History of Spain

The modern Kingdom of Spain is the successor of Habsburg Spain, which unified a number of disparate predecessor kingdoms in 1500; its modern form of a constitutional monarchy was introduced in 1812, the current democratic constitution dates to 1978.

The Iberian Peninsula was first entered by anatomically modern humans at about 32,000 years ago. Spanish prehistory extends to the pre-Roman Iron Age cultures that controlled most of Iberia: those of the Iberians, Celtiberians, Tartessians, Lusitanians and Vascones and trading settlements of Phoenicians, Greeks and Carthaginians on theMediterranean coast.

Hispania was the name used for the peninsula under Roman rule from the 2nd century BC. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, parts of Hispania came under the control of the Germanic tribes of Vandals, Suebiand Visigoths.

The Visigothic Kingdom conquered all of Hispania and ruled it until the early 8th century, when the peninsula fell to theMuslim conquests. The Muslim state in Iberia came to be known as Al-Andalus. After a period of Muslim dominance, themedieval history of Spain is dominated by the long Christian Reconquista or "reconquest" of the Iberian Peninsula from Muslim rule. The Reconquista gathered momentum during the 12th century, leading to the establishment of the Christian kingdoms of Portugal, Aragon, Castile and Navarre and by 1250, had reduced Muslim control to the Emirate of Granada in the south-east of the peninsula. Muslim rule in Granada survived until 1492, when it fell to the Catholic Monarchs.

Soon after the completion of the Reconquista, the kingdoms of Spain were united under Habsburg rule in 1506. At the same time, the Spanish Empire began to expand to the New World across the ocean, marking the beginning of the Spanish Golden Age of Spain, during which, from the early 1500s to the 1650s, Habsburg Spain was among the most powerful states in Europe.

In this time, Spain was involved in all major European wars, including the Italian Wars, the Eighty Years' War, the Thirty Years' War and the Franco-Spanish War. In the later 17th century, however, Spanish power began to decline, and after the death of the last Habsburg ruler, the War of the Spanish Succession ended with the relegation of Spain, now under Bourbon rule, to the status of a second-rate power with a reduced influence in European affairs. The so-called Bourbon Reformsattempted the renewal of state institutions, with some success, but as the century ended, instability set in with the French Revolution and the Peninsular War, so that Spain never regained its former strength.

Fragmented by the war, Spain at the beginning of the 19th century was destabilised as different political parties representing "liberal", "reactionary" and "moderate" groups throughout the remainder of the century fought for and won short-lived control without any being sufficiently strong to bring about lasting stability. The former Spanish empire overseas quickly disintegrated with the Latin American wars of independence and eventually the loss of what old colonies remained in the Spanish–American War of 1898.

A tenuous balance between liberal and conservative forces was struck in constitutional monarchy during 1874–1931 but brought no lasting solution, and Spain descended into Civil War between the Republican and the Nationalist factions.

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The war ended in a nationalist dictatorship, led by Francisco Franco, which controlled the Spanish government until 1975. The post-war decades were relatively stable (with the notable exception of an armed independence movement in the Basque Country), and the country experienced rapid economic growth in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Only with the death of Franco in 1975 did Spain return to Bourbon constitutional monarchy headed by Prince Juan Carlos and to democracy. Spain entered theEuropean Economic Community in 1986 (transformed into the European Union with the Maastricht Treaty of 1992), and the Eurozone in 1999. The financial crisis of 2007–08 ended a decade of economic boom and Spain entered a recession and debt crisis and remains plagued by very high unemployment and a weak economy.