History of Spain

The history of Spain dates to contact the pre-Roman peoples of the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula made with the Greeks and Phoenicians and the first writing systems known as Paleohispanic scripts were developed. During Classical Antiquity, the peninsula was the site of multiple successive colonizations of Greeks, Carthaginians, and Romans. Native peoples of the peninsula, such as the Tartessos people, intermingled with the colonizers to create a uniquely Iberian culture. The Romans referred to the entire Peninsula as Hispania, from where the modern name of Spain originates. The region was divided up, at various times, into different Roman provinces. As was the rest of the Western Roman Empire, Spain was subject to the numerous invasions of Germanic tribes during the 4th and 5th centuries CE, resulting in the loss of Roman rule and the establishment of Germanic kingdoms, most notably the Visigoths and the Suebi, marking the beginning of the Middle Ages in Spain.

Various Germanic kingdoms were established on the Iberian peninsula in the early 5th century CE in the wake of the fall of Roman control; germanic control lasted about 200 years until the Umayyad conquest of Hispania began in 711 and marked the introduction of Islam to the Iberian Peninsula. The region became known as Al-Andalus, and excepting for the small Kingdom of Asturias, a Christian rump state in the north of Iberia, the region remained under the control of Muslim-lead states for much of the Early Middle Ages, a period known as the Islamic Golden Age. By the time of the High Middle Ages, Christians from the north gradually expanded their control over Iberia, a period known as the Reconquista. As they expanded southward, a number of Christian kingdoms were formed, including the Kingdom of Navarre (a Basque kingdom centered on the city of Pamplona), the Kingdom of León (in the northwest, originally an offshoot of, and later supplanting, the Kingdom of Asturias), the Kingdom of Castile (in central Iberia), and the Kingdom of Aragon (in Catalonia and surrounding areas of Eastern Iberia). The history of these kingdoms and other are intertwined and they eventually consolidated into two roughly equivalent polities, the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon, roughly occupying the central and eastern thirds of the Iberian Peninsula respectively. During this period, the southwestern portion of the Peninsula developed into the Kingdom of Portugal, and developed its own distinct national identity separate from that of Spain.

The early modern period is generally dated from the union of the Crowns of Castile and Aragon under the Catholic Monarchs, Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon in 1469. This marked what is historiographically considered the foundation of unified Spain, although technically Castile and Aragon continued to maintain independent institutions for several centuries. The conquest of Granada, and the first voyage of Columbus, both in 1492, made that year a critical inflection point in Spanish history. The victory over Granada marked the official end of the Reconquista, as it was the last Muslim-ruled kingdom in Iberia, and the voyages of the various explorers and Conquistadors of Spain during the subsequent decades helped establish a Spanish colonial empire which was among the largest the world had ever seen. King Carlos I, grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella through their daughter Joanna, established the Spanish Habsburg dynasty. It was under the rule of his son Philip II of Spain that the Spanish Golden Age flourished, the Spanish Empire reached its territorial and economic peak, and his palace at El Escorial became the center of artistic flourishing. However, Philip's rule also saw the calamitous destruction of the Spanish Armada, coupled with financial mismanagement that led to numerous state bankruptcies and independence of the Northern Netherlands, which marked the beginning of the slow decline of Spanish influence in Europe.

Spain's power was further tested by their participation in the Eighty Years' War, whereby they tried and failed to recapture the newly independent Dutch Republic, and the Thirty Years' War, which resulted in continued decline of Habsburg power in favor of French Bourbon dynasty