1492 fused Granada’s fall with Columbus’s first voyage
Rome named the whole peninsula Hispania. After Visigothic rule and the 711 Umayyad conquest, Christian kingdoms pushed back across Al-Andalus. Isabella and Ferdinand joint reign is cast as Spain foundation; 1492 expelled Jews, ended Granada, and opened an overseas empire.
Atapuerca yields flint about 1.4 million years old and human fossils near 1.2 million years; Neanderthals lingered in Iberia until roughly 40,000 years ago. Cro-Magnons arrived some 42,000 years ago; Altamira’s paintings date around 15,000 BCE. Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Greeks planted coastal colonies—Gadir linked to Tyre, Emporion founded about 570 BCE—beside Iberians, Celts, Lusitanians, and Tartessians. Rome expelled Carthage in 206 BCE after the Second Punic War and finished conquering the peninsula by 19 BCE, producing emperors Trajan and Hadrian and writers such as Seneca and Martial.
Germanic kingdoms replaced Rome in the fifth century until Muslim-led Al-Andalus dominated much of the Early Middle Ages, sparing only Asturias at first. Northern Christian realms—Navarre, León, Castile, Aragon—advanced in the Reconquista and coalesced into the Crowns of Castile and Aragon. Under Charles I and Philip II the Habsburg empire peaked in a Spanish Golden Age, then frayed after the Armada’s destruction, Dutch independence, and exhausting European wars. Bourbon Philip V won the War of the Spanish Succession; later Bourbon setbacks and Napoleonic occupation preceded Spanish American independence in the 1820s.
Nineteenth-century Spain swung between liberal, republican, and monarchical experiments. The Spanish–American War stripped remaining colonies; military dictatorship and the Second Republic collapsed into civil war, after which Francisco Franco’s dictatorship lasted nearly four decades. Juan Carlos I restored monarchy and liberalization; the 1978 constitution, 1986 EEC entry, and 1998 eurozone membership reopened Spain to Europe. Felipe VI succeeded after Juan Carlos abdicated in 2014.
Source: History of Spain
