When was spain discovered

The Christian kingdoms in the north started then the reconquest of Spain. The marriage between Isabel of Castilia and Ferdinand of Aragon in , uniting the two most important among them, was the turning point of the Reconquista.

From now on Muslims rapidly lost territory, until they were definitely expelled when they lost their last remaining caliphate, Granada, in Isabel and Ferdinand succeeded in uniting the whole country under their crown, and their effort to "re-christianize" Spain resulted in the Spanish Inquisition , when thousands of Jews and Moors who didn't want to convert to Christianism were expelled or killed.

After the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in tons of gold and silver were brought in from the new continent, and Spain became one of the most powerful nations of this epoch called the Golden Age.

After Isabel died in , her daughter Joan who was married with the German emperor's son Philip succeeded to the throne. Charles I. Anyhow after his retirement in it was split between the Spanish and the Austrian line of Habsburg family. Spain was prospering economically under the Habsburg crown thanks to the trade with its American colonies, but on the hand involved in wars with France, the Netherlands and England, culminating in the disastrous defeat of the "Invincible Armada" in As a consequence of the French Revolution , Spain declared war on the new republic but was defeated.

Napoleon took the power in France and sent his troops against Spain in When he changed the law of succession to the throne and his daughter Isabel was established as queen, his brother Charles rebelled against it and the War of Seven Years broke out. Economical recession and political instability were the consequences, Spain lost its colonies with the exceptions of Puerto Rico, Cuba and Philippines. The revolution of forced Isabel II. Anyhow, it lasted for just about one year.

The rebellion of Cuba in resulted in a war against United States, with disastrous results for Spain. It lost its last overseas possessions. The economical crisis of the early s led the country to the brink of civil war, and General Primo de Ribera established a military dictature until Increasing conflicts between the Republican government and the Nationalist opposition led to the Spanish Civil War The Nationalists, led by General Franco, received extensive support from Nazi-Germany and fascist Italy and succeeded against the Republican block which was officially supported only by Russia, although many intellectuals as Ernest Hemingway and politically committed from other countries fought in the International Brigades.

The nationalists succeeded. However, peripheral is not to be confused with marginal, and Spain maintained its status as a great power and a key player in Europe with the Americas and Naples still under its control.

Following the Treaty of the Pyrenees in , it had ceded its hegemonic role to the French kingdom of Louis XIV, which made the "Sun King" into the arbiter of European politics and France into the model for what was soon to become the reformed government of 17th century enlightened despotism.

His reign prolonged the Enlightenment in Spain, a period of foreign policy equilibrium, reform and internal progress.

Spain under the House of Bourbon and the Enlightenment. The rest of Europe viewed the will of Charles II with suspicion. However, at Utrecht Philip V and his successors were obliged to renounce their Flemish inheritance.

The official renunciation of Flanders constituted the end of the old universalising conception of the Spanish-Austrian monarchy and the beginning of the nationalisation of Spanish politics. Balance and peace in Europe became the two goals pursued by Spain throughout the 18th century.

However, this ambition was thwarted by England's commercial and colonial expansion on the one hand, and by the rivalry between England and France on the other. Spain's desire for neutrality and peace was best embodied by Ferdinand VI During the reign of Charles III , the politics articulated by Prime Minister Floridablanca managed to keep Spain out of military conflicts, despite a tentative intervention in the American War of Independence.

Charles III's legacy was a country at peace and well on the road to progress, and it took a long time for the French Revolution of to derail this peaceful, non- interventionist policy. The germination of a Spanish nationality in foreign policy was accompanied by a parallel phenomenon in the country's domestic politics; indeed, the two developments were closely related. During the War of Succession, the Kingdom of Aragon had backed the Austrian candidate, a choice that presented the victorious Philip V with a perfect excuse for embarking on what was to become a chain of profound reforms in the structure of the state and the Spanish government.

The Decree of Nueva Planta or new approach, which aimed to reorganise the country was to internal politics what the Treaty of Utrecht was to foreign policy, as it implied the extension of the Castilian administrative structure to the Kingdom of Aragon and the abolition of Aragon's fueros or special charters, thus bringing the confederate monarchy of the Hapsburgs to an end.

This marked the first step on the road to centralisation, which was completed a century and a half later by liberal governments. The disproportionate and chronic deficit of the 17th century was reduced and a tendency towards budgetary balance recovered, which was only broken at the end of the 18th century. The country's improved fi nancial management was brought about by another two factors: less was spent on foreign ventures and more taxes were collected, not only as a result of a more efficient fiscal system but also because Spanish society was more prosperous.

They sought progress and efficient organisation for the country according to the theories of their time, which were influenced by mercantilist ideas, interventionist methods and, to a lesser degree, liberal impulses. A major step forward was made with the removal of all obstacles to trade and industry.

Similarly, the Catalonian cotton industry began to take off; this growth was so pronounced that, prior to the French invasion of , it represented two-thirds of the British cotton industry. The progressive liberalisation of farm prices and the limitation of the privileges of the Mesta a powerful association of sheep ranchers in the medieval Kingdom of Castile contributed to provide a greater quantity of land for cultivation and an increase in agricultural production.

The Bourbons also did away with a large proportion of the motley administrative apparatus inherited from the Hapsburgs and reduced the Councils.

The Bourbons recruited their senior civil servants from among the local and enlightened lower nobility, giving rise to a new social category - an ambitious middle-class nobility eager for advancement at the service of the state. These civil servants were people of their time, enlightened in their thinking and convinced of their reforming mission, alert to the ideas of the period, often with foreign friends and a command of other languages.

For example, Floridablanca was a friend of Benjamin Franklin and kept up a correspondence with Voltaire. The paradox lay in the fact that neither of these two figures enjoyed a reputation among their fellow countrymen, although at least they did not suffer the sad fate of Esquilache, whose reforms met with such widespread opposition that he had to go into exile.

The Napoleonic Invasion and the War of Independence. The Treaty of Fontainebleau permitted the French army of Marshal Junot to cross the Pyrenees and advance towards Portugal, and although the French entered Lisbon they did not leave Spain.

When Charles IV abdicated in favour of his son, the monarchy was irreparably damaged. The political regime that the Bonapartes attempted to unify was laid out in the Statute of Bayonne, signed on 8 July Although this document is tremendously important from a historical standpoint, it never had any legal or practical significance because it was never enacted. It was, however, the first constitutional text to appear in Spain. The result was a general uprising on 2 May, which was immortalised in Goya's paintings.

The War of Spain, as the French called it, lasted six years. The Spanish christened it the War of Independence, and it was an all-out war that raged throughout the entire country. A minority of Spaniards, albeit fairly numerous, actually supported the intruder king. The luckier ones became some of contemporary Spain's first political emigrants. The disasters that Goya reflected in his paintings clearly evoke the cruelty of a long struggle in which the guerrilla parties used the strategy of preventing normal life in the country as way of perpetually harassing the invaders.

Senior Provincial Juntas emerged spontaneously in most of the Spanish provinces, but in the face of military defeats and the lack of financial resources they eventually saw the need for a higher structure to coordinate all their efforts, giving rise to the creation of the Central Junta. The inaugural session of the new Cortes was held on 24 September and was attended by approximately representatives, around half of whom were stand-ins.

This gathering ratified the following basic principles: that sovereignty lay with the nation, that Ferdinand VII was the legitimate king of Spain, and that the representatives were entitled to parliamentary immunity.

The Constitution of proclaimed the figure of the king to be sacrosanct and immune, not subject to liability and with the right to sanction and enact laws. It also established the number of ministers, who were accountable for the king's actions and in the Cortes for compliance with the law of the land. In relation to the judiciary, the courts were responsible for applying the law, and the revolutionary concept of procedural law was introduced.

Only two special fueros or charters were granted: to the clergy and to the militia. The constitution also proclaimed the equality of all Spaniards in the eyes of the law and the irremovability of judges and civil servants.

Primary schools were contemplated for every town in the land, plus a single education system for the entire kingdom. Freedom of expression and of the press was also established. When the Spanish diplomats attended the Congress of Vienna in , they represented a victorious state but a devastated and divided nation. The profound crisis in the mother country had severely damaged the Latin American Empire, from which continental America separated in following the Battle of Ayacucho.

In the words of the Count of Aranda, the Spanish Empire had coped better with the small defeats of the 17th century than with the violent victories of the 19th century. The patriots of Cadiz had responded to the dynastic crisis and the power vacuum with three main stances on national sovereignty.

For some, this lay with the Crown and the traditional institutions the Cortes ; consequently, they initially defended a return to an absolutist regime , then a more moderate one , and eventually adopted the name of Carlists to signify their support of the king's reactionary brother, Don Carlos.

Others defended a nation based on the Cortes and the King. These subsequently became known as moderate or doctrinarian liberals between and , and then as conservatives Finally, a small but highly active group supported the idea of national sovereignty based exclusively on the Spanish people.

A more moderate version of the French Jacobeans, these went down in history first as exaltados or extreme radicals , then as progressives , and finally as constitutionalists and fusionist liberals The Carlists had a strong following in the countryside - especially in the north Basque Country and Navarre and in the hinterlands of Catalonia - and to a certain extent they represented the rebellion of rural society against urban society.

They were also supported by the lower clergy and autocratic powers such as Russia. By contrast, the liberals - who defended the succession of Isabella II, daughter of Ferdinand VII - desired a radical change to create a society made up of individuals who were equal in the eyes of a law that would guarantee human rights. Their victory must be viewed within the context of British support for liberal causes, especially in the Latin world, as opposed to Russian expansionism, and the victory of the liberal monarchy in France in The liberals legislated in accordance with individual-egalitarian principles.

They abolished privileges and legal exemptions, did away with judicial domains, and dissociated entailed estates from the Church and local authorities, thereby making millions of hectares available for the market and vastly increasing the quantity of cultivable land and agrarian production. At the beginning of the century, Spain imported wheat and ate rye bread, while by the end of the century it exported cereals and the bread was made from wheat.

The liberals also believed in the free market, and through the confiscation of land they attempted to create a much wider, national market to achieve a victory over absolutism. However, they did not pursue an agrarian reform like that advocated by other powers years later, in the 20th century. The liberals, who believed they had solved a problem of state, were in fact creating one of government by drawing up constitutional and electoral legislation that was markedly biased and designed to ensure the permanence in power of their party.

This turned rotation in office into the Spanish political problem par excellence, although in reality it was also a conflict deeply rooted in social issues, for the small parties of the time sought supporters among the employed, unemployed and job seekers, all from the urban middle classes and dependent on power for their survival.

For decades, monopolist practices alternated with mutinies and military coups, and until in Spain the military uprising was the basic and daring - but no less effective - instrument used by the parties in opposition to impose the rotation denied to them by governments entrenched in office. An oversized, ambitious and undisciplined officers corps, eternally exposed to the threat of being discharged, with no job and only half pay, were easy prey for political groups keen to take by force what the exclusivist policy of the party in power denied them.

However, it would be mistaken to view these coups as armed conflicts: they simply provided a method for precipitating political solutions with a minimum of military confrontations. In , what started out as a classic coup staged by the progressives degenerated into a revolution that deposed Isabella II and ushered in a six-year period of strong political mobilisation with the establishment of a provisional government and the enactment of a new constitution that paved the way for the ephemeral reign of Amadeus of Savoy Following the abdication of Amadeus I, who lacked popular support, on 11 February the National Assembly Congress and Senate proclaimed the First Republic by votes to 32 against.

Although extremely short-lived - it only lasted until 29 December - this republic advocated new theories that shaped the immediate future: federalism, socialism and cantonalism. The Republic met with a major uprising of the Carlists. The general political sentiment had begun to swing from the extreme right to the extreme left, in keeping with events in Europe at the time, such as the Paris Commune in and the conservative reaction it provoked.

Their rotation in power, especially after the death of the king and the regency of his wife Maria Christina , gave rise to a period of stability interrupted only in its last phase by the incidents and confrontations in Morocco and the loss in of the last two remaining colonies: Cuba and the Philippines. The dawn of the 20th century in Spain was marked by a series of profound unsolved problems. Some of these problems were structural; the population had almost doubled since the beginning of the previous century, rising from 11 to There were also agrarian problems: latifundismo, low yields and a high percentage of land left uncultivated.

In addition to these problems, capital funds and the existing infrastructure were insufficient to launch heavy industry, and consumer capacity was very low, all of which gave rise to a protectionism that was both costly and for the most part non-competitive.

At the same time, the political problems that had arisen in the previous century became more acute. In addition to the political and intellectual frustration resulting from Spain's loss of influence on the world stage, plus the disappearance of its colonial empire, the country now had to face the regionalist problem, either in the form of federalism or claims for a return to the old regime of fuerismo, the system of special privileges that had characterised the Carlists.

Similarly, the cantonalism expressed during the ephemeral First Republic raised its head again. However, the main problem undoubtedly emerged from the social and trade union movements of the working class, which was destined to play a historic and decisive role throughout the 20th century.

Working class associations first emerged in Spain in and gave rise to moments of great social agitation, even including a general strike In , Fanelli, a follower of Bakunin, established sections of the International Workers' Association in Spain, rapidly recruiting , members in Catalonia and Andalusia.

The arrival in Spain of Lafargue, sent by Marx, failed to halt the development of Bakunism, as described by F. Engels in his famous collection of articles. The socialist claims found a wide support base in industrial areas: among miners in Asturias, metal workers in the Basque Country and printers in Madrid.

In Catalonia powerful regional parties emerged, such as the Regionalist League that won the elections in Barcelona in One more splinter action also took place during this period - the separation of political Spain from intellectual Spain. In , Alfonso XIII took the throne and the emergence of new political forms threw the Canovite and liberal-conservative two-party system into crisis.

There were also several important expressions of social unrest, such as the Tragic Week of in Barcelona and popular resistance to the drafting of troops for the war in Morocco. Spain's neutral position during the First World War was only a parenthesis.

Price increases and the contraction of the European market generated enormous instability, leading in to the summons of the Parliamentary Assembly in Barcelona, which recommended the reform of the constitution, and a general strike in August of the same year. Following the failure of constitutional reform, the regional problem re-emerged, this time more acutely, and there were outbreaks of social and peasant unrest in both Andalusia and Catalonia.

But above all, the crisis was rooted in the Moroccan War. Described as "mild despotism", Primo de Rivera's dictatorship attempted to solve several problems by ending the Moroccan War, developing infrastructure for the country and promoting public works.

Although ideologically aligned with the authoritarian regimes in Europe, it adopted a more traditional, monarchic and Catholic philosophy than the one adopted in Mussolini's new state.

Its failure was mainly political, despite attempts to create a single party and involve certain sectors of the workers' movement in political life. Neither was it able to re-organise industrial relations on the basis of corporations, nor solve the agrarian and regional problems. An attempt to reform the constitution through the creation of a consultative National Assembly in also failed to materialise, and when the financial crash of occurred, the dictator was forced to resign.

He was replaced by General Berenguer. The Collapse of the Monarchy and the Second Republic. The last monarchic government was formed in February and immediately called municipal elections for 12 April, resulting in victory for the left and the Republicans in the main cities. On 14 April the Second Republic was proclaimed. The Republicans called general elections on 28 June, announced religious freedom and drew up a new constitution, approved on 9 December.

Its preamble stated, "Spain is a democratic republic of workers of all classes, organised in freedom and justice. The powers of its bodies rest with the people. The republic is a fully-integrated state, compatible with the autonomy of the municipalities and the regions. Evidence of this was provided by General Sanjurjo's abortive coup on 10 August The following year began with the repression of the uprising at Casas Viejas and municipal elections that showed a clear swing to the right.

New general elections on 19 November gave a clear victory to the right and the administration led by Lerroux and CEDA was formed. The new government revoked several laws, including the Agrarian Reform, and issued an amnesty for the rebel troops involved in the abortive coup of On 17 July, the military forces at the Melilla garrison staged an uprising, marking the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.

On 18 July the military coup spread and the following day Francisco Franco took command of the army in Morocco. The Republican government formed a coalition cabinet led by Giralt, succeeded in his post by Largo Caballero, who brought in representatives of the CNT and moved the cabinet to Valencia. On 29 September the National Defence Committee appointed General Franco head of the government and commander-in chief of the army.

The Republican government reacted to this by creating the Popular Army and reorganising the militias into professional armies. Help from abroad also arrived for both bands - the International Brigades to support the Republicans, and Italian and German troops to provide assistance to the Francoist troops.

The year was characterised by an intensification of the war in the north. Image source, Hulton Archive. Civil war and dictatorship. Move to democracy. Aznar years. Rebels attempted a coup in but King Carlos defused the situation. Madrid attacks. Catalan autonomy demands. The movement seeking independence for Catalonia has been growing in strength. Economic crisis. Spaniards were put under severe pressure by economic problems. New political forces.