Modern humans in the form of Cro-Magnons began arriving in the Iberian Peninsula from North of
the Pyrenees some 35.000 years ago. The most conspicuous sign of prehistoric human settlements are the famous paintings
in the Northern Spanish cave of Altamira, which were done c. 15,000 BC and are regarded as paramount instances
of cave art.
The Greeks, who founded the first Greek colonies in the 9th century BC are responsible for the name Iberia,
apparently after the river Iber (Ebro). In the 6th century BC, the Carthaginians arrived in Iberia, struggling
first with the Greeks, and shortly after, with the newly arriving Romans for control of the Western Mediterranean.
Their most important colony was Carthago Nova (Latin name of modern day Cartagena).
The Visigoths, having sacked Rome two years earlier, arrived in the region in 412 AD, founding the
Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse (in the south of modern France) and gradually expanded their influence into the
Iberian peninsula. The Visigothic Kingdom shifted its capital to Toledo and reached a high point during the
reign of Leovigild (568 - 586 AD).
The Arab Islamic conquest dominated most of North Africa by 640 AD. In 711 an Islamic Berber and Arab raiding party,
led by
Tariq ibn-Ziyad, was sent to Iberia to intervene in a civil war in the Visigothic Kingdom. Crossing the
Strait of Gibraltar, they won a decisive victory in the summer of 711 when the Visigothic King Roderic
was defeated and by 718 the Muslims were in control of nearly the whole Iberian Peninsula. During the next 750 years
independent Muslim states were established and the entire area of Muslim control became known as Al-Andalus.
Meanwhile the Christian kingdoms in the north of the peninsula began the long and slow Christian recovery, a process
called the Reconquista, which was concluded in 1492 with the fall of Granada.
The year 1492 was the starting point of the modern history of Spain, with the expulsion of the Moors and the
successful voyage of Christopher Columbus to the New World. The Spanish Empire was launched, as was the
Spanish Inquisition; Jews and Muslims who refused to convert were expelled from the country.
From 1500 to the 1650s Spain was the most powerful state in Europe; it controlled the largest overseas empire in the
world for three centuries, including possessions in the Americas stretching from California to Patagonia, as well as
colonies in the western Pacific, among them the Philippines. Spanish literature and fine arts, scholarship and
philosophy flourished during the 16th and 17th centuries.
Spain's European wars led to economic damage and the latter part of the 17th century saw a marked decline of power,
which ended with the relegation of Spain to the status of a second rate power with a reduced influence in European
affairs.
The end of the 18th and the start of the 19th centuries saw turmoil unleashed throughout Europe by the French
revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, and the military occupation of Spain by the Bonapartist regime.
Following a period of growing political instability in the early 20th century, in 1936 Spain was plunged into a
bloody civil war. The war ended in a nationalist dictatorship, led by Francisco Franco, which controlled
the Spanish government until 1975.
The death of Franco in 1975 resulted in the return of the Bourbon monarchy headed by Prince Juan Carlos.
While tensions remain (for example, with Muslim immigrants and in the Basque region), modern Spain has seen the
development of a robust, modern democracy.