Spain

Spain, also called Kingdom of Spain, is a transcontinental sovereign country, a member of the European Union, constituted as a social and democratic State of law, whose form of government is the parliamentary monarchy. Its territory, with its capital in Madrid, is organized into seventeen autonomous communities, formed in turn by fifty provinces; and two autonomous cities.

Spain is located both in the south of Western Europe and in the north of Africa. In Europe, it occupies most of the Iberian Peninsula, known as mainland Spain, and the Balearic Islands (in the western Mediterranean Sea); In Africa, there are the cities of Ceuta (in the Tingitana peninsula) and Melilla (in the cape of Tres Forcas), the Canary Islands (in the northeast Atlantic Ocean) and other Mediterranean possessions called "squares of sovereignty". The municipality of Llivia, in the Pyrenees, constitutes an exclave completely surrounded by French territory. The set of territories is completed by a series of islands and islets off the peninsular coasts. It has an area of ​​505,370 km², making it the fourth largest country on the continent, after Russia, Ukraine and France.and with an average altitude of 650 meters above sea level, one of the most mountainous countries in Europe. Its population exceeds 47 million inhabitants, although the population density is low. The peninsular territory shares land borders with France and with Andorra to the north, with Portugal to the west and with the British territory of Gibraltar to the south. In its African territories, it shares land and sea borders with Morocco. It shares with France the sovereignty over the island of Pheasants at the mouth of the Bidasoa river and five Pyrenean facerías .

In accordance with the Constitution, and according to its article 3.1, “Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State. All Spaniards have the duty to know it and the right to use it." In 2012, it was the mother tongue of 82% of Spaniards. According to article 3.2, "the other Spanish languages ​​will also be official in the respective Autonomous Communities of in accordance with its Statutes”. The Spanish or Castilian language, the second most spoken mother tongue in the world and with almost 600 million Spanish speakers,It is one of the most important legacies of the cultural and historical heritage of Spain in the world. Culturally belonging to Latin Europe and heir to a vast Greco-Roman influence, Spain is also home to the world's fourth largest collection of UNESCO World Heritage Sites .

It is a developed country - it enjoys the second highest life expectancy in the world - and high income, whose GDP places the Spanish economy in fourteenth position in the world (2021). Thanks to its unique characteristics, Spain is a great power tourism and stands as the second most visited country in the world —more than 83 million tourists in 2019— and the second country in the world in economic income from international tourism. It has a very high human development index (0.904), according to the 2020 report of the UN Development Program.Spain also has a notable international projection through its membership of multiple international organizations such as the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the OECD, NATO and the European Union —included within from this to the Schengen area and the Eurozone, in addition to being a de facto member of the G20.

The first confirmed presence of hominids of the Homo genus dates back to 1.2 million years before the present, as evidenced by the discovery of a still unclassified Homo mandible at the Atapuerca site. In the 3rd century  bc  . C., the Roman intervention in the peninsula took place, which led to a subsequent conquest of what would later become Hispania. In the Middle Ages, the area was conquered by different Germanic peoples and by the Muslims, who had a presence for more than seven centuries. It is not until the fifteenth  century, with the dynastic union of Castile and Aragon and the culmination of the Reconquest, together with the subsequent annexation of Navarre, when one can speak of the foundation of "Spain", as it was called abroad. Already in the Modern Age , the Spanish monarchs dominated the first global overseas empire, which encompassed territories on five continents, leaving a vast cultural and linguistic heritage around the globe. at the beginning of the nineteenth, after successive wars in Latin America, lost most of its territories in America, increasing this situation with the disaster of 98. During this century, there would also be a war against the French invader, a series of civil wars, an ephemeral republic replaced again for a constitutional monarchy and the country's modernization process. In the first third of the 20th  century , a constitutional republic was proclaimed. A failed military coup d'état caused the outbreak of a civil war, the end of which gave way to the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, ending with his death in 1975, when a transition towards democracy began, whose climax was the drafting , ratification in a referendum and promulgation of the 1978 Constitution.Significantly increased during the so-called "Spanish economic miracle", the economic and social development of the country has continued throughout the current democratic period.

Place names

Origin of the word Hispania

The name "Spain" derives phonetically from Hispania , the name by which the Romans geographically designated the whole of the Iberian Peninsula, an alternative term to the name Iberia , preferred by Greek authors to refer to the same space. However, the fact that the term Hispania is not of Latin root has led to the formulation of several theories about its origin, some of them controversial.

Hispania comes from the Phoenician i-spn-ya , a term whose use is documented from the second millennium BC, in Ugaritic inscriptions. The Phoenicians were the first non-Iberian civilization to arrive on the peninsula to expand their trade and founded, among others, Gadir, present-day Cádiz, the oldest inhabited city in Western Europe. The Romans took the name of the vanquished Carthaginians , interpreting the prefix i as «coast», «island» or «land», with already meaning «region». The lexeme spn , which in Phoenician and also in Hebrew can be read as saphan, translated as "rabbits" (actually "hideas", rabbit-sized animals widespread in Africa and the Fertile Crescent). The Romans therefore gave Hispania the meaning of "land abundant in rabbits" , a usage picked up by Cicero, Caesar, Pliny the Elder , Cato, Tito Livio and, in particular, Catullus, who refers to Hispania as a peninsula. cuniculosa (on some coins minted in Hadrian's time there were personifications of Hispania as a seated lady with a rabbit at her feet), in reference to the time she lived in Hispania.

On the Phoenician origin of the term, the historian and Hebraist Cándido María Trigueros proposed a different theory at the Real Academia de las Buenas Letras in Barcelona in 1767, based on the fact that the Phoenician alphabet (like the Hebrew) lacked vowels. . Thus spn ( sphan in Hebrew and Aramaic) would mean "the north" in Phoenician, a name that the Phoenicians would have taken when they reached the Iberian Peninsula bordering the African coast, seeing it to the north of their route, so i-spn-ya It would be the "northland" . For his part, according to Jesús Luis Cunchillos in his Elementary Phoenician Grammar (2000), the root of the term span is spy, which means "forging" or "beating metals". Thus, i-spn-ya would be "the land in which metals are forged" .

Apart from the theory of Phoenician origin, which is the most accepted despite the fact that the precise meaning of the term is still the subject of discussion, various hypotheses have been proposed throughout history, based on apparent similarities and more or less related meanings. At the beginning of the Modern Age, Antonio de Nebrija, in line with Isidore of Seville, proposed its autochthonous origin as a deformation of the Iberian word Hispalis , which would mean "the city of the West" and that, as Hispalis is the main city of the peninsula, the Phoenicians and then the Romans gave its name to all its territory. Later, Juan Antonio Moguel proposed in the 19th century  that the term Hispaniait could come from the Basque word Izpania , which would come to mean "that the sea splits" as it is composed of the words iz and pania or bania which means "divide" or "part". In this regard, Miguel de Unamuno declared in 1902 : «The only difficulty I find [...] is that, according to some of my countrymen, the name Spain derives from the Basque ezpaña , lip, alluding to the position that our peninsula has in Europe». Other hypotheses supposed that both Hispalis and Hispaniathey were derivations of the names of two legendary kings of Spain, Hispalus and his son Hispan or Hispano, son and grandson, respectively, of Hercules .

Evolution of the word Hispania to Spain

From the Visigothic period, the term Hispania , until then used geographically, began to be used also with a political connotation, as shown by the use of the expression Laus Hispaniae to describe the history of the peoples of the peninsula in the chronicles of Isidore of Seville. .You are, oh Hispania, sacred and always happy mother of princes and peoples, the most beautiful of all the lands that extend from the West to India. You, by right, are now the queen of all the provinces, from whom not only the sunset, but also the East, borrow their lights. You are the honor and ornament of the world and the most illustrious portion of the earth, in which the glorious fertility of the Gothic nation greatly rejoices and splendidly flourishes. With justice nature enriched you and was more indulgent with you with the abundance of all created things, you are rich in fruits, copious grapes, joyous harvests... You burn in the tropical heat of the sun, nor do you numb glacial rigors, but, girded by the temperate zone of the sky,

Isidore of Seville , Saint ( 6th–7th century ). Historia de regibus Gothorum, Vandalorum et Suevorum [ History of the Kings of the Goths, Vandals, and Sueves ]. Trad. by Rodriguez Alonso (1975). Lion. pp. 169 and 171 .

The word Spain derives phonetically from Hĭspanĭa , regularly through the palatalization of /n/ in /ñ/ before Latin yod -ĭa , the loss of the initial H- (which occurs in late Latin) and the opening of the ĭ in initial position to /e/ . However, Spain cannot be considered the Spanish translation of the Latin word Hispania , since modern usage designates a different extension.

Historical use of the term Spain

Use of the term Spain until the Middle Ages

The evolution of the word Spain is consistent with other cultural uses. Until the Renaissance, the toponyms that referred to national and regional territories were relatively unstable, both from the semantic point of view and from the point of view of their precise geographical delimitation. Thus, in Roman times Hispania corresponded to the territory they occupied on the peninsula, the Balearic Islands and, in the 3rd century , part of North Africa —the Mauritania Tingitana, which was included in the year 285 in the Diocese Hispaniarum— .

In the Visigoth domain, King Leovigildo, after unifying most of the territory of peninsular Spain at the end of the s. vi , is titled King of Gallaecia, Hispania, and Narbonensis . San Isidoro de Sevilla narrates the search for peninsular unity, finally culminating in the reign of Suintila in the first half of the s. vii and there is talk of "Mother Spain". In his work Historia Gothorum , Suintila appears as the first king of Totius Spaniae ("all of Spain"). The prologue of the same work is the well-known De laude Spaniae ("About the praise of Spain").

In the time of King Mauregato, the hymn O Dei Verbum was composed in which the apostle is described as the golden shining head of Ispaniae ("Oh, vere worthy sanctior apostole caput refulgens aureum Ispaniae, tutorque nobis et patronus vernulus") .

With the Muslim invasion, the name of Spania or Spain was transformed into اسبانيا, Isbāniyā . The use of the word Spain continues to be unstable, depending on who uses it and in what circumstances. Some chronicles and other documents from the High Middle Ages designate exclusively by that name ( Spain or Spania ) the territory dominated by the Muslims. Thus, Alfonso I of Aragon, "the Battler", says in his documents that "He reigns in Pamplona, ​​Aragon, Sobrarbe and Ribagorza" and, when in 1126 he made an expedition to Malaga, he tells us that "he went to the lands of Spain ». But already from the last years of the twelfth century, the use of the name of Spain is again generalized for the entire Peninsula, whether by Muslims or Christians. Thus one speaks of the five kingdoms of Spain : Granada (Muslim), León with Castile, Navarre, Portugal and the Crown of Aragon (Christians).

Identification with the Crowns of Castile and Aragon

As the Reconquest progresses, several kings proclaimed themselves princes of Spain, trying to reflect the importance of their kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula. After the dynastic union of Castile and Aragon, the name of Spain began to be used in these two kingdoms. to refer to both, a circumstance that, moreover, had nothing new; Thus, in documents from 1124 and 1125, on the occasion of Alfonso el Batallador 's military expedition through Andalusia , they referred to him —who had unified the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon after his marriage to Urraca I of León— with the terms "reigning in Spain" or reigning "in all the land of Christians and Saracens of Spain" .

Independent evolution of the Spanish gentile

The Spanish demonym has evolved in a different way than one might expect (something similar to "Hispanic" might be expected). There are several theories about how the Spanish gentile itself came about . According to one of them, the suffix -ol is characteristic of the Provençal Romance languages ​​and infrequent in the Romance languages ​​spoken on the peninsula at the time, which is why they consider that it would have been imported from the  9th century , with the development of the phenomenon of the medieval pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela, due to the numerous Frankish visitors who toured the peninsula, favoring the spread of the adaptation of the Latin name Hispani from Spanish over time, espanyol , espannol , espanhol , español , etc. (the spellings gn , nh and ny , in addition to nn , and its abbreviation ñ , represented the same phoneme) with which they designated the Christians of ancient Hispania. Later, it would have been the dissemination work of the educated elites that promoted the use of Spanish and Spaniards : the word Spaniards appears twenty-four times in the cartulary of the cathedral of Huesca, a manuscript from 1139-1221, while in the Estoria de Spain, drawn up between 1260 and 1274 at the initiative of Alfonso X the Wise , the gentile Spaniards was used exclusively .

The Dictionary of the Spanish language published by the Royal Spanish Academy, in its twenty-third edition (2014), ensures that the Spanish voice comes from the Provençal espaignol , and this from the medieval Latin Hispaniŏlus , from Hispania , Spain .

History

Prehistory, protohistory and Ancient Age

The current Spanish territory houses two of the most important places for European and world prehistory: the Sierra de Atapuerca (where the Homo antecessor species has been defined and the most complete series of Homo heidelbergensis bones has been found ) and the Altamira cave (where for the first time in the world Paleolithic art was identified).

The particular position of the Iberian Peninsula as "Extreme West" of the Mediterranean world determined the arrival of successive cultural influences from the Eastern Mediterranean, particularly those linked to the Neolithic and the Age of Metals (agriculture, ceramics, megalithism), a process that culminated in the denominated historical colonizations of the I millenium a. Both due to its favorable location for communications and its agricultural possibilities and its mining wealth, the eastern and southern areas were the ones that achieved the greatest development (Culture of the Millares, Culture of the Argar, Tartessos, Iberian peoples). There were also continuing contacts with Central Europe (urnfield culture, Celticization).

The oldest dating of a historical event in Spain is that of the legendary foundation of the Phoenician colony of Gadir (the Roman Gades , which today is Cádiz), which according to Roman sources (Veley Patérculo and Tito Livio) would have occurred eighty years later of the Trojan War, before that of Rome itself, which would place it in 1104 BC. C. and would be the foundation of a city in Western Europe with older references. The no less legendary references that Herodotus collects of Greek contacts with the Tartessian kingdom of Argantonio would be placed, for their part, in the year 630 BC. C. The archaeological evidence of Phoenician settlements ( Ebusus —Ibiza— , Sexi —Almuñécar—,Malaka —Málaga—) allow us to speak of a Phoenician monopoly of the commercial routes around the Strait of Gibraltar (including those of the Atlantic, such as the tin route), which limited the Greek colonization of the northern Mediterranean ( Emporion , present-day Ampurias).

The Phoenician colonies came under the control of Carthage from the  6th century BC  . C., period in which the disappearance of Tartessos also takes place. Already in the  third century  a. C., the victory of Rome in the First Punic War further stimulated the Carthaginian interest in the Iberian Peninsula, for which a true territorial colonization took place, with a center in Qart Hadasht (Cartagena), led by the Barca family.

The Roman intervention took place in the Second Punic War (218 BC), which began a gradual Roman conquest of Hispania, which was not completed until almost two hundred years later. The Carthaginian defeat allowed a relatively rapid incorporation of the eastern and southern areas, which were the richest and with a level of economic, social and cultural development more compatible with Roman civilization itself. Much more difficult was the subjugation of the peoples of the Meseta, poorer (Lusitanian wars and Celtiberian wars), which required confronting war approaches totally different from classical warfare (the guerrilla led by Viriato —assassinated in 139 B.C. —, extreme resistance such as that of Numancia —defeated in 133 BC—). In the following century, the Roman provinces of Hispania, converted into a source of enrichment for Roman officials and merchants and of raw materials and mercenaries, they were among the main scenes of the Roman civil wars, with the presence of Sertorius, Pompey and Julius Caesar. The pacification (roman pax) was the declared purpose of Augustus, who tried to leave it definitively settled with the submission of the Cantabrians and Asturians (29-19 BC), although its effective romanization did not take place. In the rest of the territory, the Romanization of Hispania was so profound that some Hispano-Roman families reached imperial dignity (Trajan, Hadrian and Theodosius) and there were Hispanics among the most important Roman intellectuals (the philosopher Lucio Anneo Seneca, the poets Lucan, Quintiliano or Marcial, the geographer Pomponio Mela or the agronomist Columella), although, as Tito Livio wrote in the time of Augustus, «although it was the first important province invaded by the Romans, it was the last to be completely dominated and has resisted until our time. », attributing it to the nature of the territory and the recalcitrant character of its inhabitants. The assimilation of the Roman way of life, long and costly, offered a great diversity from the advanced degrees in Baetica to the incomplete and superficial Romanization of the north of the peninsula.

Middle Ages

High Middle Ages

In the year 409 a group of Germanic peoples (Swebians, Alans and Vandals) invaded the Iberian Peninsula. In 416, the Visigoths, an equally Germanic people, but much more Romanized, did so under the justification of restoring imperial authority. In practice, such a link ceased to have significance and they created a Visigothic kingdom with capital first in Tolosa (the current French city of Toulouse) and later in Toletum .(Toledo), after being defeated by the Franks at the battle of Vouillé (507). Meanwhile, the Vandals moved into Africa and the Suevi formed the kingdom of Braga in the former province of Gallaecia (the northwestern quadrant of the peninsula). Leovigildo materialized a powerful Visigothic monarchy with the successive defeats of the Suevi of the northwest and other peoples of the north (the Cantabrian area, little Romanized, remained for centuries without clear subjection to a state authority) and the Byzantines of the southeast (Province of Spania , with center in Carthago Spartaria , the current Cartagena), which was not completed until the reign of Suintila in the year 625.

Isidore of Seville, in his Historia Gothorum , congratulates himself that this king was "the first to possess the monarchy of the kingdom of all of Spain that surrounds the ocean, something that was granted to none of his predecessors..." The elective character of the Visigothic monarchy determined a great political instability characterized by continuous rebellions and assassinations.The religious unity had been produced with the conversion to Catholicism of Recaredo (587), proscribing the Arianism that until then had differentiated the Visigoths, preventing their fusion with the Hispano-Roman ruling classes. The Councils of Toledo became a body in which, meeting in assembly, the king, the main nobles and the bishops of all the dioceses of the kingdom submitted for consideration matters of both a political and religious nature. The Liber Iudiciorum promulgated by Recesvinto (654) as common law to Hispano-Romans and Visigoths had a great later projection.

In the year 689 the Arabs arrived in northwestern Africa and in the year 711, called by the Visigoth faction enemy of King Rodrigo, they crossed the Strait of Gibraltar (a name that recalls the Berber general Tarik, who led the expedition) and achieved a decisive victory. in the battle of Guadalete. The evidence of superiority led to converting the intervention, initially limited in nature, into a true imposition as a new power in Hispania, which ended up becoming an emirate or province of the Arab empire called al-Andalus .with capital in the city of Córdoba. The Muslim advance was swift: in 712 they took Toledo, the Visigothic capital; the rest of the cities were capitulating or being conquered until in 716 Muslim control encompassed the entire peninsula, although in the north their rule was nominal rather than effective. In Septimania, northeast of the Pyrenees, a core of Visigothic resistance remained until 719. The Muslim advance against the Frankish kingdom was stopped by Charles Martel at the Battle of Poitiers (732).

The poorly controlled northwest area of ​​the Iberian Peninsula was the scene of the formation of a nucleus of Christian resistance centered on the Cantabrian mountain range, an area in which a group of little Romanized peoples (Astures, Cantabria and Vascones), scarcely subject to the Gothic kingdom, nor had they aroused much interest for the new Islamic authorities. In the rest of the Iberian Peninsula, the Gothic or Hispano-Roman lords either converted to Islam (the so-called muladíes, such as the Banu Qasi family , which dominated the middle valley of the Ebro) or remained faithful to the Muslim authorities even though they were Christians. (the so-called Mozarabs), retained their economic and social position and even a high degree of political and territorial power (such as Tudmir, which dominated a large area of ​​the southeast).

The initial uprising of Don Pelayo failed, but in a new attempt in the year 722 he managed to prevail over a Muslim punitive expedition in a small mountainous redoubt, what historiography called the "battle of Covadonga". Determining the characteristics of this episode remains an unresolved issue, since more than a vindication of Visigothic legitimacy (if Pelayo himself or the nobles who accompanied him were such) it manifested itself as a continuation of the resistance to power central of the local Cantabrians (despite the name that the kingdom of Asturias ended up adopting, the area did not belong to any of the Asturian peoples, but rather that of the Cantabrian Vadinienses).The "Gothicism" of the later chronicles established its interpretation as the beginning of the "Reconquest", the recovery of the entire peninsular territory, to which the Christians of the north understood they had a right because they considered themselves legitimate continuators of the Visigothic monarchy.

The Eastern Christian nuclei had an initial development clearly differentiated from that of the Western ones. The continuity of the Goths of Septimania, incorporated into the Frankish kingdom, was the basis of Charlemagne's campaigns against the Emirate of Córdoba, with the intention of establishing a Hispanic March north of the Ebro, in a similar way as he did with other border marches. within the limits of his empire. Proving impossible to conquer the areas of the Ebro valley, the Marca was limited to the Pyrenean area, which was organized in various counties in constant changes, confrontations and alliances both among themselves and with the Arabs and muladíes of the south. The counts, of Frankish, Gothic or local origin (Vascons in the case of the county of Pamplona) exercised de facto independent power,Western France . The feudalization process that led to the decomposition of the Carolingian dynasty, evident in the 9th century , gradually established the hereditary transmission of the counties and their complete emancipation from the link with the Frankish kings. In any case, the nominal link was maintained for a long time: until the year 988 the counts of Barcelona renewed their vassalage contract.

In 756, Abderramán I (an Umayyad survivor of the extermination of the caliphal family dethroned by the Abbasids) was welcomed by his supporters in al-Andalus and imposed himself as emir. From then on, the Emirate of Córdoba was politically independent from the Abbasid Caliphate (which moved its capital to Baghdad). Obedience to the central power of Córdoba was sometimes challenged with revolts or episodes of dissent led by different ethno-religious groups, such as the Berbers of the Duero Plateau, the muladíes of the Ebro valley or the Mozarabs of Toledo, Mérida or Córdoba (jornada del moat of Toledo and Elipando, martyrs of Córdoba and San Eulogio) and a serious uprising led by a Muslim converted to Christianity (Omar ibn Hafsún, in Bobastro) took place.

In 929, Abderramán III proclaimed himself caliph, expressing his claim to rule over all Muslims. The Caliphate of Córdoba only managed to impose itself, beyond the Iberian Peninsula, on a diffuse North African territory; but it did achieve notable economic and social growth, with great urban development and cultural strength in all kinds of sciences, arts and letters, which made it stand out both in the Islamic world and in the then backward Christian Europe (immersed in the « Dark Ages" that followed the Carolingian Renaissance). Cities like Valencia, Zaragoza, Toledo or Seville became important urban centers, but Córdoba became, during the caliphate of al-Hakam II, the largest city in Western Europe; perhaps it reached half a million inhabitants, and without a doubt it was the largest cultural center of the time,Upon Almanzor's death in 1002, after his defeat by a Christian coalition at the Battle of Calatañazor, a series of clashes began between leading Muslim families, which led to the disappearance of the caliphate and the formation of a mosaic of small kingdoms, called of Taifa.

The kingdom of Asturias, with its capital fixed at Oviedo since the reign of Alfonso II the Chaste, had become the kingdom of León in 910 with García I when Alfonso III the Great distributed its territories among his sons. In 914, when García died, Ordoño II came to the throne, reunifying Galicia, Asturias and León and definitively establishing his capital in the latter city. Its territory, which reached the Duero, was gradually repopulated through the hasty system (granting the land to the first to break it, to attract population in the dangerous border areas), while the lay or ecclesiastical manors (of nobles or monasteries) were implanted later. In areas where the border was a more permanent condition and defense fell to the social figure of the knight-villain, what happened particularly in the eastern part of the kingdom, a territory with a markedly differentiated personality was formed: the county of Castile (Fernán González). A somewhat similar process (aprisio ) was produced in the Catalan counties of the so-called Old Catalonia (until the Llobregat, as opposed to the New Catalonia conquered from the 12th century ).

Full Middle Ages

The eleventh century began with the predominance among the Christian kingdoms of the kingdom of Navarre. Sancho III el Mayor incorporated the central Pyrenean counties (Aragón, Sobrarbe and Ribagorza) and the Leonese county of Castile, establishing a de facto protectorate over the kingdom of León itself. The clashes between the Muslim taifas, who resorted to the Christians as mercenary troops to impose themselves on each other, notably increased their power, which became enough to subject them to the payment of pariahs.

The territories of Sancho el Mayor were distributed among his sons after his death. Ferdinand got Castile. His marriage to the sister of the Leonese king and the Navarrese support allowed him to impose himself as King of León after the death of his brother-in-law at the Battle of Tamarón (1037). Upon Fernando's death, a territorial distribution was made again that multiplied the number of territories that acquired the royal rank: kingdom of León, kingdom of Galicia, kingdom of Castile, as well as the city of Zamora. Successively there were reunifications and divisions, always reversed, except in the case of the county of Portugal, converted into a kingdom. The conquest of Toledo by Alfonso VI (1085) allowed the repopulation of the vast region between the Duero and Tagus rivers through the granting of charters and town charters to councils with jurisdiction over large areas (community of town and land) over which they exercised kind of "collective lordship". A similar process took place in the Ebro valley, repopulated (partly with Mozarabic emigrants from the south of the peninsula) after the conquest of Zaragoza (1118) by Alfonso I the Battler, king of Navarre and Aragon, who even became king consort of Castilla y León (in an eventful marriage with Urraca I of Castilla, which ended up being annulled). Upon his death, without direct heirs, the kingdoms definitively separated from him: while Navarre was marginalized in the Reconquest, without growth towards the south,

For its part, the formation of the Crown of Castile as a set of kingdoms, with a single king and a single Cortes, was not consolidated until the 13th century . The different territories retained various legal peculiarities, as well as their status as a kingdom, perpetuated in the royal title: "king of Castile, León, Galicia, Nájera, Toledo,... lord of Vizcaya and Molina", adding successively the titles of sovereignty of the new kingdoms that were conquered or acquired. Alfonso VII adopted the title of Imperator totius Hispaniae . The repopulation of the large area between the Tagus and Sierra Morena, relatively uninhabited, was entrusted to military orders (Santiago, Alcántara, Calatrava, Montesa).

The Christian advances towards the south were successively confronted by two North African interventions: that of the Almoravids (battles of Zalaca, 1086, and Uclés, 1108) and that of the Almohads (battle of Alarcos, 1195), who unified under a more rigorous conception from Islam to the Taifas, whose rulers were accused of being corrupt and compromising with Christians. However, the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212) meant a decisive imposition of Christian predominance and a few years later there was only one Muslim redoubt left on the peninsula, the Nasrid kingdom of Granada. The political and military decline of al-Andalus was simultaneous with its greatest splendor in the artistic and cultural fields (Aljafería Palace, Alhambra in Granada, Averroes, Ibn Hazm).

The Crown of Castile, with Fernando III el Santo, conquered in the central years of the 13th centurythe entire Guadalquivir valley (kingdoms of Jaén, Córdoba and Seville) and the kingdom of Murcia; while the Crown of Aragon, after frustrating its expansion north of the Pyrenees (Albigensian Crusade), conquered the kingdoms of Valencia and Mallorca (Jaime I the Conqueror). The agreement between both crowns defined the respective areas of influence, and even marriage links (of Alfonso X el Sabio with Violante de Aragón). The repopulation by the Christians of these areas, densely inhabited by Muslims, many of whom remained after the conquest (Mudejar), was carried out through the distribution of lots of rural and urban estates of different importance according to the social category of those who had intervened. in the taking of each of the cities. coexistence among Christians,studium arabicum et hebraicum (Toledo, Murcia, Seville, Valencia, Barcelona) and the studia generalia that became the first universities (Palencia, Salamanca, Valladolid, Alcalá, Lérida, Perpignan).

Middle Ages

From the Sicilian eves (1282), the Crown of Aragon began an expansion throughout the Mediterranean in which it incorporated Sardinia, Sicily and even, briefly, the duchies of Athens and Neopatria. In competition with Portugal, the Crown of Castile opted for an Atlantic expansion, based on its control of the Strait. In 1402 the conquest of the Canary Islands began, until then exclusively inhabited by the Guanches. The initial occupation was carried out by Norman lords (Juan de Bethencourt) who paid vassalage to King Henry III of Castile. The process of conquest did not conclude until 1496, culminated by the crown's own action. The delimitation of the areas of Portuguese and Castilian influence was agreed upon in the Treaty of Alcaçovas (1479),

The great mortality caused by the Great Plague of 1348, particularly serious in the Crown of Aragon, preceded by the bad harvests of the 1333 cycle ( lo mal any primer ), caused great economic and social instability, as well as political and ideological instability. In Castile, the First Castilian Civil War (1351-1369) broke out between the supporters of Pedro I el Cruel and his half-brother Enrique II de Trastamara. In Aragon, on the death of Martin I the Human, representatives of the three Crown States elected Fernando de Antequera, from the Castilian House of Trastámara, as his successor in the Compromise of Caspe (1412). The Aragonese Mediterranean expansion continued with the conquest of the Kingdom of Naples during the reign of Alfonso V the Magnanimous.

The crisis was particularly intense in Catalonia, whose political expression was the disputes between Juan II of Aragón and his son, Carlos de Viana, exploited by the representative institutions of local power (the Generalitat or permanent commission of the Cortes and the Council of One Hundred or regiment of the city of Barcelona) to express the limited effective power that the Aragonese monarchy had over the particularism (pactismo, foralismo) of each of its territories, where the constitutions, uses and traditional customs ( usatges , observances ) prevailed over the will real. Simultaneously, social tensions broke out between the Busca and the Biga (high and low bourgeoisie of the city of Barcelona) and the revolts of thepayeses de remença (peasants subjected to a particularly harsh regime of personal subjection), all of which sparked off the complex Catalan Civil War (1462-1472). The weakening of Barcelona and Catalonia benefited Valencia, which became the seaport that centralized the commercial expansion of the Crown of Aragon and reached 75,000 inhabitants in the mid-15th century , with a cultural boom that allows it to be defined as the Golden Age. Valencian. The kingdom of Aragon, landlocked and focused on mainly agricultural activities, limited its economic and social development. The privileges of rich men and secular and ecclesiastical nobility prevented the development of a thriving bourgeoisie, and its relative weight in the balance between the States of the Aragonese Crown decreased.

In 1479, with the accession to the throne of Fernando el Católico, second son and heir of Juan II, and king consort of Castile by his marriage to Isabella the Catholic, social tensions were reduced, including peasant conflict – Arbitral Judgment of Guadalupe de 1486–. The growing anti-Semitism, stimulated by Catholic preachers such as San Vicente Ferrer or the Archdeacon of Écija, had exploded in the anti-Jewish revolt of 1391, which, by provoking mass conversions, gave rise to the problem of the convert: the discrimination of the new Christians by the old Christians, who It even led to violent persecution (Pedro Sarmiento's anti-convert revolt in Toledo, 1449) and led to the creation of the Spanish Inquisition (1478).

Modern age

The marriage of Isabel and Fernando (1469), and the victory of the side that supported them in the War of the Castilian Succession, determined the dynastic union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon. The peninsular territorial unification increased with the War of Granada (1482-1492) and the annexation of Navarre (1512), and the territorial expansion through North Africa and Italy continued. The marriage policy of the Catholic Monarchs, who married their children to heirs of all the royal houses of Western Europe except the French (Portugal, England and the Habsburg States) caused a haphazard concentration of kingdoms in their grandson Charles of Habsburg (Carlos I as King of Spain -1516-, Carlos V as Emperor -1521-), that together with the enormous territorial dimension of the recently discovered America thanks to the navigator Christopher Columbus (1492), converted into a true colonial empire, made the Hispanic Monarchy the most powerful in the world. In the sameannus mirabilis of 1492, the expulsion of the Jews was decreed and the Castilian Grammar of Antonio de Nebrija appeared.

The power of the "imperials" did not gain a foothold in Castile without overcoming strong opposition in the War of the Communities, which evidenced the centrality of the Spanish kingdoms in the Empire of Charles. Despite his triumph in the Italian wars against France, the failure of Charles V's imperial idea (largely caused by the opposition of the German Protestant princes) led the emperor to plan the division of his states between his brother Ferdinand I (Archduchy of Austria and the Germanic Empire) and his son Philip II (Flanders, Italy and Spain, together with the overseas empire). The alliance between the Habsburgs of Vienna and the Austrians of Madrid was maintained between 1559 and 1700. The Spanish hegemony was even increased with the Iberian union with Portugal, maintained between 1580 and 1640; and was able to face open conflicts throughout Europe: the wars of religion in France, the revolt of Flanders (1568-1648, which ended with the division of the territory into a Protestant north - Holland - and a Catholic south - the Netherlands Spaniards—) and the growing Turkish power in the Mediterranean, stopped in the battle of Lepanto in 1571. The control of the seas was challenged by the Dutch and English, who managed to resist the so-called Invincible Armada of 1588. Within Spain they were suffocated with hardness the alterations of Aragon (1590) and the rebellion of the Alpujarras (1568). This was a manifestation of the non-integration of the Moors, which did not find a solution until their radical expulsion in 1609, already in the following reign,

The price revolution of the 16th century was caused by the massive arrival of silver in Castile, which monopolized American trade, and caused the collapse of local productive activities, while imports of European manufactured products were carried out. The crisis of the seventeenth centuryit especially affected Spain, which under the so-called minor Habsburgs (Philip III, Philip IV and Charles II) entered into evident decline. Simultaneously, Spanish art and culture lived through the most brilliant moments of the Golden Age. Once the critical juncture of the crisis of 1640 was overcome, in which it was about to dissolve (Catalan revolt, Masaniello's revolt in Naples, Andalusian alterations, independence from Portugal), the Hispanic Monarchy was redefined, now without Portugal and with the French border established in the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659).

The War of the Spanish Succession (1700-1715) and the treaties of Utrecht and Rastadt determined the change of dynasty, imposing the House of Bourbon on the throne (with which family pacts were maintained for almost the entire 18th century), although it meant the loss of the territories of Flanders and Italy for the benefit of Austria and onerous concessions in American trade for the benefit of England, which also retained Gibraltar and Menorca. Within Spain, a political model was imposed that adapted French absolutism and centralism to the institutions of the Crown of Castile, which were imposed on the Crown of Aragon (New Plant decrees). Only the Basque provinces and Navarre maintained their foral regime. In the context of a new growth situation, economic reactivation and colonial recovery were sought in America, with mercantilist measures in the first half of the century, which gave way to the new paradigm of free trade, already in the reign of Carlos III.

Contemporary age

19th century

Main articles: Spanish War of Independence, Spanish-American War of Independence, Spain during the Spanish War of Independence, Napoleonic Spain, Absolutist Restoration in Spain, Reign of Elizabeth II of Spain, Revolution of 1868, Democratic six-year term, Industrial Revolution in Spain , and Restoration Bourbon in Spain .

The Contemporary Age did not start very well for Spain. In 1805, at the Battle of Trafalgar, a Spanish-French squadron was defeated by the United Kingdom, which meant the end of Spanish supremacy in the seas in favor of the United Kingdom, while Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France who had taken the power in the Gallic country in the complex political scenario posed after the triumph of the French Revolution, took advantage of the disputes between Carlos IV and his son Fernando and ordered the sending of his powerful army to Spain in 1808. His pretext was to invade Portugal, for which he that he had the complicity of the prime minister of the Spanish king, Manuel Godoy, to whom he had promised the throne of one of the parts into which he planned to divide the Portuguese country. The French emperor imposed his brother Joseph I on the throne, which unleashed the War of Spanish Independence, which would last five years. At that time, the first Spanish Constitution, of a markedly liberal nature, was drawn up in the so-called Cortes de Cádiz. It was promulgated on March 19, 1812, the feast of San José, for which it was popularly known as "la Pepa". After the defeat of Napoleon's troops, which culminated in the battle of Vitoria in 1813, Ferdinand VII returned to the throne of Spain.

During the reign of Ferdinand VII, the Spanish Monarchy experienced the transition from the Old Regime to the Liberal State. After his arrival in Spain, Fernando VII repealed the Constitution of 1812 and persecuted the liberal constitutionalists, beginning a rigid absolutism. Meanwhile, the Spanish-American War of Independence continued its course, and despite the war effort of the royalists, at the end of the conflict only the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico, in America, were still under Spanish rule. After the Ominous Decade and with the support of liberal politicians for the Pragmatic Sanction of 1830, Spain was once again organized as a parliamentary monarchy. In this way, both revolutionary processes gave rise to the new national states that exist today. The end of the reign of Ferdinand VII also marked the extinction of absolutism throughout the Hispanic world. The death of Fernando VII in 1833 opened a new period of strong political and economic instability. His brother Carlos María Isidro, supported by absolutist supporters, rebelled against the appointment of Isabel II, daughter of Fernando VII, as heiress and constitutional queen, and against the repeal of the Succession Regulations of 1713, which prevented the succession of women in the crown Thus the First Carlist War broke out. as constitutional heiress and queen, and against the repeal of the Succession Regulation of 1713, which prevented the succession of women to the Crown. Thus the First Carlist War broke out. as constitutional heiress and queen, and against the repeal of the Succession Regulation of 1713, which prevented the succession of women to the Crown. Thus the First Carlist War broke out.

The reign of Isabel II was characterized by the alternation in power of progressives and moderates, although this alternation was more motivated by the military pronouncements of both signs than by a peaceful transfer of power based on the electoral results. The Revolution of 1868, called "la Gloriosa", forced Isabel II to leave Spain. Constituent Cortes were convened and pronounced themselves in favor of the monarchical regime and, at the initiative of General Juan Prim, the Crown was offered to Amadeo of Savoy, son of the King of Italy. His reign was brief due to the fatigue that the politicians of the time caused him and the rejection of his person by important sectors of society, to which was added the loss of his main support, the aforementioned General Prim, assassinated before Amadeo arrived. to set foot in Spain. The First Republic was then proclaimed, which did not live long either, although it was very hectic: in eleven months it had four presidents: Figueras, Pi y Margall, Salmerón and Castelar. During this convulsive period, serious territorial tensions and warlike confrontations took place, such as the declaration of independence of the Canton of Cartagena, the maximum exponent of cantonalism. This stage ended in 1874 with the pronouncements of generals Martínez-Campos and Pavía, who dissolved Parliament. Spain was part of the Western industrialization process that began at the beginning of the century, although its economic and industrial development was scarce and late compared to the great European powers. Salmeron and Castelar. During this convulsive period, serious territorial tensions and warlike confrontations took place, such as the declaration of independence of the Canton of Cartagena, the maximum exponent of cantonalism. This stage ended in 1874 with the pronouncements of generals Martínez-Campos and Pavía, who dissolved Parliament. Spain was part of the Western industrialization process that began at the beginning of the century, although its economic and industrial development was scarce and late compared to the great European powers. Salmeron and Castelar. During this convulsive period, serious territorial tensions and warlike confrontations took place, such as the declaration of independence of the Canton of Cartagena, the maximum exponent of cantonalism. This stage ended in 1874 with the pronouncements of generals Martínez-Campos and Pavía, who dissolved Parliament. Spain was part of the Western industrialization process that began at the beginning of the century, although its economic and industrial development was scarce and late compared to the great European powers. This stage ended in 1874 with the pronouncements of generals Martínez-Campos and Pavía, who dissolved Parliament. Spain was part of the Western industrialization process that began at the beginning of the century, although its economic and industrial development was scarce and late compared to the great European powers. This stage ended in 1874 with the pronouncements of generals Martínez-Campos and Pavía, who dissolved Parliament. Spain was part of the Western industrialization process that began at the beginning of the century, although its economic and industrial development was scarce and late compared to the great European powers.

The Bourbon Restoration proclaimed King Alfonso XII, son of Elizabeth II. Spain experienced great political stability thanks to the system of government advocated by the conservative politician Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, which was based on the peaceful turn of the Conservative (Cánovas del Castillo) and Liberal (Práxedes Mateo Sagasta) parties in government. In 1885 Alfonso XII died and the regency was entrusted to the widow María Cristina, until the age of majority of his son Alfonso XIII, born after the death of her father. Cuba's independence rebellion in 1895 prompted the United States to intervene in the area. After the confusing incident of the explosion of the battleship USS MaineOn February 15, 1898, in the port of Havana, the United States declared war on Spain. Defeated by the North American nation, Spain lost its last colonies: Cuba, the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico, an episode that resulted in permanent trauma for the Spanish ruling class, known as the "Disaster of '98."

20th century

the 20th centuryit began with a major economic crisis and subsequent political instability. There was a parenthesis of commercial prosperity brought about by Spanish neutrality in the First World War, but the succession of government crises, the unfavorable course of the Rif War, which worsened as a result of the native tribal opposition to the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco, the social unrest and discontent on the part of the army, led to the coup d'état led by General Miguel Primo de Rivera on September 13, 1923. He established a military dictatorship that was accepted by a large part of the social forces and by King Alfonso XIII himself. . During the dictatorship freedoms and rights were suppressed, which added to the difficult economic situation and the growth of the republican parties, made the situation increasingly untenable. In 1930, Primo de Rivera presented his resignation to the king and went to Paris, where he died shortly after. General Dámaso Berenguer succeeded him as head of the Directory and then, for a short time, Admiral Aznar. This period is known as «dictabland».

The king led to the holding of municipal elections on April 12, 1931, taken as a plebiscite on the continuity of the monarchy. These gave a resounding victory to the republican-socialist candidates in the big cities and provincial capitals, where the caciquismo had no influence. The organized demonstrations demanding the establishment of a democratic republic led the king to leave the country and the proclamation of the same on April 14 of that same year. During the Second Republic there was a great political and social upheaval, marked by a marked radicalization of the left and right. The moderate leaders were boycotted and the different governments applied changing legislation. For the first two years, a coalition of Republican and Socialist parties governed. In the elections held in 1933 the right triumphed and in 1936, the left. Among the relevant episodes of this short period are the monarchical uprising of the military José Sanjurjo in 1932, the 1934 revolution and numerous attacks against rival political leaders. On the other hand, it is also during the Second Republic when important reforms are initiated to modernize the country —democratic Constitution, agrarian reform, restructuring of the army, first Statutes of Autonomy— and the rights of citizens are extended, such as the recognition of the right to vote. of women, establishing universal suffrage. On July 17 and 18, 1936 there was a failed coup that left Spain divided into two zones: one under the authority of the republican government —in which the Social Revolution of 1936 took place— and another controlled by the rebels. The situation led to the Spanish Civil War, in which General Francisco Franco was invested as supreme leader of the rebels. Hitler's German and Mussolini's Italian support for the rebels, stronger than Stalin's Soviet support and Lázaro Cárdenas's Mexican support for the Republicans, added to the policy of non-intervention of Western democracies, and the continuous clashes between the different factions republican, among other reasons, led to the victory of the Francoists on April 1, 1939.

General Franco's victory marked the establishment of a dictatorial regime. The development of a strong repression on the vanquished forced hundreds of thousands of Spaniards into exile and sentenced many others to death or imprisonment. Spain's support for the Axis Powers during World War II led to international political and economic isolation .However, the anti-communism of the Spanish regime meant that during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Franco regime was tolerated and finally recognized by the Western powers. At the end of the 1950s, its international isolation ended with the signing of several agreements with the United States that allowed the installation of joint military bases in Spain. In 1956, Morocco, which had been a Spanish and French protectorate, acquired its independence and a plan for the economic stabilization of the country was launched. In 1968, Franco granted independence to Spanish Guinea and the following year appointed Juan Carlos de Borbón, grandson of Alfonso XIII, as his successor as king. Although political repression continued, government reforms,

Francisco Franco died on November 20, 1975 and Juan Carlos I was proclaimed king two days later. Then a period known as the transition to democracy began. Adolfo Suárez was appointed President of the Government by the King and managed to pass the Law for Political Reform in the Francoist Cortes. In 1977 democratic elections were held. In 1978, the Spanish Constitution was promulgated, establishing a social and democratic state of law with a parliamentary monarchy as the form of government. In 1979, after the first elections under the new constitution, the Democratic Center Union (UCD) obtained a simple majority in the Congress of Deputies and Adolfo Suárez was invested as Prime Minister. On January 29, 1981 he resigned due to internal pressure from his own party. During the voting session for the investiture of Suárez's successor, Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo (UCD), on February 23, 1981, an attempted coup d'état promoted by high-ranking military officers took place. The Palace of the Cortes was taken by Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero, but the coup attempt was aborted the same day by the intervention of King Juan Carlos in defense of the constitutional order. The transition was also characterized by the strong presence of terrorist elements, both from the extreme right and parapolice —late Francoist terrorism— as well as from the extreme left and pro-independence groups, of which Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) was the most active and long-lived terrorist group. In 1981, the protocol for Spain's accession to NATO was signed in Brussels.

In the general elections of 1982, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) led by Felipe González won by an absolute majority, who was appointed Prime Minister and remained in power for four legislatures. In 1986, Spain joined the European Economic Community, the forerunner of the European Union, and a referendum was held on Spain's permanence in NATO in which the yes vote was won.

During this period there was a profound modernization of the Spanish economy and society, characterized by industrial restructuring and the substitution of the late Francoist economic model for a more liberal one —which led to three major general strikes—, the generalization of thought and contemporary values ​​in Spanish society, the development of the autonomous and welfare state, the transformation of the armed forces and the enormous development of civil infrastructure. However, there was also a situation of high unemployment and towards the end of it there was a significant economic stagnation, which did not begin to recover until 1999 – when the unemployment rate fell from 23% to 15%. In 1992, Spain made a striking appearance on the international scene, offering an image of a solid and modern country, with the celebration of the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, ​​the declaration of Madrid as European City of Culture and the celebration in Seville of the Universal Exhibition. 1994 and 1995, on the other hand, were characterized by the multiplication and discovery of cases of corruption: the State terrorism of the Antiterrorist Liberation Groups (GAL), the Roldán case, the wiretapping of the CESID, etc.

In the early general elections of 1996, the Popular Party (PP) won, consolidating political turnismo in Spain. However, he did not obtain an absolute majority, so José María Aznar had to agree with the peripheral nationalist parties in order to be sworn in as Prime Minister. His Government had before him a key challenge: the improvement of the economic data that would allow Spain to form part of the member countries of the European Union that would share the new single currency, the euro, a milestone achieved at the end of 1997. On July 10 In 1997, ETA kidnapped the PP councilor of Ermua, Miguel Ángel Blanco, and threatened to assassinate him if the government did not meet their demands. Two days later, the ETA members ended his life.

21st  century

The 21st  century began with a brutal terrorist escalation by ETA in 2000 and with the effects of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, which caused Spain to support the US military interventions in Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003). ), despite the fact that the latter was carried out without the support of the UN and the general rejection of Spanish and world public opinion. In 2002 the euro came into circulation in Spain and in eleven other countries that made up the eurozone, replacing the peseta and the respective national currencies. This monetary change caused the hidden rise in prices. Between 1994 and 2007 there was a significant expansion of the Spanish economy, based mainly on the construction sector. late 20th  centuryand throughout the 21st  century Spain, which had traditionally been a country of emigrants, received a large number of immigrants from Ibero-American countries, as well as from different areas of Africa, Asia and Europe. The strong economic growth of the expansive type that the country presented between 1994 and 2007 required a large amount of labor.

On Thursday, March 11, 2004, the 11M attacks took place in Madrid, the largest terrorist attack in the history of Spain, which caused the death of 192 people and nearly 1,500 wounded. Ten near-simultaneous explosions occurred on four morning rush hour trains on the Madrid commuter rail network. The attacks were claimed by jihadist terrorism. The social dismay at the attacks and at the controversial reaction of the Government caused an enormous popular mobilization, in which 11 million citizens demonstrated in the streets of almost all the cities of the country. Three days after the attacks, the general elections of 2004 were held. The popular agitation was definitive in the resolution of the elections in which the PSOE won.

With Zapatero as Prime Minister, the Spanish troops that were fighting in Iraq withdrew. This caused a considerable cooling of diplomatic relations with the United States. The European Constitution was signed and the European Constitution referendum was held, in which Spanish citizens approved the treaty. However, the rejection in referendums in France and the Netherlands caused it to fail. Same-sex marriage was also approved, becoming the third country in the world to do so. On December 30, 2006, ETA planted a van bomb in T4 of the Madrid-Barajas Airport, killing two people and ending their second ceasefire .

The 2008 elections gave victory once again to the PSOE and Zapatero formed his second government; These elections consolidated and reinforced bipartisanship. That same year, Expo 2008 was held in Zaragoza, whose theme was water and sustainable development. The Great World Recession and the bursting of the housing bubble caused a serious economic crisis in Spain, the main effect of which was the historic rise in unemployment suffered until 2013.As of May 2011, social movements known as "indignados" or 15-M appeared, demanding a more participatory democracy and political and economic changes. In September, the constitution was reformed in order to guarantee budgetary stability. On October 20, 2011, the terrorist organization ETA announced the "definitive cessation of its armed activity" and made its dissolution effective on May 3, 2018.The early general elections in 2011 gave the PP an absolute majority and Mariano Rajoy was invested as President of the Government. Rajoy had to face a particularly difficult economic and social situation, territorial tensions in Catalonia and a growing discredit of the political class, exacerbated after the severe budget cuts and the request for a bank bailout from the EU in 2012. In June 2014, the King Juan Carlos I abdicated the Crown in favor of his son, Felipe VI, proclaimed King of Spain before the Cortes Generales on June 19 of the same year.

The 2015 general elections saw the entry of two new parties: Podemos and Ciudadanos, leading to a scenario of four parties that failed to invest a Prime Minister. In 2016, general elections were held again with similar results. Rajoy was invested and formed his second government, after the abstention of the PSOE. Spain was again the victim of a jihadist attack where 16 people died in Barcelona and Cambrils in August 2017. On October 1, a referendum on the independence of Catalonia was held, not recognized by the State; the Catalan parliament proclaimed independence (October 27) and the Government applied article 155 of the Constitution and called regional elections; the president of the government of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont fled the country.

On June 1, 2018, Pedro Sánchez was invested as president of the government after a motion of censure against Rajoy. Throughout 2019, two general elections were held in the country. During those months of the acting government, it is worth noting the exhumation of Franco from the Valle de los Caídos and the sentence of the Supreme Court to the members of the procés, which led to a week of strong protests in Catalonia. In January 2020, Sánchez was sworn in as president and formed the first coalition government since the Second Republic with United We Can. In the month of March, the country, along with the rest of the planet, suffered from the COVID-19 pandemic, accompanied by severe restrictions to stop its spread. In 2021, Spain became the sixth country in the world to approve euthanasia as a legal way to end a patient's life .

Policy and administration

Spain is a social and democratic state of law whose political form is the parliamentary monarchy. National sovereignty resides in the Spanish people, from whom the powers of the State emanate .The Constitution is based on the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation, common and indivisible homeland of all Spaniards, and recognizes and guarantees the right to autonomy of the nationalities and regions that comprise it and the solidarity between all of them.Spanish Constitution of 1978, article 2.

Division of powers

The head of state is the King of Spain, who arbitrates and moderates the regular functioning of the institutions and assumes the highest representation of the Spanish State in international relations, in addition to symbolizing the unity and permanence of the nation. In any case, It does not have its own initiative in its political acts, since it is not responsible for them and they must always be endorsed by the competent political authority.

Executive power —domestic and foreign policy and civil and military administration—, as well as regulatory power, are exercised by the Government.The Council of Ministers is chaired by the Prime Minister, who appoints his ministers and has the functions of a head of government in a parliamentary system. He is responsible to the Cortes Generales. At the beginning of each legislature, the king holds a round of consultations with the leaders of the political groups and proposes a candidate for the Presidency of the Government. The Congress of Deputies votes for the investiture of the President of the Government, which requires an absolute majority in the first vote or a simple majority in the second vote. Although the formation of a coalition government was possible from 1977, all governments were "monocolor" - formed by a single party or pre-election coalition - until January 2020,Until then, the leader of the pre-election party or coalition that obtained the largest number of votes and seats had always been elected President of the Government, even if they only had the parliamentary support of a relative majority. The Congress of Deputies can depose the President of the Government through a constructive censure motion, in which it must also determine who will replace him in his position.

Legislative power is exercised by the Cortes Generales, the supreme body representing the Spanish people. The Cortes Generales are a bicameral parliament made up of the Congress of Deputies —Lower Chamber— and the Senate —Upper Chamber—.General elections are held every four years by universal suffrage, in which Spaniards over the age of 18 have the right to vote. The Congress of Deputies is made up of 350 members elected by plurinominal proportional scrutiny with closed and blocked lists. The seats are distributed among the candidates through the D'Hondt system. The constituency is the province. The Senate is the chamber of territorial representation and currently has 266 members elected through a mixed system, 208 directly elected and 58 appointed. Directly elected senators are elected by partial plurinominal majority vote with open lists. The appointed senators are elected by the regional legislative bodies, at times other than those of the general elections,

The judiciary is formed by the set of courts and tribunals, made up of judges and magistrates, who have the power to administer justice on behalf of the king. The judges are career civil servants whose apex is the National High Court and the Supreme Court, the highest jurisdictional body in all orders except in matters of constitutional guarantees –exclusive jurisdiction of the Constitutional Court–. The governing body of the judiciary is the Council General of the Judicial Power, which controls the appointments, promotions, inspection and disciplinary regime of judges and magistrates.The members of that institution, as well as those of the Constitutional Court —which as a constitutional body outside the judiciary resolves appeals of unconstitutionality and conflicts of jurisdiction between the State and the autonomous communities of the country—, are elected by different political instances. . The latter has resulted in an implicit link between each of them to the political party that designates them, in contradiction to their theoretical independence and the Kelsenian legal model on which it is based, a circumstance explicitly revealed by the media and the political and political debate. intellectual .

• Headquarters of the main institutions that exercise the different powers of the State
• Palacio de las Cortes, seat of the Congress of Deputies.
• Senate Palace, seat of the homonymous upper house.
• Palacio de la Moncloa, official residence of the President of the Government.
• Convent of the Salesas Reales, seat of the Supreme Court.

External relationships

Spain has a network of 215 embassies and consulates around the world, where some 4,500 officials and professionals serve (2020). In the last half century, especially after the restoration of democracy, the country has emphasized the expansion of its relations with the rest of the world, after the period of relative isolation during the dictatorship.

Spain has been a member of the European Union since January 1, 1986. Since then, an important part of its foreign policy has been articulated through European mechanisms together with its community partners, to the point that the Government of Spain considers the territorial space of the EU 'its natural framework for political and economic development'.The other fundamental pillar of Spanish foreign action is Ibero-America, a region of preferred foreign projection for the country due to its deep historical ties of a cultural and economic nature. In this sense, Spain has tried to expand its ties with the countries of the region, especially in terms of political or business cooperation and to establish itself as a bridge between Latin America and Europe. Another focus of its diplomacy has historically been the Maghreb, with Morocco and Algeria occupying a preponderant position in the priorities of Spanish foreign policy due to its strategic nature .

The country is part of international organizations of reference such as the United Nations Organization (since December 14, 1955), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (since May 30, 1982) and the Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development; continental such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Western European Union treaty and the European Defense Agency; and organizations that strengthen historical and cultural ties of the transatlantic link such as the Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture, the Latin Union, the Ibero-American Community of Nations and ABINIA. The Spanish Government contributes to the financing of the UN with 2.14% of its annual budget for the period 2019-2021 .

Armed forces

The Spanish Armed Forces, subordinate to the civil power through the Ministry of Defense, are responsible for national defense, which, according to the provisions of the eighth article of the Constitution, have the task of "guaranteeing the sovereignty and independence of Spain, defending its territorial integrity and constitutional order.These have traditionally been divided into three arms: the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force. Currently, these arms are joined by the Royal Guard —a segregated protocol body, at the service of the king, which performs fundamentally security tasks— and the Military Emergency Unit —the most recently created member body whose mission is to intervene in quickly anywhere in the national territory in the event of a catastrophe or other public needs—, both being made up of personnel from the three main armies. Spain has the sixth most powerful navy,The oldest Marine Corps in the world and the two oldest permanent military units in the world: the King's Immemorial Infantry Regiment No. 1 and the "Soria" Light Infantry Regiment No. 9 .

The Spanish army was constituted as a whole by 133,282 troops as of January 1, 2021 according to the Government of Spain; the size of the army has been reduced in recent decades, especially after the suspension of compulsory military service in 2001 and the process professionalization of the Armed Forces. Spain's military spending was 17,177 million dollars in 2019, according to SIPRI, while the budget of the Ministry of Defense for 2021 was 10,511 million euros. Spain experienced a notable contraction of its nominal military spending in the period 2010-2020,Although with respect to the wealth of the country, defense spending has followed a downward trend since 1985, given that these as a percentage of GDP evolved from 2.9% in 1985 to 1.2% in 2019, with a minimum of 1.1% in 2016, according to SIPRI. For its part , The World Factbook , a CIA publication, maintains that military spending as a percentage of GDP was just 0.92% on average in the 2017-2019 period .

Spain is one of the most important nations of the European Union Force (EUFOR) and the Eurocorps. Likewise, it occupies a prominent position in the structure of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which it joined in 1982. The Armed Forces have participated in different international military operations under the mandate of the United Nations, the European Union or NATO. ; As of December 2020, the Spanish Armed Forces participated in 16 international missions with a deployment of up to 2,900 troops between soldiers and civil guards. On the other hand, Spain allows the presence of United States military forces in its territory since the Madrid pacts of 1953, a garrison of several thousand troops present at the Rota Naval Base and at the Morón Air Base.

Spain has a thriving military industry and access to cutting-edge technology: its suppliers are mainly national and European, but also American. The Spanish military industry has the capacity to develop and manufacture advanced technological solutions through companies with global projection such as Airbus –aerospace sector–, Navantia –public shipbuilding company–, Santa Bárbara, ITP or Indra, companies where the Spanish State has a notable influence. In the 2010s, this sector experienced a remarkable boom that made Spain the seventh largest arms exporter in the world in 2020, having tripled the value of its military exports in the last decade .

Human rights

In terms of human rights, regarding membership of the seven bodies of the International Bill of Human Rights, which include the Human Rights Committee (HRC), Spain has signed or ratified:

Spain	International deals
CESCR	CCPR	CERD	CED	CEDAW	CAT	CRC	MWC	CRPD
CESCR	CESCR-OP	CCPR	CCPR-OP1	CCPR-OP2-DP	CEDAW	CEDAW-OP	cat	CAT-OP	CRC	CRC-OP-AC	CRC-OP-SC	CRPD	CRPD-OP
membership
Signed and ratified, signed, but not ratified, neither signed nor ratified, without information, has agreed to sign and ratify the body in question, but also recognizes the competence to receive and process individual communications by the competent bodies.

In the signing and ratification of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) and in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), Spain has recognized the competence to receive and process individual communications by the Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination belonging to the Human Rights Commission .

Territorial organization

State of the autonomies

GaliciaAsturiasCantabriaBasqueCountryNavarreThe RiojaAragonCataloniaValencian CommunityRegionof MurciaAndalusiaEstremaduraCastile-La ManchaCastileand LeonCommunityof MadridCeutaMelillaBalearic IslandsCanary IslandsPortugalAndorraFranceGibralter (UK)MoroccoCantabrian SeaMediterranean SeaAtlantic OceanAtlantic Ocean

Autonomous communities of Spain.

Spain is currently what is called a “State of the Autonomies” or “Autonomous State”, a formally unitary country that functions as a sui generis decentralized federation of autonomous communities, each with different levels of self-government. The differences within this system are due to the fact that the process of transferring powers from the center to the periphery was initially conceived as an asymmetrical process, which would guarantee a greater degree of self-government only to those communities that were seeking a more federalist type of relationship. with the rest of Spain (Andalusia, Catalonia, Galicia, Navarra and the Basque Country). On the other hand, the rest of the autonomous communities would have less self-government. However, as the years went by,

Today, Spain is considered one of the most decentralized European countries, since all its different territories administer their health and education systems locally, as well as some aspects of the public budget; some of them, such as the Basque Country and Navarra, also manage their public financing with almost no (except for the quota) the supervision of the Spanish central government. In the case of Catalonia, the Canary Islands, Navarra and the Basque Country, they are equipped with their own fully operational and completely autonomous police forces that replace the functions of the National Police in these territories, except in Navarra and the Canary Islands, which are still in the process of being transferred. .

Spain is a nation organized territorially into seventeen autonomous communities and two autonomous cities. Title VIII of the Constitution establishes the territorial organization of the State in municipalities, provinces and autonomous communities, these with powers to manage their own interests with a wide level of autonomy, legislative, budgetary, administrative and executive powers in the exclusive powers that the State guarantees them through the Constitution and each Statute of Autonomy. Although Navarra was not properly constituted as an autonomous community, being de jurea foral community, and not having developed a Statute of Autonomy, but articulating an improvement of its traditional jurisdictions, it is considered an autonomous community for all purposes, according to the interpretation of the Constitutional Court.

Atlantic OceanAtlantic OceanCantabrian SeaMediterranean SeaFranceAndorraMoroccoPortugal

Provinces of Spain identified according to the ISO 3166-2 standard.

Each autonomous community is made up of one or several provinces, making a total of fifty. Since 2003, the three-level Nomenclature of Statistical Territorial Units, or NUTS units, has been adopted for purely statistical purposes based on European regulations and set by Eurostat. The fifty Spanish provinces and the two autonomous cities are classified at NUTS-3 levels; the seventeen autonomous communities are classified at NUTS-2 levels; and for the NUTS-1 levels, groups of autonomous communities have been created.

Land claims and disputed territories

Spain has historically demanded the retrocession of the colony, currently with the status of a British overseas territory, of Gibraltar, although it has lately been in favor of formulas of shared sovereignty. The claim began from the moment Anglo-Dutch troops took the square on behalf of Archduke Carlos during the War of the Spanish Succession (1704), later passing into British hands through the Treaty of Utrecht (1713). The claim, which included military operations, was particularly intense during the eighteenth  century , languished during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentiethand was taken by the Francoist government to the United Nations Organization during the 1960s. There, framed in the decolonization processes, Spain obtained support for its position by recognizing the resolutions to that effect (2231 and 2353) that the decolonization process it should respect the right to territorial integrity of Spain and that the interests, and not the wishes of the Gibraltarians, should be respected. Spain does not recognize, however, British sovereignty over the isthmus that joins the continent with the rock.

On the other hand, Portugal does not recognize Spanish sovereignty over the Olivenza region of Badajoz, which includes the municipalities of Olivenza and Táliga (although it does not actively claim its sovereignty), ceded by Portugal to Spain through the Treaty of Badajoz (1801). The resolutions of the Congress of Vienna are interpreted differently by both countries. While Portugal considers that those forced Spain to return Olivenza, Spain believes that it is a simple declaration of good wishes, without resolution capacity, which is why Olivenza remained united to Spain. Finally, although Spain recognizes Portuguese sovereignty over the Savage Islands (a tiny uninhabited archipelago in the Atlantic, 160 kilometers north of the Canary Islands and 280 kilometers south of Madeira),​​

Sovereignty over the uninhabited island of Perejil is also disputed with Morocco, which even led to an armed incident in 2002, although by agreement between the two countries no military or police force is stationed there, and neither party has renounced its claims to sovereignty. On the other hand, Morocco informally demands the transfer of the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, as well as the so-called places of sovereignty on the African continent. Some irredentist movements in Morocco, such as the Istiqlal Party, claim inclusion in the so-called "Great Morocco" of the Canary Islands .

The case of Western Sahara

In 1975, through the Tripartite Agreement of Madrid, the Spanish State formally renounced the administration of Western Sahara, a non-autonomous territory according to the Special Committee on Decolonization of the United Nations Organization, temporarily becoming Moroccan and Mauritanian . The UN itself, in its document S/2002/161, establishes:On November 14, 1975, Spain, Morocco and Mauritania issued in Madrid a declaration of principles on Western Sahara (the "Madrid Agreement"), pursuant to which the powers and responsibilities of Spain, as the administering Power of the Territory, were transferred to a tripartite temporary administration. The Madrid Agreement did not transfer sovereignty over the Territory nor did it confer the status of administering Power on any of the signatories, a status that Spain alone could not have transferred unilaterally. The transfer of administrative authority over the Territory to Morocco and Mauritania in 1975 did not affect Western Sahara's international status as a Non-Self-Governing Territory .

Therefore, Spain would continue to be the administering power over the territory. Even in 2014, the Prosecutor's Office of the Spanish National Court itself, in the investigation of two cases in which possible crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity that high Moroccan authorities would have committed against the population of the territory, established that "by international legality , that territory cannot be considered Moroccan" and, consequently, "Spain de iure , although not de facto , continues to be the administering power", criteria assumed by the Criminal Chamber of the National High Court .

Geography

Borders
Country	Total
Portugal	1232km
France	623km
Andorra	63.7km
Morocco Melilla 9.6 km, Ceuta 6.3 km	15.9km
Gibraltar	1.2km
Land	1917.8km

Located in Western Europe and North Africa, it occupies most of the Iberian Peninsula and, outside of it, two main archipelagos (the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean and the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea), two cities, Ceuta and Melilla, in North Africa, the Alboran Island and a series of islands and islets are located off the peninsular coast, such as the Columbretes Islands. In addition, it consists of smaller non-continental territories such as the Chafarinas Islands, the Vélez de la Gomera rock and the Alhucemas rock, all off the African coast.

In territorial extension it is the fourth country in Europe, behind Russia, Ukraine and France, and the second in the European Union.

The physical limits of Spain are as follows: to the west, Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean; the Mediterranean Sea to the east; the Strait of Gibraltar, the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea to the south; and the Pyrenees, along with the Bay of Biscay in the Cantabrian Sea to the north.

Climate

Spain has a very diverse climate throughout its territory. The Mediterranean character predominates in almost all its geography. The southern and Mediterranean coasts have a climate called coastal Mediterranean that the Guadalquivir valley also has: mild temperatures, abundant rainfall almost all year round except in summer.

As you enter the interior, the climate is more extreme due to the fact that it is the continental Mediterranean climate, which covers almost the entire Iberian Peninsula, low temperatures in winter, high temperatures in summer and irregular rainfall (depending on the geographical position ). In general, western communities receive more precipitation than eastern ones. Thus, Galicia and the Bay of Biscay have an oceanic climate, characterized by abundant rainfall throughout the year, especially in winter, and cool temperatures.

The mountain climate can be observed at high altitudes, the Cantabrian Mountains, the León Mountains, the Pyrenees, high points in the Iberian Mountains, the Central System and the Betic Mountains, as well as at high altitudes in the Canary Islands, where temperatures are low (cold winters or very cold) and generally abundant rainfall.

The arid or semi-arid climates (less than 300 mm per year) are found in certain points of the eastern peninsula: Almería (the famous Tabernas desert) or the Cabo de Gata-Níjar natural park (where less than 200 mm per year are recorded), Granada (Guadix), Murcia, Alicante and the Ebro valley where the Foehn effect is the main cause of such low rainfall.

The subtropical character is characteristic of the Canary Islands, with warm temperatures throughout the year and little rainfall (more abundant in the western islands). However, this climate also occurs on the southern coasts of the peninsula (Málaga, Granada, Almería), where they have relatively mild temperatures throughout the year, although rainfall is somewhat more abundant than in the Canary Islands.

Environment

Spain is a country with vast geographical areas with some type of environmental protection. In 2019, more than 40% of its land and sea surface was protected —27% land surface and 13% sea. Spanish protected areas include 16 national parks, 152 natural parks, 291 reserves —the Biosphere Reserves occupy by alone 12% of the national territory— and some 800 protected areas to varying degrees .

Since 1996, emissions of carbon dioxide (CO ₂ ) increased notably until 2007, largely failing to meet the objectives of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change on emissions that generate the greenhouse effect and contribute to climate change. However, the 2010s meant a strong reduction in its CO ₂ emissions for Spain —particularly intense between 2008 and 2013, coinciding with the economic crisis that hit the country—, to the point that in 2020 Spain's emissions were lower than in 1990, thus fulfilling its commitments established in the Kyoto Protocol .

Spain is a country particularly affected by the phenomenon of drought: during the period 1880-2000, more than half of the years have been classified as dry or very dry. In the 1980s, seven years have been considered dry or very dry and five in the 1990s. Climate change heralds very serious environmental problems for Spain, aggravating the most extreme climatic features. According to Al Gore, Spain is the European country with the most vulnerable to climate change. On the other hand, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon asked Spain for "even more active leadership" in the fight against climate change .

According to the WHO, more than 23% of deaths in the world may be caused by air pollution. According to the European Environment Agency, in European countries there could be 800,000 premature deaths per year, due to various pollutants in the air. The CSIC confirms the relationship between air pollution and the risk of death. In Spain, although the different studies on causes of death due to pollution show figures of 2,700 and up to 30,000 deaths each year, one an amount close to 10,000 premature deaths per year, could be a balanced figure .The Spanish Parliament declared a "state of climate emergency" in 2019 and passed the Climate Change and Energy Transition Law in 2021 .

Mountain Sistems

The relief of Spain is characterized by being quite high, with an average altitude of 660 meters, and mountainous if compared to the rest of the European countries, with the exception of Switzerland, Austria and the micro-states of Andorra and Liechtenstein, whose average altitude is Way to old. In peninsular Spain, the relief is articulated around a great Central Plateau that occupies most of the center of the Iberian Peninsula and has an average altitude of 660 meters. Outside the plateau, there is the depression of the Guadalquivir river, located in the southwest of the peninsula, and that of the Ebro river, in the northeast of it. The main mountain systems are: Pyrenees, Iberian system, Cantabrian mountain range, Montes de León, Central system and Betic mountain ranges (Subbética and Penibética)

Higher mountain peaks
Peak	Province	Altitude (m a.s.l.)	coordinates
Mount Teide	Santa Cruz of Tenerife	3718	28°16′17″N 16°38′37″W
Mulhacen	grenade	3479	37°03′12″N 3°18′41″W
Aneto	Huesca	3404	42°37′56″N 0°39′28″E
vane	grenade	3396	37°03′02″N 3°20′54″W
The Alcazaba	grenade	3369	37°04′02″N 3°18′05″W
Posets	Huesca	3369	42°39′56″N 0°25′28″E
Lost Mount	Huesca	3355	42°40′26″N 0°02′00″E
Marbore cylinder	Huesca	3325	42°41′34″N 00°00′42″E
Retriever	Huesca	3321	42°41′30″N 0°31′07″E
Maladeta Peak	Huesca	3312	42°38′50″N 0°38′22″E
Source: General Directorate of the National Geographic Institute

Flora

This section is an excerpt from Vegetation of Spain. 

[ edit ]

The vegetation of Spain varies depending on factors such as relief, climate or latitude, among others. The Spanish territory is divided into different phytogeographical regions (boreoalpine, Eurosiberian, Mediterranean and Macaronesian —the latter, represented in Spain by the Canary Islands—), each with its own floristic characteristics resulting largely from the interaction of different biotic and abiotic factors. .

Within the European territory, Spain has the largest number of plant species (7,600 vascular plants) of all European countries .In Spain there are 17,804 million trees and an average of 284 million more grow each year .

Fauna

This section is an extract from Fauna de España. 

[ edit ]

The fauna of Spain presents a wide diversity that is largely due to the geographical position of the Iberian Peninsula, between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean; and between Africa and Eurasia, and the great diversity of habitats and biotopes, a consequence of a considerable variety of climates and well-differentiated regions.

Certain native species have spread throughout the world, as did the rabbit ( Oryctolagus cuniculus ) in ancient times, an animal that gave Spain its name, or the canary ( Serinus canaria ) in the Modern Age.Within Europe, Spain has a high biological diversity and is home to the largest number of vertebrates (about 570 species) of all European countries .

Time zone

Spain is geographically in the UTC±0:00 time zone, since the Greenwich meridian crosses its territory. However, since 1940 it has used the UTC+1:00 zone —known as Central European Time—, except in the Canary Islands, which, due to their location, have one hour less (UTC±0:00). Likewise, in summer it is advanced one hour (UTC+2:00).

The use of a schedule that is not the corresponding one by geographical area comes from the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. By order published in the Official State Gazette , it was considered that on March 16, 1940 the legal time would be advanced by sixty minutes, "considering the convenience that the national time marches in accordance with those of other European countries", which it translated into placing Spain in the orbit of its Axis allies, Germany and Italy .

Demography

historical population
Year	Pop.	±% a.
1900	18 616 630	—
1910	19 990 669	+0.71%
1920	21 388 551	+0.68%
1930	23 667 095	+1.02%
1940	26 014 278	+0.95%
1950	28 117 873	+0.78%
1960	30 582 936	+0.84%
1970	34 008 759	+1.07%
1980	37,698,200	+1.04%
1990	39 202 524	+0.39%
2000	40 824 744	+0.41%
2010	46 931 011	+1.40%
2020	47 332 614	+0.09%
Source: National Statistics Institute

The National Institute of Statistics estimated the population at 47,394,223 inhabitants as of January 1, 2021. Of the estimated population as a whole, 42,018,306 were of Spanish nationality and 5,375,917 were foreigners, which represented 11.35% of the total. of the resident population in the country. The population density, of 93.14 inhab./km²,It is less than that of most other Western European countries and its distribution throughout the territory is very irregular: the most densely populated areas are concentrated on the coast, the Guadalquivir valley –and to a lesser extent the Ebro– and the metropolitan area of ​​Madrid, while the rest of the interior is very weakly occupied. By autonomous communities, Andalusia is the most populated region in Spain, with 8.48 million residents in 2021, followed by Catalonia (7.65 million) and the Community of Madrid (6.75 million), while Navarra, Cantabria and La Rioja stands as the least populated .

Like the rest of the nations of Western Europe, the country witnessed a high population growth from the beginning of the 19th  century that lasted throughout the 20th  century . In the case of Spain, population growth slowed markedly in the 1980s and 1990s; however, the high rates of immigration that the country experienced in the 2000s resulted in a strong and renewed demographic impulse. In the 2010-2020 period, the economic difficulties and the outflow of foreign population resulted in a population loss between 2010 and 2016, although the subsequent demographic recovery made it possible to reach new maximum populations since 2018 .

In the last two centuries and parallel to demographic growth, the population has tended to cluster in urban centres, a «rural exodus» that worsened in the second half of the 20th  century and has continued in the 21st  century , which has made Spain is a fundamentally urban country. According to the Ministry of Public Works of the Government of Spain, 69% of the country's inhabitants lived in large urban areas — those population centers with more than 50,000 inhabitants — in 2019 .

Metropolitan areas

The creation of administrative entities that group together the municipalities that constitute a metropolitan area is in the hands of the autonomous communities. According to data from the register of Local Entities, there are three constituted metropolitan areas, one in the province of Barcelona (the Barcelona metropolitan area) and two in that of Valencia (Metropolitan Entity for Hydraulic Services and Metropolitan Entity for Waste Treatment) . The Metropolitan Area of ​​Barcelona had been abolished in 1987 by the Government of Catalonia. According to the Ministry of Public Works in 2019, the metropolitan areas in a demographic sense that exceeded 700,000 inhabitants in 2018 were the following :

• Madrid metropolitan area (6,120,2454 inhabitants)
• Barcelona metropolitan area (5 108 383)
• Valencia metropolitan area (1,552,783)
• Seville metropolitan area (1 307 209)
• Malaga metropolitan area (974 822)
• Bilbao metropolitan area (901 557)
• Central metropolitan area of ​​Asturias (804 142)
• Zaragoza metropolitan area (744 862)

Distribution of the population by islands

Spanish islands by population, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics (2018) :

1. Tenerife ( 904,713 inhabitants).
2. Majorca ( 880,113 inhab.).
3. Gran Canaria ( 846,717 inhabitants).
4. Lanzarote ( 149,183 inhab.).
5. Ibiza ( 144,659 inhab.).
6. Fuerteventura ( 113,275 inhabitants).
7. Minorca ( 91,920 inhabitants).
8. La Palma ( 81,863 inhabitants).
9. La Gomera ( 21,136 inhabitants).
10. Formentera ( 12,216 inhabitants).
11. El Hierro ( 10,798 inhabitants).

Immigration in Spain

Immigration in Spain is a relatively recent phenomenon, but with great economic, demographic and social repercussions. In 2020, the foreign population in Spain represented 11.35% of the population. By origin, the main national groups present in Spain in 2021, according to the INE, came from Morocco —the historically largest immigrant group— with 775,936 individuals, Romania (658,773), United Kingdom (313,948), Colombia (297,934) and Italy (280,152). Although not as numerous as the previous ones, communities from Venezuela, China and Germany are also relevant.By continent, resident foreigners come mainly from Ibero-America —a consequence of its strong historical ties—, Europe —especially from EU countries, whose inhabitants enjoy freedom of movement— and North Africa.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, Spain was a country of emigrants, who went mainly to America —almost five million Spaniards between 1881 and 1959 alone— and neighboring countries of Western Europe —since the second half of the 20th  century .—, migratory flows that did not end until well into the 1970s. The waves of immigration to Spain began in the 1990s, but reached their peak in the 2000s, when the foreign population in Spain rose to around six million people —foreigners represented 12.2% of the population in 2010, when in 2000 they barely exceeded 2% and did not reach 1% in 1990. In the 2010s there was a tendency towards moderation and stabilization of the foreign population residing in Spain, due to the economic crisis at the beginning of the decade —the external migratory balance of foreigners was negative between 2011 and 2014— and the naturalization of the foreign population —in 2014 alone, more than 200,000 resident foreigners acquired Spanish nationality .Some studies contradict the official figures of the INE and conclude, among other data, that the immigrant population in Spain is much higher than the official data, standing at 6.4 million in 2018 —when according to the INE that year there were 4.8 registered. million—; that same year immigrants exceeded 20% of all workers between 20 and 45 years of age. Officially, legal immigration to Spain is severely restricted and is limited to the labor needs contained in the Job Catalog of Difficult Coverage, however, the majority of immigrants enter the country by other means, although only a residual proportion does so illegally. Immigrants in Spain are also characterized by higher rates of unemploymentand poverty than the general population.

Most populous municipalities

Most populous municipalities in Spain
Madrid Barcelona Valencia		Municipality	Autonomous community	Population		Municipality	Autonomous community	Population	Seville Zaragoza Malaga
1st	Madrid	C. of Madrid	3,334,730		11th	Alicante	Valencian C.	337 482
2nd	Barcelona	Catalonia	1 664 182		12th	Cordova	Andalusia	326 039
3rd	Valencia	Valencian C.	800 215		13th	Valladolid	Castile and Leon	298 265
4th	Seville	Andalusia	691 395		14th	Vigo	Galicia	296 692
5th	Saragossa	Aragon	681 877		15th	Gijon	Principal from Asturias	284 877
6th	Malaga	Andalusia	578 480		16th	Hospitalet de Llobregat	Catalonia	269 ​​382
7th	Murcia	Region of Murcia	459 403		17th	Victory	Basque Country	253 996
8th	Palma de Mallorca	Balearic Islands	422 587		18th	La Coruna	Galicia	247 604
9th	The Palms of GC	Canary Islands	381 223		19th	Elche	Valencian C.	234 765
10th	Bilbao	Basque Country	350 184		20th	grenade	Andalusia	233 648
Source: National Statistics Institute (2020 population register )

Economy

Spain has a capitalist mixed economy, the fourteenth world economic power by nominal GDP according to the IMF in 2021, although in the 1990s it came to be the seventh according to this indicator. It is a high-income developed country, with a GDP per nominal capita of more than USD 31,000 —about USD 41,000 in PPP—, a level significantly lower than the average of the EU and the main countries of Western Europe. The services sector contributes most of the annual GDP, while the Community of Madrid is the richest community with the highest income per inhabitant in the country, followed by Catalonia in overall production and the Basque Country in income per inhabitant.Spain has a high quality of life, excellent infrastructure and a vast welfare state, developed since the 1980s. The state intervenes in the economy through regulations and social welfare policies; public revenue and expenditure have been around 40% of GDP –revenue equivalent to 39% and expenditure equivalent to 42% of GDP in 2019–, below the European Union average .

The Spanish economy is one of the most open in the eurozone and with more internationalization in its financial products, services, etc. The growth of its exports, together with the enormous surplus it obtains from its foreign services – thanks to being one of the most visited countries in the world – give it a positive balance of payments with the rest of the world. Its companies stand out internationally in some fields such as renewable energy, textiles, technology or construction. More than 80% of Spanish workers are salaried –and of these, one in five are employed by the State–, while the remaining 20% ​​are self-employed or business owners –the vast majority of which are SMEs. The highest salaries are in the industrial sector,On the other hand, the low results of its educational system, its underground economy and its very high levels of unemployment over several decades are some of the perennial problems of the Spanish economy .

The beginnings of industrialization in Spain in the 19th  centurythey yielded few and late results, and only a few poles in Catalonia and the Basque Country achieved full industrialization. A series of development plans, which began in 1959, helped expand the economy and bring it closer to European levels, until it became the second fastest growing country in the world in the 1960s, a phenomenon known as a "miracle". Spanish economic However, since 1974 a period of economic recession began due to the oil crisis, and an increase in imports with the arrival of democracy and the opening of borders. The development of the steel, shipyard, textile and mining industries was followed by the outsourcing of the economy since the 1980s. This process, known in Spain as industrial reconversion, It meant the dismantling of a large part of heavy industry and the constant loss of weight of the secondary sector in the economy, parallel to the rise of the services sector. The period of strong economic growth recorded between 1994 and 2008 created a series of internal imbalances which, together with the Great Recession of 2008, generated an economic crisis in Spain with particularly serious and lasting consequences that would be felt throughout much of of the 2010s. The highest unemployment rates recorded in the country's history were reached and the sharp drop in activity had a negative impact on the State's accounts, its indebtedness and the standard of living of the population in general, which generated a great social, political and territorial crisis,

Primary sector

Until the 1960s, agriculture was the mainstay of the Spanish economy, but currently it employs approximately only 4% of the active population and generates around 3% of GDP. The main crops are wheat, barley, sugar beet ), corn, potatoes (potatoes), rye, oats, rice, tomatoes and onions. The country also has extensive vineyards and orchards of citrus and olive trees. Spain is the world's leading producer of wine, cava and olive oil. In the case of olive oil, Spain accounts for more than half of all world production and exports of this product, which is produced especially in the Andalusian province from Jaen .

The climatic and topographical conditions make rainfed agriculture mandatory in a large part of Spain. The provinces of the Mediterranean coast have had irrigation systems for a long time, and this previously arid coastal belt has become one of the most productive areas in Spain, where it is common to find crops under plastic. As a result, a semi-desert region like Almería has managed to establish itself as the "garden of Europe", by producing throughout the year and having a large exporting muscle.Combined irrigation and hydroelectric projects can be found in the Ebro valley. Large areas of Extremadura are irrigated with water from the Guadiana through irrigation systems that have been installed thanks to government projects (Plan Badajoz and Coria irrigation, among others). Small-sized irrigated farms are more widespread in areas with a humid climate and in the Murcia orchard and the Valencia orchard.

Regarding livestock, sheep, pigs and cattle have an important economic importance. Spain stands out for one of its breeds of pig, the Iberian pig, which is one of the emblems of Spanish gastronomy for its products: Iberian sausages, with Iberian acorn-fed ham at the top. Cork is the main forest resource in Spain. The production of paper pulp and wood from Spanish forests is insufficient to cover the needs of the country. The fishing industry is less important today for the Spanish economy than in the past, despite the fact that it occupies the first positions among European countries both in terms of the volume of its fleet and that of catches. For a few decades, aquaculture (marine and continental) has had a great development, highlighting the breeding of sea bream, sea bass, mussel,

Spanish mining has a scarce production, focused on the extraction of metallic minerals, industrial minerals and quarry products, followed by ornamental rocks and energy minerals —the latter very scarce in the country—.Since 1996 it has been marked by the progressive and forced reduction in coal extraction, a certain stagnation in metallic mining and the constant growth of industrial minerals and rocks —celestine, sodium sulfate, sepiolite, fluorite, gypsum, feldspar, slate. , marble or granite—with increasing weight in the mining sector. The main coal mines, already closed, are in the province of Asturias, in the north of the province of León and in the province of Teruel; the main iron ore deposits are around Santander and Bilbao; Almadén, in the province of Ciudad Real, was very productive in the extraction of mercury. By volume of production, Andalusia monopolizes almost 40% of the national production —mainly thanks to its high production of metallic minerals—,​

Industry

In Spain, among others, textiles, iron and steel, motor vehicles, aircraft and their components, chemical products, clothing, footwear, boats, oil refining and cement are produced, with the industrial sectors of food, beverages and and transport material, among which the automobile sector and the aeronautical industrial sector should be highlighted. Historically, the country's industrial hubs par excellence have been located in Catalonia and the Basque Country, and Catalonia continues to be the main industrial hub in terms of production (23.5% of the national total in 2019), followed by Madrid, the Valencian Community and the Basque Country. Basque.The secondary sector represented 20.5% of Spanish GDP in 2020, with the industrial sector representing just over 14% of GDP and construction 6%. As in most industrialized nations, the weight of the secondary sector has tended to decline in recent decades —27.9% of GDP in 2000— .

The automobile sector is the most important industry in the country, representing by itself 10% of the national GDP and 18% of exports (2019). Spain was the second largest producer of vehicles in Europe and the ninth in the world. world in 2019, with more than 2.8 million vehicles manufactured, more than 80% destined for export .The presence of factories of foreign automobile companies - French, German and American - explains this large volume of production, since Spain lacks a national producer of importance since the privatization and sale of Seat to the Volkswagen group, although the companies maintain the Spanish nature of some vehicle brands manufactured in the country —some exclusively worldwide— such as Seat or Cupra itself. Spain has played an important role in the modernization of the railway and especially modern trains, with Talgo being its main actor, by creating its articulated train, the forerunner of all later industry, which bases its development on its original solution. Spain still maintains a notable railway industry, focused on high speed and accompanied by other companies in the wagon, metro and tram sector, such as CAF.The aerospace and defense sector is also relevant, representing 1.7% of GDP (2020) and having a comprehensive manufacturing capacity through leading companies such as Airbus and other national companies .

The steel industry, before its reconversion in the 1990s, was concentrated in Bilbao, Santander, Avilés and part of Zaragoza, having great weight for the country. The reconversion of the steel industry in the Basque Country –particularly hard, since it went from employing almost half of the entire active population to being a residual sector– occurred intelligently, by investing a large part of the funds received in R&D and generating a model of industrial hyper-specialization, inspired by the model of the German mittelstand . In Zaragoza, its metallurgical specialization, in addition to its geographical position, favored the arrival of the automobile industry with Opel.Also noteworthy is the Valle de Escombreras, in Cartagena, one of the most important energy poles in the country and which received the largest investment in industry in the history of Spain, or the Huelva chemical pole.

In the industrial fashion sector that includes textiles and footwear, the Inditex group stands out for its production, a world leader in textiles and an ideologue of accessible and seasonal fashion. Special mention deserves the now deceased master designers Balenciaga and Manuel Pertegaz, among others. Along with the United States, it is a pioneer in the emerging sector of gamification, which is the art of turning problems, business or education into games. It also has a combative video game industry with several companies with successful titles and collaborations with large studies .

Science and Technology

Spain is well equipped in terms of a network of Singular Scientific and Technical Infrastructure (ICTS), having proliferated in recent years technology parks in the main industrial areas, as well as around universities and research and development centers (R&D). D). According to data from the National Institute of Statistics, research spending in 2019 stood at 15,572 million euros, which represents 1.25% of the gross domestic product. Investments in R&D in Spain have been substantially lower than the average of Western European countries (2.2% in 2019), both by the public sector and by universities, although the main reason is the low investment of private companies, with a relative expenditure of less than the half of the euro zone average.The CSIC is the main research organization in the country.

Service sector

The services sector is the dominant sector in the Spanish economy: it employs most of the country's workers and accounted for 68% of GDP in 2019 .

The monetary unit is the euro, since January 1, 1999, the euro was linked to the value of the peseta, with a fixed exchange rate of 166.386 pesetas per euro; on January 1, 2002, euro banknotes and coins were introduced, and on February 28 of the same year, the peseta ceased to circulate. The country has a powerful banking system, with a large number of commercial banks and savings banks. savings. Two Spanish banks are among the top forty in the world by market capitalization: Grupo Santander (12th) and Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (34th). In addition, these two banks are among the top fifty in the world by assets, 22nd and 46th, respectively. The main stock exchanges are located in Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Bilbao and Valencia .

Tourism

Tourism is one of the pillars of the Spanish economy, becoming the economic sector that contributes the most wealth to the national economy as a whole and the largest source of foreign currency inflows from abroad. Its geographical location, its coasts bathed by different seas and oceans, its diverse climates and landscapes, and its cultural heritage have made the country one of the main international destinations in the world. The extraordinary variety of services and infrastructure of its tourism industry has placed Spain on several occasions as the most competitive country in the world in this sector. The World Tourism Organization has its headquarters in Madrid.

Since the 1960s, Spain has been one of the most visited countries in the world and the number of tourists has not stopped growing in the last half century – visitors doubled between 1998 and 2018. In 2019, Spain was the second most visited country in the world, with more than 83 million tourists, almost half of which came from the United Kingdom (18 million tourists in 2019), Germany and France. Catalonia is by far the most visited region, with nearly 19 million tourists in 2019, followed by the Balearic and Canary Islands (13 million each), which together with Andalusia (12 million) and the Valencian Community (9 million) form the most popular group of communities among international tourists .

The tourism sector contributed the equivalent of 12.4% of GDP to national wealth and generated more than one million direct jobs in 2019. International tourism represents a massive source of foreign currency for Spain, totaling 79.7 billion dollars in 2019, the second largest amount in the world, only surpassed by the United States. Discounting the spending of Spanish tourists abroad, the country obtained a positive balance of 52 billion dollars in 2019 according to the UNWTO, the second largest in the world .

Foreign trade

Main exports	Main imports
Product	Percentage	Product	Percentage
Equipment goods	20.4%	Equipment goods	21.3%
Alimentation and drinks	16.8%	Chemical products	15.8%
automobile industry	15.2%	energy products	13.8%
Chemical products	14.5%	automobile industry	12.5%
Others	33.1%	Others	36.6%
Source: Ministry of Commerce (2020) .

Spain exported goods worth 261,175 million euros and imported goods for an amount equivalent to 274,597 million euros in 2020. These figures, in a year marked by the global coronavirus pandemic, contrast with the 290,892 million euros exported and 322,436 million euros in imported goods in 2019. In any case, the trade balance was negative, presenting a deficit of 13,422 million euros, the lowest of the decade, and a coverage rate of 95.1 %. Spanish exports have followed a continuous upward path in recent decades, while imports, after a period of sustained growth, stabilized in the 2010s —the annual historical maximum was in 2008—;Spain has had a trade deficit every year since the World Bank's historical series began in 1975. Very different is the export and import of services, with a high and permanent surplus for decades, which results in the total export of goods and services is higher than the value of imports.

The main Spanish exports correspond to capital goods —which includes assembled cars—, food, beverages and tobacco and the automobile sector. The main imported products are capital goods, chemical products and energy products. By product line, the main trade surpluses were in food, beverages and tobacco (17,336 million euros) and the automobile sector (8,119 million) in 2020. On the contrary, the main negative balances and those responsible for the trade deficit are energy products (-14,524 million euros), since the import of oil alone represented an expense of more than 20,000 million in 2020 and 35,000 million in 2019 and capital goods (-10,443 million).Regarding the technological level of exports, 53% corresponded to high and medium-high technology exports, 20.3% to medium-low technology and 26.7% low .

Spanish exports were mostly destined for other European countries (73% of the total) in 2020, its main partners being France (16.1%), Germany (11.3%), Italy (7.8%) , Portugal (7.6%) and the United Kingdom (6.5%). The origin of imports had a greater diversification and the weight of Europe was limited to 61.1% in 2020. The main supplying countries that same year were Germany (12.4%), China (10.7%), France (10.4%), Italy (6.5%) and the United States (5.1%) .

Balance of payments

Balance of payments according to the World
Year	% of GDP
2020	0.67%
2019	2.12%
2018	1.91%
2017	2.81%
2016	3.19%
2015	2.01%
2014	1.65%
2013	2.03%
2012	0.05%
2011	–2.7%

Spain registered a positive balance of payments of 28.9 billion euros in 2019 according to the Bank of Spain and the INE, equivalent to 2.1% of its GDP or 29.6 billion dollars according to the World Bank. This positive balance in current account remained in 2020, although it was seriously affected by the strong economic recession resulting from the global Covid-19 epidemic, falling to an amount of 8.66 billion dollars or 0.67% of GDP, according to the Bank World .

The country had a constant foreign deficit between 1987 and 2011, to the point that in 2008 it was one of the countries with the largest foreign deficit in the world —145.7 billion dollars or 8.9% of GDP, according to the World Bank. —. However , in a few years the country managed to progressively reduce the deficit with the rest of the world, until in 2012 the balance of payments registered a surplus. Since that year, the balance with the rest of the world has been uninterruptedly positive and even Spain has managed to position itself as one of the countries with the largest surplus in the world in its foreign transactions .

The composition of the balance of payments balance has followed a similar trend throughout the last decades: trade in goods has historically been in deficit, as has the balance of primary and secondary income, while thanks to the strong surplus of services (more than 5% of GDP between 2013 and 2019), the foreign balance has been able to balance itself in years of deficit or show a clearly positive balance in years of surplus. In nominal terms, income from current and capital accounts added €515.6 billion, compared to payments of €486.7 billion in 2019.The main source of foreign currency for the Spanish economy and the main reason for the surpluses obtained in recent years is international tourism. Tourism and travel alone represented 50.7% of revenue from services abroad in 2019 and had a positive balance of 46.28 billion euros that same year, enough to cover the deficit of all other indicators and make that Spain had a foreign surplus .

Infrastructure and services

Energy

Electricity production in Spain (2020)
Source		Percentage
Nuclear		22.2%
Wind		21.8%
Combined cycle		17.5%
Hydraulics		12.2%
cogeneration		10.7%
Solar		7.9%
Rest		7.7%
Source: REE, 2021 report .

The energy sector in Spain accounts for approximately 3% of the country's Gross Domestic Product, but its importance goes beyond its participation in total production, as it constitutes a strategic sector on which all branches of economic activity depend. being the energy necessary for the production of goods and services. One of the most outstanding elements of the energy sector in Spain, in the last two centuries, has been the scarcity and poverty of the existing energy resources in the national territory. This scarcity has traditionally condemned the national energy system to a situation of deficit and foreign dependency. The degree of foreign self-sufficiency was estimated in 2008 at 25%,​ a figure that has remained unchanged in the following decade, with 26.6% in 2018, a figure well below the EU average, which results in the country's trade deficit. Regarding electricity distribution, all The high voltage network —which is over 44,000 kilometers long— is managed by Red Eléctrica Española, a private company but with the Spanish State as the main shareholder. The electricity network also has international interconnections with the networks of neighboring countries, especially with France and Portugal, and to a lesser extent with Morocco.To complete its energy infrastructure, Spain has a network of several thousand kilometers of oil pipelines —which connect with refineries in national territory— and gas pipelines, through which it receives gas from its Maghreb partners, especially Algeria.

It had an installed capacity of 110,839 MW in 2020. The energy demand in Spain grew significantly from the end of the 20th  century to the first decade of the  21st century , followed by a period of stabilization. Nuclear energy was the first source of electricity generation in Spain in 2020, while wind power was a very short distance away. Parallel to the increase in renewable sources, there has been a sharp decline in some fossil sources, especially coal, which barely contributed 2% of production in 2020, when it still provided 20% in 2015. Similarly, a phase-out of nuclear power as plants reach the end of their useful lives.The installed power for electricity generation shows notable divergences with respect to gross production and a constant evolution. Wind power was the largest source of generation by installed power with 27,485 MW in 2020, followed by the combined cycle (26,250 MW) and hydraulic power (17,097 MW) .

The geographical and climatic conditions characteristic of Spain have allowed the country to position itself as one of the European and global leaders in the use of renewable energies. The generation of electricity from renewable sources has been increasing steadily in recent decades, reaching 45.5% in 2020, when a decade earlier it had stood at 32.5% (2011). Spain was the eighth country in the world in terms of installed power from renewable sources in 2020 and its weight in national production is expected to increase in the coming decades. Wind energy is already the source of electricity generation with the highest installed power —and the fifth largest in the world-and the second in production (2020). Photovoltaic solar energy, after little growth in the last decade, managed to double its installed capacity in just two years (2018-2020) to place Spain as the eleventh country with the highest installed capacity in 2020 .

Transport

Spain enjoys a modern and highly developed transport infrastructure, the result of an extraordinary investment effort since the mid-1980s that had the dual objective of integrating the different regions of the country and catching up with the main European countries, historically with a better endowment in an infrastructure system of great economic importance. Between 1995 and 2017, the country invested an average of 1.42% of its annual GDP in this matter, 40% more than France and twice as much as Germany, spending destined mostly to highways and rail, and to a lesser extent to airports and ports.This outstanding effort reached its peak in the period 2001-2010, when more than 174 billion euros were invested in transport infrastructure, placing Spain in the first place of the main European economies both in investment per inhabitant and in proportion to his wealth .

Spain has 51 airports located in the different regions, of which 46 are considered "general interest airports" —a name that includes the most important. The general interest airports —and two heliports— are managed by the public company AENA, the largest airport operator in the world by number of passengers .

More than 275 million travelers passed through AENA airports, where more than 200 airlines operate, in 2019, a figure that has grown significantly since the beginning of the century, as well as cargo cargo operations. From the airport network The main airports include the Madrid-Barajas airport and the Barcelona-El Prat airport, which with their more than 61 million and 52 million passengers, respectively, absorbed more than 40% of passenger traffic and close to 70% of freight traffic of the AENA airport network in 2019. Madrid-Barajas is one of the hubsleading European airports, as it is an important airport connection center between the different regions of Spain and Europe, in addition to aspiring to consolidate itself as an intermediary in the airlift between Europe and Latin America. Madrid-Barajas is also the main base of operations for Iberia, a member of IAG and a historic Spanish flag carrier. For its part, El Prat airport has also sought, through successive expansions, to establish itself as a hub of transcontinental relevance similar to Madrid-Barajas.In the network of airports, the so-called "tourist airports" have great weight: the airports of Palma de Mallorca and Malaga were the third and fourth busiest, with 29 and 19 million passengers, respectively, while the eight airports More than 45 million passengers passed through the Canary Islands in 2019. In cargo loading and unloading operations, Zaragoza airport stands out, second in tonnage in the country —compared to its 28th position in passenger traffic— only surpassed by Madrid (2019) .

Spanish railways are characterized by the heterogeneity in the width of their tracks. The Spanish rail network is mostly built on Iberian gauge, while modern high-speed lines incorporate international gauge (FGC) and there are some metric gauge lines (FEVE). The Spanish railway system is fundamentally radial with its center in Madrid. The city of Barcelona allows connecting Spain with Paris, Zurich and Milan among other European cities. The railway infrastructure is state-owned as a whole and is managed by the public company ADIF, while the also state-owned company Renfe operates the passenger service of all the Iberian gauge lines under a monopoly regime, including the "commuter hubs", responsible for alone of more than 90% of train trips in Spain.The rolling stock is manufactured on many occasions by national companies of international relevance such as Talgo and CAF.

The Spanish high-speed railway, with more than 3,000 kilometers of tracks and the heavy investments made, which accumulated more than 61,000 million euros in 2020, make it the second largest in the world, only surpassed by China —although it is the first in the world in density of kilometers per inhabitant. Its construction has been characterized by its cost overruns and its endemic underuse —it is the least used of countries with similar comprehensive networks, such as Japan or China— in addition to the difficulties in its construction due to to the Spanish orography, very mountainous.On the other hand, the Spanish high-speed network has had construction costs much lower than the average European and international cost, its maximum operating speed is 350 km/h —the commercial speed is set at 310 km/h— and its overall profitability is positive. The Spanish high-speed network has been open to public and private competition since the European railway liberalization of 2020; The first company to start operating in this segment together with Renfe —and its AVE service— was the French state conglomerate SNCF.

The metro network is available in ten of the main Spanish cities and, in the case of large metropolitan areas, also in their adjacent urban centres. The main Spanish metropolitans are Barcelona, ​​which consists of twelve lines with a length of 166 kilometers and 411 million passengers in 2019 , and the Madrid metro, which is 293 kilometers long and 677 million passengers in 2019. third largest suburban in Europe and one of the largest in the world. In some cities there are also tram networks.

The Spanish road network is made up of more than half a million paved kilometers and is interurban in nature. This network includes toll motorways, free motorways, dual carriageways, dual carriageways and conventional roads. This figure does not include urban roads and streets, nor agricultural or forestry roads or paths. Thanks to the strong investments of recent decades, Spain is the country with the most kilometers of high-capacity roads —motorways and expressways— in all of Europe and the third in the world. Its endowment of kilometers of motorways and expressways, which are part of the State Highway Network and are mostly free, double the average per inhabitant of the European Union.The network of highways and expressways extends over more than 15,500 kilometers, more than twice that of Italy, greater than the 13,000 km of Germany —a much more populous country— and the more than 11,000 of France —significantly more. extensive and populated .

Likewise, Spain enjoys numerous maritime communications with more than 53 international ports on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. It is worth highlighting the port of Algeciras, the only one in Spain considered world-class due to its high movement of passengers and goods, the port of Valencia —together with Algeciras, one of the main ports in Europe—, as well as the port of Vigo, being also one of the most active in terms of merchandise traffic, live catches of fish and frozen. The port of Seville is the only purely fluvial port that exists in the country, because although the city is inland, it has access to the sea through the Guadalquivir river. The neighboring port of Cádiz is a strategic point for shipping goods to the Atlantic archipelago of the Canary Islands.

Living place

Spain had a park of 25.7 million homes at the end of 2018, according to data from the Government of Spain, of which approximately 77% are used as a habitual residence, while the rest are used as a second residence (12%) and for rent to third parties (9%). 2% of the country's homes in the hands of individuals have no use .

The number of available homes increased by more than five million in the period 2000-2020, although this increase in supply —greater than population growth— was accompanied by a strong increase in house prices —especially pronounced until 2008—which continued to a lesser extent in the second half of the 2010s. At the beginning of 2021, the average house price nationwide was €1,625/m². The price, however, varies ostensibly depending on the the autonomous communities and the provincial capitals, with the highest value in Catalonia (€3,934/m² in 2020), as opposed to prices in Extremadura (€1,198/m² in 2020) .

Spain is characterized by a high rate of ownership, higher than that of many other developed countries, since 76.1% of households owned a home in 2018 according to the INE. On the other hand, approximately 17.5% of Its inhabitants live on a rental basis, a housing solution on the rise in the last two decades, while almost one in five owners owns two or more homes. Parallel to the increase in rent, the proportion of home ownership has also decreased in the last two decades —in 2001 up to 84.5% of households owned a home—,Although in the last half century the tendency to own property has followed a marked upward trend —in 1970, owned homes accounted for 63.4%, while 30.1% of inhabitants lived for rent and 6, 5% by transfer or other forms .

Telecommunications

Spain has a good telecommunications network and is one of the largest markets in Europe in this segment; To the extensive conventional fiber optic cable network, one of the largest submarine cable networks and satellite connection with the five continents must be added.

The majority operator in telephony and Internet access is the multinational of Spanish origin Telefónica, based in Madrid, which operates in both fixed and mobile telephony, and comes from the former state telephony monopoly. However, the telecommunications market has been open to competition in all its sectors since the breakup of the monopoly, in 1994 for mobile telephony with the appearance of Airtel (currently Vodafone) and in 1998 for fixed lines with the arrival of Retevisión. (currently Vodafone). In mobile telephony, there are four operators with their own network —Movistar, Orange, Vodafone and Yoigo—and a considerable number of virtual mobile operators that share a market in which, since 2006, there are officially more lines than inhabitants. Spain is one of the European Union countries with the greatest extension and quality of coverage; According to a study by the Ministry of Industry in 2006, 98% of Spanish territory already had GSM coverage at that time, ahead of countries such as France, Italy or Germany. After achieving 4G coverage of more than 85% of its population in three years, Spain has been in full deployment of 5G networks since 2019 .

In fixed telephony and Internet access, there is currently a cable access market organized by demarcations in most of which the main companies in the sector operate, in addition to some regional companies in their respective demarcations. In addition, the dominant operator (Telefónica) is required to allow third party companies to provide services on its network by renting the copper pairs it owns and space in its exchanges. It is the European leader in fiber optic deployment and the government objective is to provide high-speed networks to 100% of the population; Spain had a fiber optic network larger than those of the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Germany combined in 2020 .

Health

Spain, with the second highest life expectancy in the world, enjoys a public health system of national and international prestige, governed by the National Health System, which holds the top positions in various studies that highlight the strength of its health care system , particularly their primary care. However, after the COVID-19 pandemic, some deficiencies in planning and management emerged. Likewise, since the end of the 20th  century , Spanish healthcare has stood out in organ donation and transplantation through the National Transplant Organization; the nation has Erected as the world leader in donations, in relation to its population, continuously since 1991 .

Culture

World Heritage

Spain is the fourth country in the world —along with France— after Italy, China and Germany with the most monuments declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. In 2021, it had 49 declared properties, including Monte Perdido and the Coa Valley and Siega Verde, shared with France and Portugal respectively .

On the other hand, Spain has 17 intangible cultural assets, which makes it the first country in Europe with the largest number of assets declared on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity .

This characteristic of Spanish heritage prompted the different state administrations to draw up a specific law for its protection, Law 16/1985 on Spanish Historical Heritage. This law, still in force, seeks the protection of all cultural property declared or not, likely to be of public interest. It summons all the institutions that are part of the Spanish state or cultural associations to collaborate in the maintenance or discovery of this cultural heritage, both real estate and movable property, inviting the whole of society to draw up a census and catalog of the protected heritage or that must be protected .

Art

The different peoples that passed through Spain throughout history, the border situation of the Iberian Peninsula between two continents with diverse cultural traditions, the long period of political influence of the Hispanic monarchy, and its expansion in the American continent , have determined that the cultural and artistic heritage of Spain is one of the richest, most varied and influential in the West. The great wealth of heritage that Spain preserves stands out, both in archaeological sites, temples, palaces, fortresses, historic gardens, monumental urban complexes, ethnographic heritage or museums, as well as in another series of cultural manifestations.

Spain has been the cradle of great authors in practically all artistic disciplines, the Spanish contribution to the field of painting being very relevant, with a great influence on the development of numerous European and North American artistic movements. Due to its historical, geographical and generational diversity, Spanish art has also known a large number of external influences. The Mediterranean heritage, with Greco-Roman but also Moorish influences, especially in Andalusia, is still evident today. The main European currents that influenced Spanish art came from Italy, Germany and France, especially during the Renaissance, Spanish Baroque and Neoclassical periods. Some indigenous styles were also born in the country, such as pre-Romanesque art and architecture, Herrerian architecture or Elizabethan Gothic. The so-called Golden Age saw universal painters such as El Greco, Ribera, Murillo and Zurbarán, among others. Also in the Baroque period, Diego Velázquez created some of the most famous Spanish paintings, such as Las Meninas and Las Hilanderas.

Likewise, among the Spanish painters of the contemporary era, there are geniuses of universal significance such as Francisco de Goya —who painted during a historical period that includes the Spanish War of Independence, the struggles between liberals and absolutists and the emergence of nation-states. contemporaries—, Joaquín Sorolla, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Juan Gris and Joan Miró. All this artistic wealth is widely represented in the Spanish art galleries, among which are some of the best and most visited in the world, such as the Prado Museum, the Reina Sofía Museum, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, which together form the called "triangle of art", one of the most important artistic centers in the world.

Literature

The literature of Spain includes not only the literary tradition in Castilian, but also the literary manifestations of the rest of the Spanish languages, such as Catalan, Galician and Basque, as well as classical Hispano-Latin, Judeo-Spanish or Hispano-Arabic literature. In its historical context, Spanish literature ranges from the first poetic expressions preserved in the vernacular to the literature of our days. The literature of Spain has its origin in Roman literature, while the literature of Latin America has its origin in Spanish and is one of the main manifestations of literature in Spanish, with its own characteristics that were forged since the Spanish colonization of America.

The Roman conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, beginning in the 3rd centuryto. C. brought Latin culture to present-day Spain. The arrival of the Muslims in 711 AD. C. brought the cultures of the Near East and Far East. In medieval Spanish literature, the earliest recorded examples of a vernacular literature mix Muslim, Jewish, and Christian culture. One of the notable works is the epic poem Cantar de Mio Cid, written in 1140, however, the Glosas Emilianenses are the first testimony of a writing in the Romance language of the Iberian Peninsula. Already in the Baroque and the Golden Age of literature in Spanish, the essential names of universal influence emerged: Mateo Alemán, Alonso de Ercilla, Francisco de Quevedo, Luis de Góngora, Baltasar Gracián, Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina and Pedro Calderon de la Barca. Of this time was also Miguel de Cervantes, Probably the most universal author in the country thanks to his magnum opus, Don Quixote de la Mancha, the classic founder of Western literature. Later, during the reign of Carlos III, a stage of enlightened despotism, the French influence was noted in the Spanish literature of the nineteenth century.xviii . Among the most representative authors of this period are Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, Leandro Fernández de Moratín, Ramón de la Cruz, José Cadalso and Benito Jerónimo Feijoo. During romanticism, at the beginning of the 19th century , the most important are: the poetry of José de Espronceda and other poets and the theater of Ángel de Saavedra (Duke of Rivas) and José Zorrilla, among other authors. In realism (late nineteenth century ), mixed with naturalism, the important themes are the novel, with Juan Valera, José María de Pereda, Benito Pérez Galdós, Emilia Pardo Bazán, Leopoldo Alas, Armando Palacio Valdés and Vicente Blasco Ibáñez.

In modernism there are several currents such as Parnassianism, symbolism, futurism and creationism. Parallel to the so-called "Disaster of '98", a group of young writers grouped together in the so-called generation of '98 emerged, including Miguel de Unamuno, Pío Baroja and José Martínez Ruiz. Among the main voices of the early twentieth century are also the authors belonging to the generation of 14, such as the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez, the academics and essayists Ramón Menéndez Pidal, Gregorio Marañon, Manuel Azaña, Eugeni d'Ors and Ortega y Gasset , in addition to the novelists Gabriel Miró, Ramón Pérez de Ayala, Ramón Gómez de la Serna and the playwright Pedro Muñoz Seca.

Around 1920, a group of younger writers, mainly poets, began to publish works that from the beginning revealed the extent to which the younger artists were absorbing the literary experimentation of the writers of 1898 and 1914. Among these authors, who by their narrow link would make up the Generation of 27, are the names of Pedro Salinas, Federico García Lorca, Jorge Guillén, Dámaso Alonso and Vicente Aleixandre, among others. Novelists like Rosa Chacel, Francisco Ayala, and Ramón J. Sender were equally experimental and academic. This extraordinary period in terms of literary production has sometimes led to it being called the “Silver Age of Spanish letters”.

The Spanish civil war had a devastating impact on Spanish writing. Among the few poets and writers of the civil war, Miguel Hernández stands out. During the first two decades of the dictatorship, literature followed dictator Francisco Franco's reactionary vision of a "second Spanish golden age" and many of the greatest literary exponents went into exile. In the mid-1950s, as in the novel, a new generation that had only experienced the Spanish civil war in childhood was coming of age. At the beginning of the 1960s, Spanish authors headed towards tireless literary experimentation. When Franco died in 1975, the important work of establishing democracy had an immediate literary impact. In the next years,

Architecture

Thanks to its geographical and historical variety, Spain shows great diversity in its architecture. Although the most primitive works date from the Megalithic period, the most impressive works from the Ancient Age are those from Roman times, among which the Roman aqueduct of Segovia, the Roman ruins of Mérida or the Alcántara bridge stand out for their magnificence. The seven centuries of Islamic presence in the peninsula left a rich artistic heritage —Córdoba became the cultural capital of the Umayyad Caliphate—, with monuments of great interest such as the Mosque of Cordoba or the Alhambra in Granada. Parallel to the Muslim architectural development, in the Christian north, the pre-Romanesque style was developed first, still far from the rest of the currents of Western Europe, although later important representatives of the Romanesque and Gothic style were built, such as the cathedrals of Toledo, Barcelona, ​​León and Burgos. In the Renaissance style stood outsui generis known as Plateresque, whose most representative monument is the University of Salamanca.

The Baroque in Spain occupied a very important place and, contemporary with the most glorious and prolific periods of Spanish art, it ended up spreading significantly to the Spanish colonies in America, especially to New Spain and Peru. Two different visions emerge from the Baroque: on the one hand, the austere Herrerian style —conceived by the architect Juan de Herrera— whose masterpiece is the Escorial Monastery, and on the other hand, the overloaded and overflowing Churrigueresque style —of the Churriguera family—. In Galicia, a unique style emerged from the Baroque known as “Compostelian Baroque”. Neoclassicism spread thanks to the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts, but its postulates were less successful in Spain than the expressive Baroque. Its main figure was Juan de Villanueva,

Already in the Contemporary Age, modernism played an important role with wide international repercussion. Centered in Barcelona, ​​converted into an international pole of the most innovative architectural currents, modernism would revolutionize traditional schemes. The maximum exponent of this current was Antoni Gaudí, whose most outstanding construction, within his prolific work, was the Sagrada Familia. After the death of Francisco Franco and the restoration of democracy, a period of architectural optimism began in Spain. Critical regionalism became the dominant school, while the flow of money from the EU, mass tourism and a rising economy created a fertile field for national architecture, with a generation of new personalities represented by names like Enrique Miralles,

Official holidays

The calendar of official holidays is set each year, depending on the weekly distribution. The repertoire of common festivals for all of Spain are the following:

Date	Name	Grades
January 1	New Year	International holiday.
January 6th	Epiphany of the Lord	Catholic holiday. Kings Day.
March or April	Holy Friday	Christian holiday.
May 1	Workers Day	International holiday.
August 15th	Assumption of the Virgin	Catholic holiday.
October 12 °	National holiday	Commemoration of the discovery of America.
November 1st	All Saints Day	Catholic holiday.
6th of December	Day of the constitution	Commemoration of the referendum for the ratification of the Spanish Constitution.
December 8	Immaculate Conception	Catholic holiday. Patron Saint of Spain for the Catholic Church .
December 25th	Nativity of the Lord	Christian holiday. Christmas Day, commemoration of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.

According to Royal Legislative Decree 2/2015, of the Workers' Statute Law, four holidays are fixed and nationwide: New Year, Labor Day, National Day and Nativity of the Lord. They are non-working days always on their respective days, except when they fall on a Sunday; in that case they are transferred to Monday .

In addition to ten national festivities, each autonomous community can establish two holidays, apart from the autonomous community's own holiday, and each municipality another two, in such a way that the maximum number of holidays in any locality does not exceed fourteen.

Public religious festivities

The Catholic religion has been predominant in Spain in the last two millennia. Thus, the festive role it plays in many towns and cities is significant.

The public religious festivities that stand out are those related to the Passion of Christ, with twenty Holy Weeks declared Festivals of International Tourist Interest, and Easter, especially Pentecost and Corpus Christi.

Bullfighting

In Spain, the tradition of carrying out various bullfighting shows is preserved, such as running of the bulls or bullfights, which are the hallmark of numerous popular festivals.

The bullrings are distributed by categories. The top ten are: Las Ventas de Madrid; Royal Maestranza of Seville; The Mercy of Saragossa; the bullring of Valencia; The Malagueta of Malaga; the Monumental of Barcelona; the Monumental of Pamplona; Joyful View of Bilbao; the bullring of the Caliphs of Córdoba; and Illumbe of San Sebastián.

Languages

The official language and the most widely spoken in the whole of Spain, by 99% of the population, is Spanish, the mother tongue of 89% of Spaniards, which can receive the alternative name of Castilian. The estimated number of speakers worldwide ranges from 450 to 500 million people , being the second most widely spoken mother tongue after Mandarin Chinese, and third if we count those who speak it as a second language. It is expected that become the second language of international communication after English in the future, and it is the second most studied language after English .

In addition, other languages ​​are spoken that, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, may be official in their regions if so established by their Statutes of Autonomy. Sorted by number of native speakers, these languages ​​are:

• Catalan or Valencian (9% of the population), co-official in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and the Valencian Community. It is also spoken in the eastern part of Aragon, in the so-called Franja de Aragón. The 2009 Language Law regulates the use, protection and promotion of Catalan in Aragon, giving the language rights such as its use in education, as well as addressing it in the Aragonese administrations, defining it as a "own language, original and history" of the autonomous community, although without granting it the degree of co-officiality. It is also spoken, without co-official status, in the Murcian region of El Carche. Officially it is called Valencian in the Valencian Community .

• Galician (5% of the population), co-official in Galicia. It is also spoken in some areas of Asturias and Castilla y León (León and Zamora), without co-official status.
• Euskera (1% of the population), co-official in the Basque Country and in the Basque-speaking area of ​​Navarra, where it is statutorily called Basque. It is also spoken in the mixed area of ​​Navarra (where Basque, without being official, enjoys a certain recognition) and in a very minority way in the non-Basque speaking area.
• Occitan, co-official in Catalonia. It is spoken, in its Aranese variety, in the Lleida municipalities of the Arán Valley.

A series of Romance languages ​​or dialects are also spoken that do not have official language status, although depending on the case, they do have different degrees of legal recognition:

• Asturleonese, spoken in Asturias —called Asturian or bable and recognized through the fourth article of the Statute of Autonomy, which promotes its use and protection—. It is also spoken in the north and west of the Castilian-Leonese provinces of León and Zamora, where it is known by the name of Leonese, a gluttonous term that refers to this same language —recognized as “object of specific protection” in the fifth article of the Statute of Autonomy—, also spoken in the Portuguese municipality of Miranda do Douro, where it is called Mirandese and does have recognized co-official language status. On the other hand, there are several transitional speeches between Spanish and the Asturian-Leonese linguistic diasystem. Among these transitional speeches, in areas of Cantabria, is the so-called mountain speech,and in certain areas of Extremadura and in the region of El Rebollar, south of Salamanca, the so-called Alto Extremadura, also called El Rebollar speech. At the beginning of the 20th century , several authors included these transitional speeches within the same domain however, they are no longer included within the Asturian-Leonese nuclear linguistic domain .
• Aragonese, is spoken throughout the north of Aragon. The Language Law of 2009 and the Language Law of 2013 regulate the use, protection and promotion of Aragonese, giving the language rights such as its use in education, as well as addressing it in the Aragonese administrations. It is defined as the «own, original and historical language» of the autonomous community, although without granting it the degree of co-officiality.
• Fala, a set of three varieties of a Romance language of the Galician-Portuguese subgroup spoken in the municipalities of San Martín de Trevejo, Eljas and Valverde del Fresno, all of them in the Jálama Valley, northwest of the province of Cáceres (in the Portuguese border). Other names by which it is known are Xalimés , Mañegu (or Manhegu ), A fala de Xálima , A fala d'acá , A nossa fala and chapurráu (in Valverde) or, by supporters of the theory on the relationship between the fala and the Galician language, "Galician from Extremadura" or "Galaico-Extremeño" .

Spain ratified the European Charter for Minority or Regional Languages ​​of the Council of Europe on April 9, 2001 .

Religion

Religion in Spain Barometer of the CIS of July 2021
Catholicism (58.6%)     Agnosticism and non-believers (21.9%)     Atheism (15.1%)     Other religions (2.4%)     NS/NC (1.9%)

Catholicism is the predominant religion in the country, although the Spanish Constitution defines the State as non-denominational according to its article 16.3: "No confession shall have a state character." However, it guarantees the religious and worship freedom of individuals and ensures relationships cooperation between public authorities and religious denominations. The Catholic Church is the only religious organization expressly mentioned in the Constitution, in the same article 16.3 —«[…] and will maintain the consequent relations of cooperation with the Catholic Church and other confessions»—.Sociological studies show a constant process of secularization of Spanish society in recent decades, although the Church remains very present in different sectors of society, such as in the educational field, where Catholic schools, mostly subsidized by the State through "educational concerts", they represent 15% of the educational offer .

According to the opinion barometer of the Sociological Research Center (CIS) carried out in July 2021, 58.6% of Spaniards consider themselves Catholic, non-believers and agnostics account for almost 22%, atheists 15.1% and those attached to another religion 2.4%. However, the percentage of religious and practicing people is much lower. According to the same study, 56.8% of this social group say they do not go to mass or other religious services "almost never" or "never", 19% say they go several times a year, while 13. 4% say they go to religious services almost every Sunday and on holidays, 6.8% do so once a month, and 2.9% say they go several times a week.The Spanish population tends to be less religious the lower the age range studied – for example, 48.9% of those surveyed by the CIS among people aged 18 to 24 declared themselves non-religious, in contrast to the 9.6% of respondents over 65 years of age, in 2018 – .

In terms of members, the second most important religion is Islam, of which it is estimated that there were 1.9 million faithful in 2017, mainly from the recent waves of immigration from North Africa. It is followed by Protestantism with approximately 1 .5 million members. Jehovah's Witnesses also stand out with more than 191,000 faithful. For its part, the Jewish community in Spain does not exceed 45,000 faithful. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints arrived in Spain in the 1960s and currently has about 53,000 followers .

In Spain there is the concept of "religion of notorious roots", a status granted by the Ministry of Justice through the General Directorate of Religious Affairs after the corresponding report of the Advisory Commission on Religious Freedom. In addition to Catholicism, they have the character of well-established religions are the following, in order of agreement: Protestantism, Judaism, Islam (all since 1992), Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and Buddhism, the latter accepted in 2007 and with some 85,000 faithful.

Sports

Sport in Spain is mainly dominated by football (since the 20th century ), basketball, cycling, tennis, futsal, handball, and motor sports, with athletics being the most practiced. Spain is a world power in sports, especially since the 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympics, which promoted a wide variety of sports in the country. The country is a major tourist attraction due to its sports infrastructure, such as water sports facilities, golf and skiing. Both in individual and team sports, the country has produced names of great relevance, also in soccer, the most followed sport in the country —cycling rivaled it in popularity until the end of the 20th century .— with clubs like Real Madrid CF or FC Barcelona, ​​two of the most important in the history of this sport and with the most followers around the world .

Spain occupies the thirteenth position in the world ranking of the great sports nations, an annual study carried out by Havas Sports and Entertainment in which an annual hierarchy of the different nations is established according to their results in the world competitions of 52 sports .

The country has had world champions in sports such as fencing, paddle tennis, futsal, water polo, sailing, boxing, rhythmic gymnastics, handball, athletics, soccer, basketball and badminton. Likewise, Spain is a world power in martial arts, especially karate, taekwondo and judo.

Media

The country has a combination of private —majority— and state media that provide, through radio and television, hundreds of international, national, regional or local channels, also available via satellite or cable.

According to the General Media Study, carried out between April 2015 and March 2016 by the Association for Media Research, television is the main means of communication in the country.The three main television operators in the country are the state trading company Radio Televisión Española and the private operators Atresmedia Corporación and Mediaset España. The main general channels in terms of audience in Spain are La 1, Antena 3, Cuatro, Telecinco and La Sexta. All of them that monopolize just over 50% of the screen share. The list is completed with the set of regional digital channels and public channels grouped in FORTA. After the so-called “analog blackout” took place in 2010, the only signal transmission system is digital. In this regard, there are both free access digital channels and paid digital platforms.

The main non - sports paid newspapers in the country per reader are El País and El Mundo , to which are added La Vanguardia , La Voz de Galicia , El Periódico and ABC , in addition to the free 20 minutes . In the sports press, Marca , As , El Mundo Deportivo and Sport stand out .

As for radio, the main stations in the country are Cadena SER, COPE, Onda Cero and Radio Nacional de España .

As regards the third sector of communication - non-profit media, mainly local, and dedicated to providing a service to their community - many of them are grouped in the Community Media Network, with headquarters in Cuac FM (La Coruña).