SpainEspaña

Rome spent two centuries conquering Hispania and then made it one of its most Latin provinces: the aqueduct of Segovia, the theatre of Mérida and the emperors Trajan and Hadrian all come from here. After the Visigoths, a North African army crossed at Gibraltar in 711 and within a decade most of the peninsula was al-Andalus. Córdoba became the largest city in western Europe; its Great Mosque, extended over two centuries, still stands with a Renaissance cathedral built into its middle.

Christian kingdoms grew from the northern mountains — Asturias, León, Castile, Navarre, Aragon — and pushed south for seven centuries, taking Toledo in 1085 and Seville in 1248. The marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon in 1469 joined the two largest crowns. In 1492 they took Granada, expelled Jews who would not convert, and sent Columbus west. The Inquisition, already founded in 1478, policed the converted.

Under the Habsburgs Charles V and Philip II, Spain ruled the Americas, much of Italy, the Low Countries and the Philippines. Silver from Potosí and Mexico passed through Seville and paid for wars across Europe; Madrid became the capital in 1561, and Philip built El Escorial as palace, monastery and tomb. The empire declined through the 17th century, a Bourbon king arrived after the War of the Spanish Succession (which also cost Spain Gibraltar in 1713), and Napoleon's invasion of 1808 set off the independence of most of Latin America.

The 19th century was a string of civil wars, coups and short-lived constitutions, and Spain lost its last major colonies — Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines — to the United States in 1898. The Second Republic of 1931 tried land reform, secular schools and regional autonomy; it split the country between left and right, town and church, worker and landowner.

In July 1936 army officers led by Francisco Franco rebelled. The Civil War drew in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy on Franco's side, the Soviet Union and the International Brigades on the Republic's. The bombing of the Basque town of Guernica in 1937 by German and Italian aircraft became the image of the war through Picasso's painting. Franco won in 1939 and ruled until his death in 1975, with executions, prison camps and repression of Catalan and Basque culture in the first decades, then a tourist and industrial boom from the 1960s.

Franco named Juan Carlos, grandson of the last king, as successor. Instead of continuing the regime, the king and reformist prime minister Adolfo Suárez steered the country to free elections in 1977 and a new constitution in 1978. An attempted coup on 23 February 1981, when Civil Guards held parliament at gunpoint, collapsed after the king opposed it on television. A 1977 amnesty law meant no one was tried for Franco-era crimes; debates over mass graves, monuments and Franco's tomb — moved out of the Valley of the Fallen in 2019 — continue.

The 1978 constitution created 17 autonomous communities, each with a parliament and wide powers over health, education, police in some cases, and language. Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia were recognised as 'historic nationalities'; the Basque Country and Navarre collect their own taxes under medieval charters.

Catalan, spoken by about ten million people, is the main language of schools in Catalonia and is used, in local forms, in Valencia and the Balearics. Basque (Euskara) is unrelated to any other living language and was nearly lost; ETA's armed campaign for Basque independence killed more than 800 people before it declared a ceasefire in 2011 and dissolved in 2018. Galician is close to Portuguese.

Catalonia's independence movement grew after 2010, culminating in a referendum ruled illegal on 1 October 2017, a short-lived declaration of independence and prison sentences for leaders, later pardoned and amnestied. For travellers the effect is visible in flags on balconies and in bilingual signs; the practical rule is simple — Spanish is understood everywhere, but local languages are the first language of many people you meet.

Spain's royal collections became the Prado, which opened in 1819 and holds the core of Spanish painting. El Greco, a Cretan working in Toledo, painted elongated saints in the 1580s–1610s. Diego Velázquez, court painter to Philip IV, made Las Meninas (1656), a picture about looking that painters still study. Francisco de Goya moved from tapestry designs to the Disasters of War and the Black Paintings he made on the walls of his house.

In the 20th century Spain supplied a disproportionate share of modern art: Pablo Picasso (born in Málaga), Joan Miró (Barcelona), Salvador Dalí (Figueres) and Juan Gris. Madrid's 'golden triangle' — the Prado, the Reina Sofía and the Thyssen-Bornemisza — lies within a 15-minute walk.

Architecture layers every period: Roman bridges, Moorish palaces, Gothic cathedrals in Burgos, León and Seville, Plateresque façades in Salamanca, Baroque churches. Barcelona's modernisme, Catalonia's take on Art Nouveau, peaked with Antoni Gaudí, whose Sagrada Família has been under construction since 1882 and is being completed with private donations and ticket money. Frank Gehry's Guggenheim (1997) turned Bilbao into a model for cities using architecture to reinvent themselves.

Spanish food is regional first. The Basque Country built modern Spain's culinary reputation — its gastronomic societies, pintxo counters and chefs of the 'new Basque cuisine' from the 1970s, followed by Ferran Adrià's El Bulli in Catalonia, which made Spain the centre of avant-garde cooking around 2000. Galicia is seafood, Castile roast lamb and suckling pig, Valencia rice, Andalusia fried fish, cold soups and ham.

Tapas began as small bites served with a drink; in Granada, León and parts of Madrid they still come free. The evening crawl — one drink and one dish in each of two or three bars — is the social unit. Markets such as Madrid's San Miguel and Barcelona's Boqueria have become food halls; neighbourhood markets are where locals shop.

Spain has the world's largest vineyard area. Rioja and Ribera del Duero dominate reds, Rías Baixas makes Albariño, Penedès makes cava, and Jerez and Sanlúcar make sherry, aged in solera systems. Olive oil is the base of everything; Spain produces around 40–45% of the world's supply in a normal year.

Spain is largely secular in daily life, yet its calendar is shaped by Catholic feasts. Holy Week brings brotherhoods (cofradías) carrying floats of Christ and the Virgin through the streets, in Seville through the night of Maundy Thursday. The pointed hoods of the penitents predate and have nothing to do with the American Ku Klux Klan.

Every town has its fiesta: Valencia burns giant satirical figures at Fallas in March, Seville dances sevillanas at the April Fair, Pamplona runs bulls through the streets for San Fermín, Buñol throws tomatoes at La Tomatina. Bullfighting survives in the south and centre but is banned in the Canaries and contested elsewhere; attendance has fallen for decades.

Flamenco grew in 18th- and 19th-century Andalusia from Roma (gitano), Andalusian and older musical traditions; UNESCO listed it in 2010. Its heart is cante (song), with guitar, dance and handclaps (palmas). The best places to hear it are small tablaos and peñas in Seville's Triana, Jerez and Granada's Sacromonte, not dinner-show halls.