 | McLae´s guide to Spain |  |
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Spain Internet country code: .es International telephone prefix: +34  At the age of seven I wanted to be Napoleon. My ambitions have continued to grow at the same rate ever since." Salvador Dalí Once the center of a global empire with territories in North,Central and South America, Africa and the Philippines, contemporary Spain has overcome civil war and fascism in the 20th century to stand proud and centered in itself. With great beaches, fun nightlife, many cultural regions and historic cities, Spain makes a great destination for any kind of trip. A country of large geographical and cultural diversity, Spain is sometimes a surprise to people who know its reputation for great beach holidays. There is everything from lush meadows in the Northern provinces, snowy mountains to almost desert in the South. Language: Unsurprisingly, the primary language used in Spain is Spanish (español), but it's more complicated than that. It differs in pronunciation and other details from the Spanish spoken in the Americas. The language – closely related to Portuguese, and more loosely to Italian and French – is more properly called Castilian (castellano), and was temporarily imposed on the rest of Spain in the mid 20th century. Although it is spoken natively by the majority of Spaniards, and consistently pronounced and understood throughout Spain, there are several regions where it is not the dominant language, and in several areas local languages are co-official with Castilian. French and English are commonly studied in school, however many people have difficulties understanding and pronouncing English. Eating and Drinking: Eating and drinking is the big thing in Spain. Spanish are passionate about their food and wine and Spanish cuisine. Spanish food can be described as quite light with a lot of vegetables and a huge variety of meat and fish. The Spanish cuisine does not use many spices; it relies only on the use of high quality ingredients to give a good taste. The entry level to Spanish food is found in bars as tapas, which are a bit like "starters" or "appetizers", but are instead considered side orders to accompany your drink. Some bars will offer a variety of different tapas; others specialize. A Spanish custom is to have one tapa and one small drink at a bar, then go to the next bar and do the same. Tourists are easily spotted when they load their plates full of tapas. Fast food has not yet established a strong grip on the Spaniards and you will find McDonalds and Burger King only in bigger towns in the usual places. Pizza is increasingly popular and you will find some outlets in bigger towns as well. Restaurants: Restaurants deliver a wide range of food. In coastal areas seafood deserves some attention, especially on the north Atlantic coast. Spanish are very concerned about the freshness of seafood and you may place an order only to have the waiter tell you that he can not serve this dish, because they did not receive this particular seafood freshly that day. It is very unlikely to find dishes prepared from frozen fish in a real Spanish restaurant. Obviously so much freshness has its toll and seafood is quite pricy. Meat products are usually of very good quality, because Spain has maintained quite a high percentage of free range animal. A speciality is "jamón iberico" from free range pigs. Tipping: A little tip is common and you are free to increase that if you are very pleased, but obviously you don’t have to tip a lousy waiter. Large tips are uncommon and are not expected. You would typically leave the small change after paying with a note. Special offers: Many restaurants offer a complete lunch meal for a fixed price – "menú del día" – and this often works out as a bargain. Water and wine are commonly included in the price. Lunch and dinner times: Spaniards have a different eating timetable than most people are used to, spreading meals out over a longer period of the day. Breakfast is of course eaten first thing of the day. The main lunch time starts around 2 pm. Most shops and public offices will also close from 1:30 pm to 4:30 or 5 pm, excluding those located in large malls or belonging to big stores. Dinnertime starts at around 9 or 10 pm so don’t be surprised that a restaurant looks completely deserted at 8 pm and crowded at 11 pm. Touristy places: Typical Spanish food can be found all over the country, however top tourist destinations such as Costa Brava and Costa del Sol have turned all existing traditions upside down. Meaning that drinks are generally more expensive (about double) and it is difficult to find proper Spanish food in the tourist centers. However you will get Schnitzel, original English breakfast, Pizza, Doner, frozen fish and all the good things that modern society has invented to supersize you. However, if you are prepared to look a little harder, then even in the busiest tourist towns, you can find some exceptional traditional Spanish restaurants. If you are on the coast then think fish and seafood and you wont be disappointed. Typical dishes are: Bars: Probably one of the best places to meet people in Spain is in bars. Everyone visits them and they are always busy and sometimes bursting with people. There is no age restriction imposed to enter these premises. They are mainly to have drink or a small tapa. Usually Spaniards can control their drink better than their northern European fellows and drunk people are rarely seen here or on the streets. Beer: The Spanish beer is not too bad at all and well worth a try. Most popular local brands include San Miguel, Cruzcampo, Mahou and many others, including local brands at most cities; import beers are also available. In Spain, beer is often served from a tap in 25 cl ("caña") or 33 cl ("tubo") tube glasses. Bigger servings are rare, but you can also ask for a "corto", "zurito" (round the Basque country) or simply "una cerveza" (south of the country) to get a half size beer, perfecto to drink in one go and get quickly to the next bar while having tapas. Cava: Cava is Spanish sparkling wine and was invented after a long lasting dispute with the French about the right name for the sparkling wine. The Spanish called it for a long time champan, but the French argued that champagne can made only from grapes grown in the Champagne region in France. Nevertheless, Cava is a quite successful sparkling wine and 99% of the production comes from the area around Barcelona. Sangria: Sangria is drink made of wine and fruits and usually is made from simple wines. You will find sangria mainly in touristy places prepared for tourists. Spanish prepare sangria for fiestas only and not every day as seen in Mallorca. Sangria in restaurants aimed for foreigners are best avoided unless you are very sad! But it is a very good drink to try if a Spaniard prepares it for a fiesta! Sherry or "Fino": The wines around Jerez are very high in alcohol and they produce the famous sherry. If you would like to have one in a bar you have to order a fino. Wine: Spain is a country with great wine-making traditions: 22% of Europe's wine growing area is located in Spain, however the production is about half of what the French produce. The most famous wines come from Rías Baixas (province of Pontevedra), Rioja and from Ribera del Duero. The later ones are becoming more and more popular and are slightly more expensive than Rioja wines. White, rose and red wines are produced, but the red wines are certainly the most important ones. Spanish wines are produced with time and they have been in a oak barrel for at least one year (Crianza) and then another two years in a bottle, Reservas are first released after five years and Gran Reservas leave the wine estate after 10 years. Spain has seen a tremendous rise in wine prices over the last decade and Spanish wines are not any more such a bargain as they were one decade before. However you will still find 5, 10 and 20 year old wines for affordable prices. To order a red wine in a bar you have to ask for a "un tinto por favor", white wine "un blanco por favor" and last not least rose "un rosado por favor". Young people in Spain have developed their own way to have wine. When having "botellones" (big outdoor parties with drink and lots of people from the same town), most of them will be mixing some red wine with coke and drink such mix straight from the coke bottle. The name of this drink is "calimocho" or "kalimotxo" (depending on the part of the country you're in) and is really very popular... But don't ask for it while in an upper class bar, or among adults, since they will most certainly not approve the idea! History: In the 8th century, nearly all the Iberian peninsula, which had been under Visigothic rule, was quickly conquered (711–718), by Muslims (the Moors), who had crossed over from North Africa. Visigothic Spain was the last of a series of Christian and pagan lands conquered in a great westward charge from the Middle East and across north Africa by the religiously inspired armies of the Umayyad empire. Indeed this onslaught continued northwards until it was decisively defeated in central France at the Battle of Tours in 732. Astonishingly the invasion started off as an invitation from a Visgothic faction within Spain for support. But instead the Berber army, having defeated King Roderic, with its superior tactics and the help of internal infighting among the Visigoths, proceeded to conquer the entire peninsula for itself. Only three small counties in the mountains of the north of Spain managed to cling to their independence: Asturias, Navarra and Aragon, which eventually became kingdoms. Despite internal discord, the Muslim emirate proved strong in its first three centuries - was able to stop Charlemagne's massive forces at Saragossa and, after suffering from a massive Viking surprise attack, was able to quickly establish effective defences at a time when they were the terror of Europe. Indeed it became a terror in its own right to Christian neighbours with its own "al-jihad fil-bahr" (holy war at sea), raiding shipping and coastal settlements for the purposes of looting and enslavement. The Christian kingdoms were able to seize the harsh depopulated lands north of the Duero river from their mountain redoubts, and the Franks were able to seize Barcelona (801) and nearby areas (Spanish Marches), but save for these and some other small incursions in the north, the Christians were unable to make headway against the superior forces of Al-Andalus for several centuries. War settled into a pattern of raids and retaliations. It was only in the 11th century, when Muslim Spain split into small warring kingdoms that the small Christian kingdoms were able to make large, sustained advances southward. By this stage the Christian kingdoms had attained such power that they were much more afraid of each other than of the Muslim kingdoms, and so a free-for-all fight, involving alliances and divisions which barely followed religious lines, developed among the Muslim and Christian kingdoms. In trying to increase their status, the Muslim taifa kings competed in patronage of the arts, and the Jewish population of Iberia set the basis of Sephardic culture. The distinctiveness of much Spanish art originates from the Muslim influence of this period, and many Arabic words made their way into Castilian (Spanish) and Catalan, and from them to other European languages. Later, even as Muslim Spain retreated southward, Mozarabs (Christians who spoke an Iberian tongue but used Arabic script to write it) and converts to Christianity brought with them the art and architecture of Muslim Spain into the Christian north. The Moorish capital was Córdoba, in the southern portion of Spain known as Andalucía. During the time of Arab-Berber occupation, large populations of Jews, Christians and Muslims lived in close quarters, and at its peak some non-Muslims were appointed to high offices. At its best it produced exquisite architecture and art, and Muslim and Jewish scholars played a great part in reviving the study of ancient Greek and Roman culture and philosophy. However, there were also restrictions and prohibitions on non-Muslims, which tended to grow after the death of Al-Hakam II in 976. Later invasions of stricter Muslim groups from north Africa led to persecutions of non-Muslims, forcing some (including Muslim scholars) to seek safety in the then still relatively tolerant city of Toledo after its Christian reconquest in 1085. Spanish society under Muslim rule became increasingly complex, partly because Islamic conquest did not involve the systematic conversion of the conquered population to Islam. At the same time, Christians and Jews were recognized under Islam as "peoples of the book", and so given dhimmi status. Christianity and Judaism shared with Islam the tradition of the Old Testament, and Islam considered Jesus Christ a major prophet. Most importantly, the Islamic Berber and Arab invaders were a small minority, ruling over a few million Christians. Thus, Christians and Jews were free to practice their religion, but they had to pay a prescribed poll tax. They were not permitted to build new churches or synagogues, and clothing conventions were used to mark them out. Conversion to Islam proceeded slowly but steadily as it offered social and economic advantages to converts. After several centuries of conversion, Muslims may have begun to outnumber Christians in Al-Andalus. The Roman Catholic Church in Muslim Spain continued to function, although it lost contact with religious reforms in Rome. Muslim Spain came to include a growing number of Mozarabic Christians, people who adopted Arabic script and culture and preserved the old Visigothic rites that differed from those of Rome. Under some Muslim rulers, Jews held prominent positions in commerce and the professions, and sometimes even positions in government. The Muslim community in Spain was itself diverse and beset by social tensions, which ultimately was one of the principle causes of the fall of Al-Andalus. From the beginning, the Berber tribespeople of North Africa, who had provided the bulk of the soldiers, clashed with the Arabs of the Middle East, who formed the ruling elite. The Berbers, who were comparatively recent converts to Islam, accounted for the majority of Moors in Spain and they resented the sophistication and aristocratic pretensions of the Arab elite. They soon gave up attempting to settle the harsh lands of the northern reaches of the Meseta Central handed to them by the Arab elite, and, complaining of Arab duplicity, many returned to Africa during a Berber uprising against Arab rule. Meanwhile, many Christians in Spain, including Visigothic nobles, converted to Islam. Conversion was commonplace among merchants, large landowners, and other local elites. Drawn into the politics of Islamic power, many Christians found that conversion made it easier to maintain their influence. Muslim Spain was wealthy and sophisticated under Islamic rule. Cordoba was the richest and most sophisticated city in all of western Europe. It was not until the 12th century that western medieval Christiandom began to reach comparable levels of sophistication, and this was due in part to the intellectual and commercial stimulus coming from Muslim Spain. Mediterranean trade and cultural exchange flourished. Muslims imported a rich intellectual tradition from the Middle East and North Africa, including knowledge about mathematics and science, and they helped revive in Europe the Greek philosophical tradition, which they continued to build upon in Spain. Crops and farming techniques introduced by the Arabs, including new irrigation practices, led to a remarkable expansion of agriculture, which had been in decline since late Roman times. In towns and cities, the Muslims constructed magnificent mosques, palaces, and other architectural monuments, many of which still stand today. Outside the cities, the mixture of large estates and small farms that existed in Roman times remained largely intact because Muslim leaders rarely dispossessed landowners. The Muslim conquerors were relatively few in number and so they tried to maintain good relations with their subjects. This relative social peace, which was already deteriorating from the late 10th century, broke down with the stricter, less tolerant, Muslim sects that arrived from the end of the 11th century. Roman, Jewish, and Muslim culture interacted in complex ways. A large part of the population gradually adopted Arabic. Even Jews and Christians often spoke Arabic, while Hebrew and Latin were frequently written in Arabic script. These diverse traditions interchanged in ways that gave Spanish culture - religion, literature, music, art and architecture, and writing systems - a rich and distinctive heritage. Life in Muslim Spain was very different from life in contemporary Christian Spain. Arabic was the official language of government, commerce and scholarship in Muslim controlled areas of Spain, and the majority of the population, including Christians and Jews, spoke it, though many were bilingual and the majority had been converted to Islam. However, as the 11th century drew to a close most of the north and centre of Spain came back under Christian control. Fall of Muslim Rule: The long, convoluted period of expansion of the Christian kingdoms, beginning in 722, only eleven years after the Moorish invasion, is called the Reconquista. As early as 739, the north-western region of Galicia, which became one of the most important centres of western medieval Christian pilgrimage (Santiago de Compostela), had been liberated from Moorish occupation by forces from neighbouring Asturias. The 1085 conquest of the central city of Toledo had largely brought to an end the reconquest of the northern half of Spain. In 1086 the Almoravids, an ascetic Islamic sect from Africa, quickly conquered the small Moorish states in the south and then launched an invasion in which they captured the east coast as far north as Saragossa. This Islamic revival was short-lived, as by the middle of the 12th century the Almoravid empire had collapsed. The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 heralded the collapse of the great Moorish strongholds in the south, most notably Córdoba in 1236 and Seville in 1248. By the middle of the 13th century nearly all of the Iberian peninsula had been reconquered, leaving only Granada as a small tributary state in the south. It clung to its peripheral existence for two and half centuries when in 1492 Isabella and Ferdinand captured the southern city of Granada, the last Moorish city in Spain. The Treaty of Granada [1] guaranteed religious tolerance toward Muslims while Spain's Jewish population of over 200,000 people was expelled that year. At Ferdinand's urging the Spanish Inquisition had been established in 1478. Behind much real religious intolerance lay the fear that the local Muslims might assist another Muslim invasion. Also Aragonese labourers were angered by landlords use of Moorish workers to undercut them. A 1499 Muslim uprising, triggered by forced conversions, was crushed and was followed by the first of the expulsions of Muslims, in 1502. The year 1492 was also marked by the discovery of the New World. Isabella I funded the voyages of Christopher Columbus. In their contests with the French army in the Italian Wars, Spanish forces under Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba eventually achieved success, against the French knights, thereby revolutionizing warfare. The combined Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Aragon emerged as a European great power. The reconquest from the Muslims is one of the most significant events in Spanish history since the fall of the Roman Empire. Arabic quickly lost its place in southern Spain's everyday life, and was replaced by Castilian. In the south the process of conversion was reversed from the 13th century: the majority Muslim population was gradually converted to Roman Catholicism. The mosques and synagogues were converted into churches. With the union of Castille and Aragon in 1479 and the subsequent incorporation of Navarre in 1512, the word Spain (España, in Spanish) began being used only to refer to the new unified kingdom and not to the whole of Hispania (the term Hispania is Latin and the term Iberia Greek). From the Renaissance to the 19th Century: Until the late fifteenth century, Castile and Léon, Aragon and Navarre were independent states, with independent languages, monarchs, armies and, in the case of Aragon and Castile, two empires: the former with one in the Mediterranean and the latter with a new, rapidly growing, one in the Americas. The process of political unification continued into the early sixteenth century. It was the unification of these separate Iberian empires that became the base of what is now referred to as the Spanish Empire. By 1512, most of the kingdoms of present-day Spain were politically unified by the crown, although not as a modern, centralized state. In contemporary minds, "Spain" was a geographic term that was more or less synonymous with Iberia, not the present-day state called Spain, although today's more restricted notion of it was beginning to gain in currency. As the old states continued to exist and function with their own laws, assemblies and administrations under one monarch the title of the reigning Habsburgs was "The King of the Spaniards", not "Spain". The grandson of Isabella and Ferdinand, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor but called in Spain Carlos I, extended his crown to other places in Europe and the rest of the world. The unification of Iberia was complete when Charles V's son, Philip II, became King of Portugal in 1580. During the 16th century, early Habsburg Spain (i.e. the reigns of Charles V and Philip II) became the most powerful state in Europe. The Spanish Empire covered most territories of South and Central America, Mexico, some of Eastern Asia (including The Philippines), the Iberian peninsula (including the Portuguese empire from 1580), southern Italy, Sicily, Germany, and the Netherlands. It was the first empire about which it was said that the sun did not set. It was a time of daring explorations by sea and by land, the opening up of new trade routes across oceans, conquests and the beginning of European colonization. Not only did this lead to the arrival of ever increasing quantities of precious metals, spices and luxuries, and new agricultural plants, that had a great influence on the development of Europe, but the explorers, soldiers, sailors, traders and missionaries also brought back with them a flood of knowledge that radically transformed the European understanding of the world, ending conceptions inherited from medieval times. This Renaissance intellectual transformation is best seen in the influential School of Salamanca. The treasure fleet across the Atlantic and the Manila galleons across the Pacific made it the wealthiest and most powerful nation in Europe, but the rapidly rising influx of silver and gold from the colonies in the Americas in the last decades of the 16th century ultimately resulted in economically damaging rampant inflation and led to economic depression by the 17th century. Religious and dynastic wars supported by the Spanish crown, especially in the Netherlands, also greatly burdened the empire's economy. In 1640, under Philip IV, the centralist policy of the Count-Duke of Olivares provoked wars in Portugal and Catalonia. Portugal became an independent kingdom again, taking with it its empire, and Catalonia enjoyed some years of French-supported independence but was quickly returned to the Spanish Crown, except Roussillon. A series of long and costly wars and revolts followed in the early 17th century, and began a gradual decline of Spanish power in Europe from the 1640s. Of note during the 17th century was the cultural efflorescence now known as the Spanish Golden Age. Spain had vast colonies in the Americas, stretching from Chile and Argentina to Central America and Mexico, to some states in the present-day United States. These included all of Florida, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, and parts of Oklahoma, Colorado and Wyoming. The influence of Spain on these cities is still evident in such cities as Los Angeles, California; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and San Antonio, Texas, as well as the Spanish language's dominance in these states (it is interesting to note that in New Mexico, Spanish is considered one of the 'de facto' official languages, along with English.) Historically the period of the mid 17th century to the mid 20th century was a relative failure for Spain compared to north western Europe. The lingering, "decline of Spain" after a long period of considerable growth of population was due in large part, ironically, to its spectacular successes in the 15th and 16th centuries that led to the centuries of the treasure fleets. These shipments of silver engendered inflation that ate away at Spanish trades and commerce (never large or sophisticated in the harsh, thinly populated country - much of the manufactures and finance had always originated in third countries). This proved disastrous when the mines declined in output. Worsening matters were the wars defending the global empire against envious European rivals, internal successions and the European wars (Eighty Years War and Thirty Years War) in fighting for the Habsburg's dynastic and religious interests (Counter Reformation). During the vast Thirty Years War the government sought to meet its needs by tampering with the silver content of the currency, leading to severe bouts of inflation and deflation. The financial instability led to the collapse of the Castilian economy and in 1628 Castilians resorted to bartering. A steep economic and demographic decline followed in the empire's plague ridden lynchpin, Castile. Many emigrated. Habsburg policies that had entrenched the privileges and exemptions of the nobility from the time of the Castilian War of the Communities (1518–1520), and the vast grants of land to the Church, helped to undermine the economy and curtail the spread of modern thought. The resentment of ordinary peasants and labourers would find expression in implicating the nobility of Moorish ancestry and the churchmen of hypocrisy and found its way into the theatre and literature. The growing beggary forced many to live by their wits, increasing the popularity of picaresque literature. This 17th century stagnation was mirrored throughout Europe, as the growing global oceanic trade pioneered by the Iberian countries, that was increasingly diverted to north-western Europe, helped alleviate it in that region. Controversy over succession to the throne consumed the country and much of Europe during the first years of the 18th century. It was only after this war ended and a new dynasty-the French Bourbons-was installed that a true Spanish state was established when the absolutist first Bourbon king Philip V of Spain in 1707 dissolved the parliamentarist Aragon court and unified the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon into a single, unified Kingdom of Spain, abolishing many of the regional privileges and autonomies (fueros) that had hampered Habsburg rule. The British abandoned the conflict after Utrecht (1713), which led to Barcelona's easy defeat by the absolutists in 1714. The National Day of Catalonia still commemorates this defeat. Following the wars at its commencement the 18th century saw a long, slow recovery, with an expansion of the iron and steel industries in the Basque Country, a growth in ship building, some increase in trade and a recovery in food production and a gradual recovery of population. The new Bourbon monarchy drew on the French system in trying to modernise the administration and economy, in which it was more successful in the former than the latter. In the last two decades of the century, with the ending of Cadiz's royally granted monopoly, trade experienced an extraordinary growth (from a relatively low base) which even witnessed the initial steps of an industrialisation of the textile industry in Catalonia. Spain's effective military assistance to the rebellious British colonies in the American War of Independence won it renewed international status. But this promising late eighteenth century resurgence was short-lived, being totally disrupted by the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars at the beginning of the 19th century. This initiated a period of turmoil that led to the loss of the vast mainland American territories and plunged the country into endemic political instability until 1939. The Napoleonic incursion led to a fierce guerilla war (Peninsular War) which saw the first wide spread manifestation of Spanish nationalism. The unexpectedly ferocious resistance to the invaders led to manifold atrocities being committed by the French soldiers. Some of these atrocities (and metaphoric references to them) were depicted by Goya the most celebrated artist of the period. The Romantic travellers saw in a backward Spain an exotic country, based on romantic 19th century mythmaking that was confirmed by the instability of the times. In the latter half of the 19th century Spanish Catalonia became the main centre of Spain's industrialization. Pockets of considerable modern industry would appear, especially in Catalonia, and the Basque country, but generally Spain's political instability and difficult geography made progress slow and extraordinarily uneven. At the end of the 19th century, Spain lost all of its remaining old colonies in the Caribbean and Asia-Pacific regions, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, Philippines, and a large number of Pacific islands to the United States after unwittingly and unwillingly being thrust into the Spanish-American War of 1898. "The Disaster" of 1898, as the Spanish-American War was called, gave increased impetus to Spain's cultural revival (Generation of '98) in which there was much critical self examination, and relieved it from the burden of its last major colonies. However political stability in such a dispersed and variegated land, caught between pockets of modernity and large areas of extreme rural backwardness and strongly differentiated regional identities would elude the country for some decades yet, and was ultimately imposed only by a brutal dictatorship in 1939. 20th century: The 20th century initially brought little peace; Spain played a minor part in the scramble for Africa, with the colonization of Western Sahara, Spanish Morocco and Equatorial Guinea. However the area it had occupied had an age old history of fighting Europeans, resulting in the military disaster in Morocco in 1921. This contributed to discrediting the monarch and worsened political instability. A period of dictatorial rule (1923–1931) ended with the establishment of the Second Spanish Republic. The Republic offered political autonomy to the Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia (where the autonomy did not have any effect due to the civil war) and gave voting rights to women. However, in July 1936, against a backdrop of increasing political polarization, anti-clericalism and pressure from all sides, coupled with growing and unchecked political violence, including the murder of the prominent right-wing political figure José Calvo Sotelo by communist agents, the Republic was faced with an attempted military coup d'etat led by right-wing army generals. Although the coup initially failed, the ensuing Spanish Civil War ended in 1939 with the victory of the nationalist forces led by the ruthlessly efficient General Francisco Franco and supported by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. The Republican side, receiving only tepid assistance from European democracies, was supported by the Soviet Union and volunteer International Brigades organized by the Communist Parties of other nations. The Spanish Civil War has been called the first battle of the Second World War. After the civil war, General Francisco Franco ruled a nation exhausted politically and economically. Guerilla warfare in the countryside continued until 1950. During the Second World War, Franco, under extreme pressure (Hitler had brought his army to the border of Spain after invading France), opted to remain neutral arguing that Spain could not afford a new war, but, as a concession to his civil war backer, authorised volunteers to go to the Russian front to fight the Soviet Union in an anti-Communist crusade in what came to be known as the Blue Division. On the other hand tens of thousands of Spanish refugees in France, many of them experienced anti-fascist soldiers and guerrilla fighters, played a leading role in the French resistance. [2] The resentment of Franco's brutality towards the more industrialized pro-Republican regions of Catalonia and the Basque country, whose distinctive languages and identities he suppressed during his long reign, continues to fuel strong separatist movements to this day. The only official party in Spain at the time of Franco’s regime was the Falange party founded by José Antonio Primo de Rivera. Primo de Rivera denied his party was fascist, calling fascism fundamentally false. His political philosophy was based on Catholicism, saying that man "carries eternal values" and carries "a soul that is capable of damning or saving itself". He called for "the greatest respect for… human dignity, for the integrity of man and for his liberty." Primo de Rivera called for what he called "organic democracy", which amounted for all intents and purposes to the fascism he repudiated. Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera was executed in Alicante in 1936. After World War II, being one of few surviving fascist regimes in Europe, Spain was politically and economically isolated and was kept out of the United Nations until 1955, when it became strategically important for U.S. president Eisenhower to establish a military presence in the Iberian peninsula. This opening to Spain was aided by Franco's opposition to communism. In the 1960s Spain began to enjoy economic growth (Spanish miracle) which gradually transformed it into a modern industrial economy with a thriving tourism sector. Growth continued well into the 1970s, with Franco's government going to great lengths to shield the Spanish people from the effects of the oil crisis. Upon the death of General Franco in November 1975, his personally-designated heir Prince Juan Carlos assumed the position of king and head of state. With the approval of the Spanish Constitution of 1978 and the arrival of democracy, some regions - Basque Country, Navarra- were given complete financial autonomy, and many - Basque Country, Catalonia, Galicia and Andalusia- were given some political autonomy, which was then soon extended to all Spanish regions, resulting in a quite decentralized territorial organization in Western Europe. Remaining dysfunctions, such as unlimited financial strain on contributor regions such as Catalonia make their people aim for a more equilibrated system, such as those enjoyed in Germany, where financial contribution to the whole can never exceed 4% of a Land's GDP. In the Basque Country moderate Basque nationalism coexist with radical nationalism supportive of the terrorist group ETA, which remains one of the biggest problems faced by Spanish citizens. Adolfo Suárez González, Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo Bustelo (after an attempted coup d'état on 23 February 1981), Felipe González Márquez (when Spain joined NATO and European Union), José María Aznar López and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero have been presidents of the government of Spain. |
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