Spain
Spain,[f] or the Kingdom of Spain,[g][h] is a country located in Southwestern Europe, with parts of its territory in the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea and Africa.[11][i] It is the largest country in Southern Europe and the fourth-most populous European Union member state. Spanning across the majority of the Iberian Peninsula, its territory also includes the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea, and the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla in Africa. Peninsular Spain is bordered to the north by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; to the east and south by the Mediterranean Sea and Gibraltar; and to the west by Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean. Spain's capital and largest city is Madrid, and other major urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Zaragoza, Seville, Málaga, Murcia, Palma de Mallorca, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and Bilbao.
"España" redirects here. For other uses, see Spain (disambiguation) and España (disambiguation).
Kingdom of Spain
Reino d'Espanya
Reino d'Espanya
Reinu d'España
Regne d'Espanya
Espainiako Erresuma
Reino de España
Reiaume d'Espanha
Regne d'Espanya
- 87.1% Spanish
- 12.9% foreigners
- 56.0% Roman Catholicism
- 37.5% non-practicing Catholic
- 16.5% practicing Catholic
- 14.9% atheist
- 12.6% agnostic
- 12.3% indifferent or no religion
- 2.7% other religion
- 1.5% unanswered
- Spaniard
- Spanish
20 January 1479
14 March 1516
9 June 1715
19 March 1812
29 December 1978
1 January 1986
0.89[6]
94/km2 (243.5/sq mi) (120th)
2024 estimate
2024 estimate
32.0[9]
medium
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#3__answer--2DEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
dd/mm/yyyy (CE)
right
In early antiquity, the Iberian Peninsula was inhabited by Celtic and Iberian tribes, along with other local pre-Roman peoples. With the Roman conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, the province of Hispania was established. Following the Romanization and Christianization of Hispania, the fall of the Western Roman Empire ushered in the inward migration of tribes from Central Europe, including the Visigoths, who formed the Visigothic Kingdom centred on Toledo. In the early eighth century, most of the peninsula was conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate, and during early Islamic rule, Al-Andalus became a dominant peninsular power centred in Córdoba. Several Christian kingdoms emerged in Northern Iberia, chief among them Asturias, León, Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and Portugal; made an intermittent southward military expansion and repopulation, known as the Reconquista, repelling Islamic rule in Iberia, which culminated with the Christian seizure of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada in 1492. The dynastic union of the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon in 1479 under the Catholic Monarchs is often considered the de facto unification of Spain as a nation-state.
During the Age of Discovery, Spain pioneered the exploration of the New World and the first circumnavigation of the globe. At the same time, it formed one of the largest empires in history through colonization. The Spanish empire reached a global scale and spread across continents, underpinning the rise of a global trading system fueled primarily by precious metals. The 18th century was marked by extensive reforms and, notably, the Bourbon reforms centralized mainland Spain.[12] In the 19th century, after the Napoleonic occupation and the victorious Spanish War of independence, the following political divisions between liberals and absolutists led to the breakaway of most of the American colonies. These political divisions finally converged in the 20th century with the Spanish Civil War, giving rise to the Francoist dictatorship that lasted until 1975. With the restoration of democracy and its entry into the European Union, the country experienced an economic boom that profoundly transformed it socially and politically. Since the Siglo de Oro, Spanish art, architecture, music, poetry, painting, literature, and cuisine have been influential worldwide, particularly in Western Europe and the Americas. Spain is one of the main nations of Latin Europe and a cultural superpower.[13][14] As a reflection of its large cultural wealth, Spain is the world's second-most visited country, has one of the world's largest numbers of World Heritage Sites, and it is the most popular destination for European students.[15] Its cultural influence extends to over 600 million Hispanophones, making Spanish the world's second-most spoken native language and the world's most widely spoken Romance language.[16]
Spain is a secular parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy,[17] with King Felipe VI as head of state. It is a major advanced capitalist economy,[18] with the world's fifteenth-largest economy by nominal GDP (fourth of the European Union) and the fifteenth-largest by PPP. Spain is a member of the United Nations, the European Union, the eurozone, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a permanent guest of the G20, and is part of many other international organizations such as the Council of Europe (CoE), the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI), the Union for the Mediterranean, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Etymology
The name of Spain (España) comes from Hispania, the name used by the Romans for the Iberian Peninsula and its provinces during the Roman Empire. The etymological origin of the term Hispania is uncertain, although the Phoenicians referred to the region as Spania (meaning "Land of rabbits"), therefore, the most accepted theory is the Phoenician one.[19] There have been a number of accounts and hypotheses about its origin:
Jesús Luis Cunchillos argued that the root of the term span is the Phoenician word spy, meaning "to forge metals". Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean "the land where metals are forged".[20] It may be a derivation of the Phoenician I-Shpania, meaning "island of rabbits", "land of rabbits" or "edge", a reference to Spain's location at the end of the Mediterranean; Roman coins struck in the region from the reign of Hadrian show a female figure with a rabbit at her feet,[21] and Strabo called it the "land of the rabbits".[22] The word in question actually means "Hyrax", possibly due to the Phoenicians confusing the two animals.[23]
There is also the claim that "Hispania" derives from the Basque word Ezpanna, meaning "edge" or "border", another reference to the fact that the Iberian Peninsula constitutes the southwest corner of the European continent.[24]