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The history of Spain is a compendium of influences from the different cultures
that have lived in the country. The first settlers on the Peninsula were the Celts
and the Iberians. The first testimonials written about the country date back to
this period. It is said that Hispania (the name the Romans used to describe the
Peninsula) is a word of Semitic origin from Hispalis (Seville). From the year
1100 A.D. and until the middle of the 3rd century A.D., commercial and cultural
contact with high Mediterranean civilisations was held with the Phoenicians and
Greeks. At the end of this era, both civilisations were taken over by the Carthaginians
and Romans, respectively. The Roman presence in Hispania lasted for seven centuries,
during which time the basic borders of the Peninsula in relation to other European
towns were set up. In addition to territorial administration, many more institutions
were inherited from Rome such as the concept of family, Latin as a language, religion
and law. At the start of the 5th century new settlers from the North arrive and
settle on the Peninsula: the Visigoths in the interior and the Swabians on the
West. This Germanic people saw themselves as the continuators of the weakened
Imperial power. Integration between Hispanic-Germanics was a rapid process, with
the exception of the Northeast of the peninsula, inhabited by Basques, Cantabrians
and Asturians, who resisted the infiltration of the Romans, Visigoths and later
the Muslims. The decomposition of the Visigoth state apparatus would lead to the
successive infiltration of Arab and Berber troops from the other side of the Straits
of Gibraltar at the beginning of the 8th century. In the middle of the 8th, century
the Muslims had completed occupation and Cordoba became the centre of the flourishing
Andalusian state. The Arab presence in Spain would last for almost seven centuries
and leave an indelible mark on the Spanish cultural heritage. Following a long
period of peaceful coexistence, the small Christian strongholds in the North of
the Peninsula took on a leading role in the Reconquest, which ended with the capture
of Granada in 1492 under the reign of the Catholic King and Queen, traditionally
considered the founders of peninsular unity and the imperial management of the
Spanish revival. Also during the reign of the Catholic King and Queen and under
their auspice, Columbus discovered the New Continent (America), new boundary of
what would be the largest Western empire. The 16th century represents the zenith
of Spanish hegemony in the world, a process that would last until the middle of
the 17th century. With the Catholic King and Queen, and in particular with Phillip
II, what was the prototype of the absolutist modern State in the 16th century
was fully established. Following the death of Charles II, the last of the Austrians,
who died without having had children, Phillip V inaugurated the dynasty of the
Borbons of Spain. The Spanish Enlightenment is characterised as being an era of
exterior harmony, reformations and interior development. The crisis of the Old
Order opened the doorway to the Napoleonic invasion. The War of Independence was
a war against the French invasion, but also a revolutionary war due to the decisive
involvement of the people and the clear formation of a national conscience that
would later shape the 1812 Constitution. The Courts of Cadiz thereby enacted one
of the first Constitutions of the world which ratified that sovereignty would
reside in the nation. The conflict between liberalists and absolutists, or in
other words, between two different ways of perceiving the establishment of the
state, would be one of the longest Spanish conflicts throughout the 19th century.
The brief reign of Amadeo de Saboya, the first republican experience and the subsequent
restoration of the monarchy, under the rule of Alfonso XII, take Spain to the
beginning of the 20th century with a series of serious unresolved problems that
intensify following the definitive loss of the last strongholds of the colonial
empire: Cuba and the Philippines. Despite the interruption of the First World
War in which Spain remained neutral and following the dictatorship of Primo de
Rivera, the monarchical crisis returns, resulting in the exile of King Alfonso
XIII. The ballot box is introduced into Spain and with it the first democratic
experience of the 20th century: the second Republic, a brief attempt to introduce
the reformations the country needed, frustrated by General Franco's military rising
and the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936. The military victory of General Franco
gave way to a long dictatorial period that would last until 1975; it was an era
characterised by an iron control of interior politics and isolation from the international
environment, which did not however prevent an incipient economic development in
the sixties. Following the death of General Franco, the Spanish people peacefully
made the transition from dictatorship to democracy in a process known as 'the
Spanish model'. Don Juan Carlos I, as King of the Spanish people, became the chief
of a social and democratic state of law, which moulded the Constitution of 1978.