Page 57 - Northern Spain & Portugal: Pilgrimage into the Past

Historical Overview of Spain

Archaeological evidence suggests that Paleolithic humans lived in Spain perhaps half a million
years ago. By 12,000 B.C., prehistoric man had decorated the Altamira stone caves in the north
of Spain with colorful paintings. These prehistoric illustrations are marveled at today for their
surprising technical skill.

During the Neolithic period, rudimentary stone megaliths were built by the Iberians, who
probably migrated from North Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar about 3000 B.C. The most
sophisticated stone pillars, including the Stonehenge-like talayotic monuments on the
Balearics, date from 1100 B.C.

It was at around this time, too, that the Phoenicians passed through and established colonies
in Andalusia, notably at Cadiz, Malaga, and Tartessus. Greeks, Celts, Carthaginians, Romans,
and Visigoths also invaded the country before the Moors conquered all of Spain, except its
northernmost region, in A.D. 711. At this pivotal point in history, Spain, which had been a
Christian land since the 1st century A.D., was suddenly forced to adopt a Muslim culture.
Though the Moors created in Spain an enlightened civilization—which made enormous
contributions to architecture, the arts, medicine, science, and higher learning—they were
at constant, violent odds with the Christians for the next 700 years. The country’s internal
dissension around Spanish Islam invited a steady Christian conquest from the north.
Eventually, as the Christian Reconquest pushed southward, only Andalusia remained under
Muslim rule. That, too, fell in the late 15th century, when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella
drove out the last enclave of Moors from Granada. Once again, Spain was united.

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history ensued. The cruel court of the Inquisition, which had been instituted in 1478 by
Isabella and Ferdinand, continued on its zealous crusade to discover and punish converted
Jews and later Muslims, who were insincere. Christians also were investigated for heresy.
The court lasted until 1834. In 1492, the same year as the reconquest of Granada, the Catholic
monarchs expelled all Jews who would not convert. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic Ocean,
Christopher Columbus, sponsored by the same monarchs, was opening a new era for Spain by
discovering America.
In the age of discovery and colonization, Spain amassed tremendous wealth and a vast colonial
empire through the conquest of Peru by Pizarro (1532-33) and of Mexico by Cortes (1519-21).
The Spanish Hapsburg monarchy became for a time the most powerful in the world. In 1588,
Philip II sent his invincible Armada to invade England, but its destruction cost Spain its
supremacy on the seas and paved the way for England’s colonization of America.

Spain’s subsequent military losses in the Thirty Years’ War, which ended in 1643, further
contributed to its decline as a powerful nation. The War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14)
resulted in Spain’s loss of Belgium, Luxembourg, Milan, Sardinia, and Naples. Its colonial
empire in the Americas and the Philippines vanished in wars and revolutions during the
18th and 19th centuries. Cuban independence at the end of the Spanish-America War in 1898
spelled the end of the Spanish overseas empire.

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