Spain (Spanish: España), officially known as the Kingdom of Spain (Spanish: Reino de España), is a Southern European country inhabited by more than 40 million people, home of the Conquistadores and the first language of over 400 million people, and, including the Canary Islands, is the southernmost country in Europe. It is a member of NATO and The European Union.
The modern day Spanish trace their descent from many peoples, including but not limited to Celts, Romans, Greeks, Phoenicians, Visigoths, Suebians, Jews, and Muslims, and the modern nation-state was formed with the union of the Kingdom of Castille and the Kingdom of Aragon in 1469 by the marriage of their respective monarchs, Queen Isabella and King Fernando and the siege of Granada in 1492, which would complete the Reconquista and end 700 years of Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula. Through the discovery and later conquest of the Western Hemisphere that same year, an empire grew and soon became the one of the most powerful on the planet until its eventual decline over the course of the 1800's, culminating in a war with the United States at the very end of the century.note This, along with the failure of the conquest of Morocco and the feuds between political factions led to the last and bloodiest of five Civil Wars. The winner of the war, Francisco Franco, ruled the country as a dictator for no less than 36 years until his death in 1975note , after which the current Constitutional Monarchy was installed, first led by Juan Carlos I before Felipe VI took over after his abdication in 2014. Spain thus became one of the few examples in the modern day in which a monarchy is restored after being overthrown for quite some time, the other being Cambodia (although to be fair, the Spanish monarchy never actually renounced their rights for their country when the Republicans took over in 1931).
Spain is bordered by France and the tiny Andorra in the north-east, Portugal in the west, and the British territory of Gibraltar in the south. It is bathed by the Mediterranean Sea at its east, the North Atlantic Ocean at the west and north and the Straits of Gibraltar at the south, where the Mediterranean joins the Atlantic. Most of Spain is located in the Iberian Peninsula, but the country also has a few overseas territories, the biggest being the Canary Islands off the western coast of Africa, followed by the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea, as well as the North African cities of Ceuta and Melilla, which border Morocco.
Spain's Government consists of a Prime Minister (Presidente del Gobierno or president of the government) elected democratically by Parliament upon nomination by the King, who is the Head of the Cabinet (Consejo de Ministros or council of ministers). He resides in the Moncloa Palace, Madrid.
Geography
History of Spain
- Punic Wars
- Lusitanian Wars
- Celtiberian Wars
- Roman Hispania
- Visigothic Spain
- Moorish Spain
- Spanish Reconquista
- Battle of Clavijo
- The Kingdom of Spain
- Italian Wars
- The Spanish Inquisition (which nobody expected)
- Spanish Age of Discovery
- Spanish Conquest of America
- Habsburg Spain
- The Eighty Years' War
- Battle of Lepanto
- The War of the Spanish Armada
- War of the Spanish Succession
- War of Jenkins' Ear
- Bourbon Spain
- Spanish-American War
- Spanish Civil War
- The Franco Regime
General Spain
- Toros y Flamenco, the stereotypical Spain
- Spexico, Ambiguously Spain (And Mexico)
- New Spanish Armada
- Francisco Franco, that man. Yes, he is still dead.
- Spaghetti Western, made in Italy but filmed in Spain (and set in Mexico or the American Southwest).
- Spanish Films
- Culture of Spain - about politics and TV
- Spanish Language
- Spanish Naming Conventions
- Spanish Literature
- Spanish Media
- Spanish Series
Spain in popular culture
- Don Quixote: The most famous Spanish novel of all time, takes place in Spain. Actually, it codified a lot of tropes that allowed the modern Western literature to flourish after their long decline in the Middle Ages.
- The Barber of Seville by Pierre de Beaumarchais.
- Carmen by Georges Bizet.
- Un Chien Andalou
- Diego Vélazquez
- Francisco de Goya
- Pablo Picasso
- Salvador Dalí.
- The Sun Also Rises
- For Whom the Bell Tolls
- George Orwell wrote Homage to Catalonia about his experiences during the Spanish Civil War.
- The Private Life of Don Juan
- The Story of Ferdinand and the Disney cartoon The Story Of Ferdinand
- The Looney Tunes cartoon Bully for Bugs
- Suddenly, Last Summer
- El Cid
- In Le Bossu and its 1959 film adaptation, the hero hides in Spain with the baby girl he saves from a certain death, plotting revenge for her father for over a decade before coming back to France.
- Mr. Arkadin
- For Your Eyes Only
- Sketches of Spain by Miles Davis.
- The comic strip Mortadelo y Filemón is Spanish and thus takes place in Spain most of the time.
- Zipi y Zape: A Spanish comic strip where the adventures of the protagonists also take place in Spain.
- Suske en Wiske: The album "De Stierentemmer" takes place in Spain.
- The Asterix album Asterix in Spain takes place in Hispania (the Roman name for Spain).
- The Monty Python sketch "The Spanish Inquisition" features the Spanish Inquisition interrupting everything.
- Manuel the waiter in Fawlty Towers hails from Barcelona.
- The films of Pedro Almodóvar.
- Land of Freedom
- Guillermo del Toro is Mexican, but has set a few films in Spain. The Devil's Backbone is set during the Spanish Civil War. Pan's Labyrinth is set a few years after the Civil War, in which the last vestiges of Republicans are being hunted down by Franco's regime. Prepare your tissues before watching these two.
- The terrifying and tearjerking The Orphanage, executive produced by Guillermo del Toro and directed by Spaniard Juan Antonio Bayona.
- The equally terrifying Julia's Eyes, also produced by del Toro and starring the same actress, Belén Rueda, and directed by Guillem Morales.
- Barcelona
- The Woody Allen film Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
- The first scene of The World Is Not Enough is set in Bilbao.
- The Spanish Apartment ("L' Auberge Espagnole")
- Digital Fortress by Dan Brown presents an inaccurate version of Spain, and quite an insulting one at that. Namely, it presents Spain as being a Wretched Hive full of crimes and having an inadequate healthcare system. Spain has one of the best healthcare institutions in Europe (and indeed the world) and its living standards are very high too. Maybe he confused it with some Banana Republic in the Americas.
- Vantage Point is set entirely in Spain, but, like above, is less about Spain and more about what Americans think about Spain. It depicts the Spanish police as terribly inept compared to the mighty Yankees who could easily borrow/destroy/steal Spanish properties as if they're their own, and the Spaniards seem to treat the US president as their own (they don't)
- The third act of Fast & Furious 6 is set in Spain.
- The Brave's sixth episode is in Seville as the protagonists try to help a Russian defector and his daughter evade capture and find safe passage to America.
- Resident Evil 4 takes place in Spain, though Capcom keep denying it is Spain and saying that it is a Castilian speaking country of Europe that is not Spain, even though the in-game map places the village in the center of the Iberian Peninsula next to Madrid and the currency in the game is the Peseta, the former currency of Spain before it switched to the Euro. The Ganados all speak Spanish with a Mexican accent and Luis Sera also speaks English with a Mexican accent despite being a former cop from Madrid.
- El Ministerio del Tiempo takes place mostly in Spain, as the main characters are part of a Ministry in charge of protecting Spain's history from being manipulated.
- Carlota Joaquina, Princesa do Brasil revolves around the historical Spanish princess of the same name during her stay in Brazil, though Spain itself is featured briefly at the start of the movie.
- Dagon, 2001 horror movie is set in Inboca (loose translation of Innsmouth), a fictional coast village of Galicia.
- Spain has won the Eurovision Song Contest twice: in 1968 with the song "La, la, la" by Maissel, and then a year later in 1969 with "Vivo cantando" by Salomé, the latter being part of a joint four-way tie.
- Drag Race España is the Spanish adaptation of RuPaul's Drag Race, featuring a cast of Spain-based drag queens and hosted by Supremme De Luxe.
- Pokémon Scarlet and Violet's Paldea is based on the Iberian Peninsula, but mostly on Spain.
- The 2016 Assassin's Creed film takes place mostly in Madrid in Present Day and in Granada and Seville in the 1491-1492 scenes.
The Spanish Flag
Coat of arms of Spain
, a pair of promontories guarding the Strait of Gibraltar, surrounded by ribbons which read "Plus Ultra" ("Further Beyond" in Latin) and topped by the crowns of the Holy Roman Empire and the Spanish Kingdom, the former alluding to Emperor Charles V, also titled King Charles I of Spain, under whose reign Spain expanded its territories to South America and the Philippines.
Spanish national anthem
Government
- Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy
- Monarch: Felipe VI
- Prime Minister (President of the Government): Pedro Sánchez
- President of the Senate: Pedro Rollán
- President of the Congress of Deputies: Francina Armengol
- President of the Supreme Court: Francisco Marín Castán
Miscellaneous
- Capital and largest city: Madrid
- Population: 47,450,795
- Area: 505,990 sq km (195,360 sq mi) (51st)
- Currency: Euro (€) (EUR)
- ISO-3166-1 Code: ES
- Country calling code: 34
- Highest point: Teide (3715 m/12,188 ft) (46th)
- Lowest point: Atlantic Ocean (3,646 m/11,962 ft) (-) and Mediterranean Sea (5,267 m/17,280 ft) (-)
