farming techniques introduced by the Arabs, including new irrigation practices, led to a remarkable expansion of agriculture, which had been in decline since Roman times. In towns and cities the Muslims constructed magnificent mosques, palaces, and other architectural monuments, many of which still stand today. Outside the cities, the mixture of large estates and small farms that existed in Roman times remained largely intact because Muslim leaders rarely dispossessed landowners. The Muslim conquerors were relatively few in number and so they tried to maintain good relations with their subjects. This relative social peace, which was already deteriorating from the late 10th century, broke down with the stricter, less tolerant, Muslim sects that arrived from the end of the 11th century. Roman, Jewish, and Muslim culture interacted in complex ways. A large part of the population gradually adopted Arabic. Even Jews and Christians often spoke Arabic, while Hebrew and Latin were frequently written in Arabic script. These diverse traditions interchanged in ways that gave Spanish culture — religion, literature, music, art and architecture, and writing systems — a rich and distinctive heritage. Life in Muslim Spain was very different from life in contemporary Christian Spain. Arabic was the official language of government, commerce and scholarship in Muslim controlled areas of Spain, and the majority of the population, including Christians and Jews, spoke it, though many were bilingual and the majority had been converted to Islam. However, as the 11th century drew to a close most of the north and center of Spain was back under Christian control. |
The long, convoluted period of expansion of the Christian kingdoms, beginning in 722, only eleven years after the Moorish invasion, is called the Reconquista. As early as 739, the north-western region of Galicia, which became one of the most important centers of western medieval Christian pilgrimage (Santiago de Compostela), had been liberated from Moorish occupation by forces from neighboring Asturias. Other areas in the northern mountains and around Barcelona were also soon liberated by Frankish and local forces, providing a base for Spain's Christians. The 1085 conquest of the central city of Toledo had largely brought to an end the re conquest of the northern half of Spain. In 1086 the Almoravids, an ascetic Islamic sect from Africa, quickly conquered the small Moorish states in the south and then launched an invasion in which they captured the east coast as far north as Saragossa. This Islamic revival was short-lived, as by the middle of the 12th century the Almoravid empire had collapsed. The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 heralded the collapse of the great Moorish strongholds in the south, most notably Córdoba in 1236 and Seville in 1248. By the middle of the 13th century nearly all of the Iberian peninsula had been re conquered, leaving only Granada as a small tributary state in the south. Surrounded by Christian Castile but afraid of another invasion by Muslims from Africa, it clung tenaciously to its isolated mountain splendor for two and half centuries. It came to an end when in 1492 Isabella and Ferdinand captured the southern city of Granada, the last Moorish city in Spain. The Treaty of Granada guaranteed religious tolerance toward Muslims while Spain's Jewish population of over 200,000 people was expelled that year. At Ferdinand's urging the Spanish Inquisition had been established in 1478. Having seen out the invasions of no less than three Islamic empires (Ummayad, Almoravid and Almohad), and all too aware of the rapid conquests of a fourth, the Ottoman, there existed a real fear that the local Muslims might assist yet another invasion. Also, Aragonese laborers were angered by landlords use of Moorish workers to undercut them. A 1499 Muslim uprising, triggered by forced conversions, was crushed and was followed by the first of the expulsions of Muslims, in 1502. The year 1492 was also marked by the discovery of the New World. Isabella I funded the voyages of Christopher Columbus. Ferdinand and Isabella, as exemplars of the Renaissance New Monarchs, consolidated the modernization of their respective economies that had been pursued by their predecessors and enforced reforms that weakened the position of the great magnates against the new centralized crowns. In their contests with the French army in the Italian Wars, Spanish forces under Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba eventually achieved success, against the French knights, thereby revolutionizing warfare. The combined Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, long vibrant and expansive, emerged as a European great power. The re conquest from the Muslims is one of the most significant events in Spanish history since the fall of the Roman Empire. Arabic quickly lost its place in southern Spain's life, and was replaced by Castilian. In the south the process of conversion was reversed in the 13th century: the majority Muslim population was gradually converted to Roman Catholicism. The mosques and synagogues were converted into churches. With the union of Castille and Aragon in 1469 and the subsequent conquest of Granada in 1492 and Navarre in 1512, the word Spain (España, in Spanish) began being used only to refer to the new unified kingdom and not to the whole of Hispania (the term Hispania (from which España was originally derived) is Latin and the term Iberia Greek).
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Until the late fifteenth century, Castile and León, Aragón and Navarre were independent states, with independent languages, monarchs, armies and, in the case of Aragon and Castile, two empires: the former with one in the Mediterranean and the latter with a new, rapidly growing, one in the Americas. The process of political unification continued into the early sixteenth century. It was the unification of these separate Iberian empires that became the base of what is now referred to as the Spanish Empire. By 1512, most of the kingdoms of present-day Spain were politically unified by the crown, although not as a modern, centralized state. In contemporary minds, "Spain" was a geographic term that was more or less synonymous with Iberia, not the present-day state called Spain, although today's more restricted notion of it was beginning to gain in currency. As the old states continued to exist and function with their own laws, assemblies and administrations under one monarch the title of the reigning Habsburgs was "The King of the Spaniards", not "Spain". The grandson of Isabella and Ferdinand, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor but called in Spain Carlos I, extended his crown to other places in Europe and the rest of the world. The unification of Iberia was complete when Charles V's son, Philip II, became King of Portugal in 1580. During the 16th century, early Habsburg Spain (i.e. the reigns of Charles V and Philip II) became the most powerful state in Europe. The Spanish Empire covered most territories of South and Central America, Mexico, some of Eastern Asia (including the Philippines), the Iberian peninsula (including the Portuguese empire from 1580), southern Italy, Sicily, Germany, and the Netherlands. It was the first empire about which it was said that the sun did not set. It was a time of daring explorations by sea and by land, the opening up of new trade routes across oceans, conquests and the beginning of European colonization. Not only did this lead to the arrival of ever increasing quantities of precious metals, spices and luxuries, and new agricultural plants, that had a great influence on the development of Europe, but the explorers, soldiers, sailors, traders and missionaries also brought back with them a flood of knowledge that radically transformed the European understanding of the world, ending conceptions inherited from medieval times. This Renaissance intellectual transformation is best seen in the influential School of Salamanca. The treasure fleet across the Atlantic and the Manila galleons across the Pacific made it the wealthiest and most powerful nation in Europe, but the rapidly rising influx of silver and gold from the colonies in the Americas in the last decades of the 16th century ultimately resulted in economically damaging rampant inflation and led to economic depression by the 17th century. Religious and dynastic wars supported by the Spanish crown, especially in the Netherlands, also greatly burdened the empire's economy. In 1640, under Philip IV, the centralist policy of the Count-Duke of Olivares provoked wars in Portugal and Catalonia. Portugal became an independent kingdom again, taking with it its empire, and Catalonia enjoyed some years of French-supported independence but was quickly returned to the Spanish Crown, except Roussillon. A series of long and costly wars and revolts followed in the early 17th century, and began a gradual decline of Spanish power in Europe from the 1640s. Of note during the 17th century was the cultural efflorescence now known as the Spanish Golden Age. Spain had vast colonies in the Americas, stretching from Chile and Argentina to Central America and Mexico, to some states in the present-day United States. These included all of Florida, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, and parts of Oklahoma, Colorado and Wyoming. The influence of Spain on these cities is still evident in such cities as Los Angeles, California; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and San Antonio, Texas, as well as the Spanish language's dominance in these states (it is interesting to note that in New Mexico, Spanish is considered one of the 'de facto' official languages, along with English.) Historically the period of the mid 17th century to the mid 20th century was a relative failure for Spain compared to north western Europe. The lingering, "decline of Spain" after a long period of considerable growth of population was due in large part, ironically, to its spectacular successes in the 15th and 16th centuries that led to the centuries of the treasure fleets. These shipments of silver engendered inflation that ate away at Spanish trades and commerce (never large or sophisticated in the harsh, thinly populated country — much of the manufactures and finance had always originated in third countries). This proved disastrous when the mines declined in output. Worsening matters were the wars defending the global empire against envious European rivals, internal successions and the European wars (Eighty Years' War and Thirty Years' War) in fighting for the Habsburg's dynastic and religious interests (Counter Reformation). During the vast Thirty Years War the government sought to meet its needs by tampering with the silver content of the currency, leading to severe bouts of inflation and deflation. The financial instability led to the collapse of the Castilian economy and in 1628 Castilians resorted to bartering. A steep economic and demographic decline followed in the empire's plague ridden lynchpin, Castile. Many emigrated, with the shift of much of Spain's population to the Americas combined with a low natural increase contributing to the decline. Habsburg policies that had entrenched the privileges and exemptions of the nobility from the time of the Castilian War of the Communities (1518–1520), and the vast grants of land to the Church, helped to undermine the economy and curtail the spread of modern thought. The resentment of ordinary peasants and laborers would find expression in implicating the nobility of Moorish ancestry and the churchmen of hypocrisy and found its way into the theatre and literature. The growing beggary forced many to live by their wits, increasing the popularity of picaresque literature. This 17th century stagnation was mirrored throughout Europe, as the growing global oceanic trade that had been pioneered by the Iberian countries, was increasingly diverted to north-western Europe. Controversy over succession to the throne consumed the country and much of Europe during the first years of the 18th century. It was only after this war ended and a new dynasty—the French Bourbons—was installed that a true Spanish state was established when the absolutist first Bourbon king Philip V of Spain in 1707 dissolved the parliamentarist Aragon court and unified the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon into a single, unified Kingdom of Spain, abolishing many of the regional privileges and autonomies (fueros) that had hampered Habsburg rule. The British abandoned the conflict after Utrecht (1713), which led to Barcelona's easy defeat by the absolutists in 1714. The National Day of Catalonia still commemorates this defeat. Following the wars at its commencement the 18th century saw a long, slow recovery, with an expansion of the iron and steel industries in the Basque Country, a growth in ship building, some increase in trade and a recovery in food production and a gradual recovery of population in Castile. The new Bourbon monarchy drew on the French system in trying to modernize the administration and economy, in which it was more successful in the former than the latter. In the last two decades of the century, with the ending of Cadiz's royally granted monopoly, trade experienced an extraordinary growth (from a relatively low base) which even witnessed the initial steps of an industrialization of the textile industry in Catalonia. Spain's effective military assistance to the rebellious British colonies in the American War of Independence won it renewed international status. |
The reformatory efforts led by Charles III and his ministers Ensenada and Floridablanca led to a profound gap between partisans of the Enlightenment (Afrancesados) and the partisans of the Old Spain. The French Revolution and the subsequent war with France in 1793 French Revolutionary Wars led to a polarization of the country and an apparent triumph of the reaction over the europeanized elites. It must be underlined that the "Afrancesados" were a minority and that a vast portion of Spain remained deeply attached to the "Old Order" (even though they watched with distrust Charles IV, his wife Maria-Luisa de Borbon Parma and her favorite Manuel Godoy, representatives of said order). The disastrous Spanish policies (specifically the wishy-washy relations with the new european juggernaut that was Napoleonic France), led by the lust-ridden, inexpert Godoy, ended with his overthrow at the Mutiny of Aranjuez on March 17th 1808 and the forced abdication of Charles IV and his son Ferdinand, Prince of Asturias (the future Ferdinand VII), in Bayonne later that year, in favor of Joseph Bonaparte (aka Jose I or Pepe Botellas). Said abdication was masterminded by Napoleon, who watched with distrust the uncertain ally that was Spain and also motivated by his hatred of the Bourbons. The afrancesados had high expectations of the nomination of Joseph Bonaparte in Spain, even though he was not of royal blood and a foreigner, while the rest of the country regarded him with scorn. The new monarch, endowed with a meek character, was sincerely interested in reforming the country and was looking to please his new subjects. In May 2, 1808, the people of Madrid rose in arms against the French army, commanded by Marshall Joachim Murat. This uprising was immortalized by Goya in his masterpiece Dos de mayo and nowadays is the holiday of the Community of Madrid. The ensuing repression was swift and merciless, but it could not avoid the fact that the Napoleonic rule in Spain would be anything but peaceful. The war that followed, known to the English as the Peninsular War and to the Spanish as the War of Independence ravaged the country with its overwhelming cruelty and destruction. There were few ranged battles, with the bright exception of the Battle of Bailen (July 18-22, 1808) where the Spanish army was the first army that defeated a French Army in Europe. The subsequent invasion, directed personally by Napoleon, brought the Spanish army to its knees and started a war of guerrillas (another dark innovation) that was equally cruel and ruthless on both sides. The Spanish painter Goya depicted the atrocities in his engravings Desastres de la guerra. The guerrillas had help from Wellington and the Anglo-Portuguese army, which led to the final expulsion of the French out of Spain in 1814, and the return of king Ferdinand VII (aka El Deseado ).
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The French invasion had numerous consequences for Spain. The war proved disastrous for Spain's economy, but also brought a political and territorial legacy. In 1812, the Liberal Cortes of Cadiz redacted a Constitution, bringing to the country a new form of government, and one by which future monarchs would have to rule, more or less willingly. The power vacuum between 1808 and 1814 had enabled local juntas in the Spanish colonies in America to rule independently. Starting as early as 1809, the continent started freeing itself from Spanish rule; by 1825 with the exceptions of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, and a number of Pacific Islands Spain had lost all its colonies in Latin America. The Trienio Liberal (1820-1823) At the end of the 19th century, Spain lost all of its remaining old colonies in the Caribbean and Asia-Pacific regions, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, Philippines, and a large number of Pacific islands (New Guinea was later sold to Germany) to the United States after unwittingly and unwillingly being thrust into the Spanish-American War of 1898. "The Disaster" of 1898, as the Spanish-American War was called, gave increased impetus to Spain's cultural revival (Generation of '98) in which there was much critical self examination, and relieved it from the burden of its last major colonies. However political stability in such a dispersed and variegated land, caught between pockets of modernity and large areas of extreme rural backwardness and strongly differentiated regional identities and deep divisions over legitimacy originating from the Napoleonic period, would elude the country for some decades yet, and was ultimately imposed only by a brutal dictatorship in 1939.
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The 20th century initially brought little peace; Spain played a minor part in the scramble for Africa, with the colonization of Western Sahara, Spanish Morocco and Equatorial Guinea. However the area it had occupied had an age old history of fighting Europeans. A poorly planned and led advance into the interior due to political pressure led to military disaster in Morocco in 1921. This contributed to discrediting the monarch and worsened political instability. A period of dictatorial rule under General Miguel Primo de Rivera (1923–1931) ended with the establishment of the Second Spanish Republic. The Republic offered political autonomy to the Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia (where the autonomy did not have any effect due to the civil war) and gave voting rights to women. In the elections in February 1936, the left-wing coalition Popular Front won a narrow victory over the right-wing National Front coalition, but tension continued to mount with the destruction of Church property and an increasing number of politically-motivated murders, including that of prominent right-wing leader José Calvo Sotelo. In July, a number of generals attempted a military takeover which they had been planning for months. The coup failed to topple the government and civil war (1936-39) ensued. After nearly three years of bitter struggle, Nationalist forces led by General Francisco Franco emerged victorious with the support of Germany and Italy. The Republican side was supported by the Soviet Union and Mexico, but was crucially left isolated through the British-led policy of Non-Intervention. The Spanish Civil War has been called the first battle of the Second World War. Spanish involvement in the Second World War was in fact a continuation of its Civil War, as the ideological conflicts involved had much in common, despite Franco's official policy of neutrality (and non-belligerency during the years of Axis success). As a result, over a hundred thousand highly motivated and experienced Spanish Civil War veterans also fought on both sides, throughout the Second World War in Europe, the Soviet Union and North Africa. Many of the most effective forces in the French Resistance were Spanish as were many of Général Leclerc's troops which led the liberation of Paris. Others, including some ex-Republican soldiers, fought as members of the German army against the Soviet Union, in the División Azul (Blue Division). After CEDA was dissolved in 1937, the only legal party under the Franco regime was the Falange party founded by José Antonio Primo de Rivera. Although its parades made it highly visible, it had received only 0.7 per cent of the vote in the 1936 election. It gained popularity as Spanish politics polarized under the Popular Front. The party emphasized anti-Communism, Catholicism, nationalism, and imperial expansion. After World War II, being one of few surviving right wing regimes in Europe, Spain was politically and economically isolated and was kept out of the United Nations until 1955, when it became strategically important for US president Eisenhower to establish a military presence in the Iberian peninsula. The USA, Eisenhower, signed a treaty with Franco in 1953 to build the military air base of Torrejon de Ardoz (this base had nuclear weapons) some 40 km northeast of Madrid, the naval base of Rota, Huelva (also with nuclear weapons in submarines), and the air base of Morón de la Frontera in Zaragoza. This opening to Spain was aided by Franco's opposition to communism. In the 1960s Spain began to enjoy economic growth (Spanish miracle) which gradually transformed it into a modern industrial economy with a thriving tourism sector. Growth continued well into the 1970s, with Franco's government going to great lengths to shield the Spanish people from the effects of the oil crisis. Upon the death of General Franco in November 1975, his personally-designated heir Prince Juan Carlos assumed the position of king and head of state. With the approval of the Spanish Constitution of 1978 and the arrival of democracy, some regions — Basque Country, Navarra— were given complete financial autonomy, and many — Basque Country, Catalonia, Galicia and Andalusia— were given some political autonomy, which was then soon extended to all Spanish regions, resulting in a quite decentralized territorial organization in Western Europe. Remaining dysfunctions, such as unlimited financial strain on contributor regions such as Catalonia make their people aim for a more equilibrated system, such as those enjoyed in Germany, where financial contribution to the whole can never exceed 4% of a Land's GDP. In the Basque Country moderate Basque nationalism coexist with radical nationalism supportive of the 'terrorist' group ETA. Adolfo Suárez González, Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo Bustelo (after an attempted coup d'état by Col. Tejero of the paramilitar police force Guardia Civil on 23 February 1981), Felipe González Márquez (when Spain joined NATO and European Union), José María Aznar López and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero have been presidents of the government of Spain. |
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On March 11, 2004, a series of bombs exploded in commuter trains in Madrid, Spain. This act of terror claimed the lives of 191 people and wounded 1,460 more, besides having a dramatic effect on the upcoming national elections.
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Spain Information: Inside
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