Spain

The official name of Spain is Reino de Espaa (kingdom of Spain), its ruled by King Juan Carlos l, the capital is Madrid and the main language is Castilian Spanish. The population in 2007 was estimated at 45,321,000 and they all share a space of a country that covers an area of 504,645 sq km/ 194,845 sq mi. even though its thought of as a catholic country, there is no official religion and the currency is the euro.

Spain countryside is appealing, speckled with castles, aqueducts and ancient ruins, but its cities are overwhelmingly modern. The Andalusian capital of Sevilla (Seville) is famous for its musical culture and ancient traditions, the Catalonian capital of Barcelona for its spectacular architecture and maritime industry and the national capital of Madrid for its winding streets, museums, bookstores, and its around-the-clock lifestyle. Madrid is Spain largest city and is also its financial and cultural centre, as it has been for hundreds of years

Spain

Beautiful and historic country of stylish cities, snow-capped mountains, stone castles, picturesque fishing villages, sandy beaches and vast monuments, all of which have made it a desired travel destination. The country is geographically and culturally diverse. At its heartland is the Maseta, a broad central plateau half a mile above sea level. Much of the region is traditionally given over to cattle ranching and grain production, tall windmills dot the landscape in several places. In the countries north east is the broad valley of the Ebro River, the mountainous region of Catalonia, and the hilly coastal plain of Valencia. To the north west are the Cantabrian Mountains, a rugged range in which heavily forested, rain-swept valleys are interspersed with tall peaks. To the south are the bountiful citrus orchards and irrigated lands of the valley of the Guadalquivir River, celebrated in the renowned lyrics of Spanish poets Antonio Machado and Federico Garcia Lorca, over this valley rise the snow-capped Sierra Nevada. The southern portion of the country is desert and was made well-known to Americans through the spaghetti western films of the 1960s and early 1970s. The south-eastern Mediterranean coast and the Balearic Islands are lined with palm trees, cacti, rosemary bushes, and other tropical vegetation and enjoy a gentle climate, drawing millions of visitors and retires, especially from northern Europe.

Many varied cultures have gone into the making of Spain, those of the Castilians, Catalonians, Lusitanian, Galician, Basques, Romans, Arabs, Jews and Roma(Gypsies) among other peoples, are renowned for their varied cuisines, customs and creative contributions to the world artistic heritage. The counties Roman conquerors left their language, roads and monuments. Many of the Roman Empires greatest rulers were Spanish, among them Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius. The Moors, who ruled over Spain for nearly 800 years, left a legacy of fine architecture, lyric poetry and science. The Roma contributed the haunting music called the cante jondo (a form of flamenco). Even the Vandals, Huns, and Visigoths who swept across Spain following the fall of Rome are remembered in words and monuments, which prompted Garcia Lorca to remark, In Spain, the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world.

In 1492, the last of the Moorish rulers were expelled from Spain and ships under the command of Christopher Columbus reached America. For 300 years after that Spanish explorers and conquerors travelled the world, claiming huge territories for the Spanish crown and was therefore, arguably the richest country in the world, for generations. With the loss of its overseas empire throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, Spain was all but forgotten in world affairs, apart from, for the three years that the Spanish Civil War (1933 1339) put the country at the centre of the worlds stage, only to become ever more insular and withdrawn during the four decades of rule by dictator Francisco Franco. Following Francos death in 1975, King Juan Carlos, returned to the throne and established a constitutional monarchy. The country has been ruled since then by a succession of elected governments, some socialist, some conservative, but all devoted to democracy.

Land

Spain is bordered to the west by Portugal and by France to the north east, from which it is separated by the tiny principality of Andorra and by the great wall of the Pyrenees Mountains. Spains only other land border is in the far south with Gibraltar, an enclave that belonged to Spain until 1713, when it was given to Great Britain in the Treaty of Utrecht at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession. The rest of the country is bounded by water, the Mediterranean Sea to the east and south east, by the Atlantic Ocean to the north west and south west, and by the Bay of Biscay (an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean) to the north. The Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean off the north-western African mainland, and the Balearic Islands, in the Mediterranean, also are parts of Spain, as are Ceuta and Melilla, two small enclaves in North Africa (northern Morocco) that Spain has ruled for centuries.

Plant life

Nearly half of Spain is covered by spontaneous vegetation of some sort, but only a small proportion (largely confined to the mountains) is classified as dense woodland. Northern Spain has heath and deciduous woodland (oak, beech). The mountains of the northern Meseta and the Iberian and Baetic cordilleras carry deciduous Portuguese oak; those of the central Pyrenees, the Iberian ranges, and the Central Sierras have diverse pine species. The rest, more than half of Spain, has a Mediterranean vegetation characterized by evergreen oak (Quercus ilex) and other drought-resistant plants commonly reduced to scrub status (matorral). An esparto grass (Lygeum spartum) is found in the steppes of La Mancha and the south east; the esparto products of Spain (paper, rope, basketry), however, come from an associated alfa grass (Stipa tenacissima). Poplar and eucalyptus have become widespread since the 19th century.

Wildlife

The proximity of Africa has given Spain more African species of wildlife than are found in the other Mediterranean peninsulas, while the Pyrenean barrier and the general extent of the country explain the number of indigenous species. The European wolf and the brown bear survive in the scarce wild areas of the north east. The Barbary ape is possibly indigenous but is more likely an import from North Africa. It survives only under protection, at Gibraltar. The wild boar, ibex (wild goat), and red and fallow deer are more common. More than half of the bird species of Europe are found in Coto Donana National Park, at the mouth of the Guadalquivir; the Spanish imperial eagle and other large species such as the eagle owl, the buzzard, and several varieties of pheasant are native to the high Pyrenees. Desert locusts have been known to invade southern Spain from North Africa.

Sealife

The countrys waters contain a diversity of fish and shellfish, especially in the south east where Atlantic and Mediterranean waters mix (the Alborn Sea). Species include red mullet, mackerel, tuna, octopus, swordfish, pilchard, Sardines, anchovy and bottom-dwelling (Demersal) species include hake and whiting. Striped dolphin and the long-finned whale inhabit the waters off south eastern Spain, and the bottlenose dolphin is found off the Ebro delta. Overfishing has tended to alter the balance of species.

Ethnic groups

Spain has been invaded and inhabited by many different peoples. The peninsula was originally settled on by groups from North Africa and western Europe, including the Iberians, Celts and Basques. Throughout antiquity it was a constant point of attraction for the civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean. From 1100 bc the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Carthaginians began to establish settlements and trading posts, especially on the eastern and southern coasts. These outsiders found a mosaic of peoples, collectively known as the Iberians, who did not have a single culture or even share a single language. A kingdom called Tartessus, which flourished between 800 and 550 bc, ruled much of the valley of the Guadalquivir. Elsewhere political organization was less sophisticated, consisting of a number of city-states in the coastal regions and of clans in the interior and the north west.

The Romans

The Phoenician and Greek presence was limited to small coastal regions. The Carthaginians were the first to move inland; late in the 3rd century bc they set out to conquer as much of the peninsula as they could. Yet their success led to intervention in Iberia from the Romans, who quickly drove out the Carthaginians and conquered much of the peninsula. The Romans, however, had to deal with a number of revolts, and it was only in 19 bc, after almost 200 years of warfare, that they secured their rule over all of Iberia. The Romans brought Iberia under a single political authority for the first time but did not try to impose a single culture on the inhabitants. Nevertheless, much of the indigenous elite adopted Roman culture and became Roman citizens, particularly in the south and east, where the Roman presence was strongest.

The Visigoths

Roman power in Spain collapsed during the 5th century ad when a number of Germanic peoples the Suebi, the Alani, the Vandals and finally the Visigoths%u2014invaded the peninsula. At the end of the 6th century, King Leovigild brought all of Spain under Visigothic rule, and his son Reccared imposed a single religion, Catholic Christianity on the country.

The Muslims

Visigothic rule did not last long. In 711 Muslim Arabs invaded Spain from North Africa and defeated the Visigothic ruler, King Roderick. They quickly conquered almost the entire peninsula and established Muslim states in Spain that were to last until 1492.

Recent arrivals

The Muslims were the last new peoples to arrive in Spain in large numbers for many centuries. Indeed, from the 16th century on and especially during the 100 years after 1860, Spain was a country of emigration rather than immigration. This began to change in the 1980s when Spains new position as a highly industrialized and relatively prosperous country made it attractive to people from the developing world. For the first time since the middle Ages, Spain received large numbers of immigrants. By the early 21st century there were several million legal foreign residents and illegal immigrants in Spain, the latter concentrated mainly in Andalusia (Andaluca), in metropolitan Madrid and Barcelona, and in the Balearic and Canary islands. Most foreign residents came from other countries of the European Union (EU) and from Latin America. Many also arrived from Morocco, often crossing the Strait of Gibraltar in small boats, and from sub-Saharan Africa, arriving often at the Canary Islands; there also are significant numbers of Asians and Europeans from non-EU countries. Since 1985 Spanish governments have passed several laws on foreigners, which have made it more difficult for people to enter Spain and easier for the authorities to deport them. Promulgated in 2000 (and subsequently modified), the Law on the Rights and Freedoms of Foreigners in Spain and Their Social Integration sought to end the restrictive policies of the previous 15 years, terminating the practice of repatriating illegal immigrants and giving legal status to any employed illegal immigrant who resided in Spain for at least two years. In 2005 legislation legalized the status of many immigrant workers. The law also gave immigrants most of the same rights as Spanish citizens (except the right to vote).

The Gitano minority

The one ethnic minority of long standing in Spain is the Roma (Gypsies), who are known in Spain as Gitanos. Their traditional language is Cal. Many of them have assimilated into the mainstream of Spanish society, but others continue to lead their traditional nomadic way of life. The Gitanos were at one time most numerous in southern Spain, and, while there continue to be large populations in Andalusian cities such as Almera, Granada, and Murcia, large communities now exist in Madrid and Barcelona as well. Flamenco, an expressive song-dance form, has long been associated with the Gitanos.

Considerable prejudice and discrimination have existed against the Gitanos in Spain and are still prevalent today. But Gitanos have begun to create their own political organizations, such as the Union of the Gitano People (Unin del Pueblo Gitano; also known as the Unin Roman), and some have been elected to parliament. There also are government programs that promote Gitano culture.

Languages

The official language of Spain is Castilian. It is the countries most widely spoken language, and outside Spain it is generally known as Spanish. The constitution of Spain allows for its autonomous communities to recognize their dominant regional languages and dialects as having official status along with Castilian. The statutes of 6 of the 17 autonomous communities stipulate the following co-official languages: Catalan in Catalonia and in the Balearic Islands, Valencian in Valencia, Galician (Gallego) in Galicia, and Euskera (Basque) in the Basque Country and in some Euskera-speaking territories of Navarra. Although not named a co-official language of Asturias, Bable (Asturian) is protected and promoted under the communities statutes, as are local Aragonese dialects in Aragon. In addition, Aranese, spoken in the Aran Valley, is safeguarded in a provision by the regions government, the autonomy of Catalonia. All of these languages except Euskera are Romance languages(i.e., they evolved from Latin). With no relation to any other language of the world, Euskera is what is known as a language isolate. Within their respective regions of dominance, many of the languages of Spain are taught regularly in school and are used in newspapers and radio and television broadcasts.

Castilian

Castilian, which contains many words of Arabic origin, began as a dialect spoken in northern Spain. It became the language of the court of the kingdoms of Castile and Len in the 12th century, and the dominance of Castile within Spain allowed it to become the official language of the state.

There are differences in accent and, to a lesser extent, in vocabulary in Castilian as it is spoken in various regions of the country. The most significant difference is in the pronunciation of cbefore i or e. In northern Castile, where the language is said to be spoken in its purest form, this is pronounced as an English th; in southern and western Spain it is pronounced as an English s. The prominence of people from these latter regions in the colonization of Latin America led to their pronunciation becoming the standard in American Spanish. The Cervantes Institute promotes the Spanish language and Spanish culture in many countries.

Catalan

Catalan is closely related to Occitan (Provenal), a language spoken in southern France. It is spoken by more than four-fifths of the population in Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands. But there are differences in the way Catalan is spoken in these three regions, and in the 1980s there were politically motivated disputes as to whether Valencian was a Catalan dialect or a distinct language. Catalan literature, which has a long and distinguished history, flourished especially during the Middle Ages. However, it declined after the 15th century before reviving again in the period known as the Renaixena (Renaissance), which began in the mid-19th century.

Galician

Spoken in Galicia, in the north-western corner of Spain, the Galician language (Gallego) is closely related to Portuguese, although it has been influenced by Castilian Spanish throughout the modern period. It was the language of courtly literature until the 14th century, when it was displaced by Castilian. From then until the late 19th century, when a literary revival began, its use was limited to everyday speech, and it was more common in the countryside than in the cities due to a tradition of spoken Galician at home. Most of the population of Galicia is bilingual in Galician and Castilian.

Euskera

Euskera is the most distinctive language spoken in Spain. Neither a Romance nor an Indo European language, it predates the arrival of the Romans in Spain. Until the end of the 19th century, Euskera was spoken mostly in the countryside, and, unlike the other peninsular languages, it had no significant literary tradition. In the 20th century, especially after it became the official language of the Basque Country (Euskera: Euskadi; Spanish: Pas Vasco) in 1978, Euskera grew in popularity and was increasingly used in literature, journalism, and the electronic media. Moreover, it has been the regional governments policy to extend its use in education and public administration. About one-third of the regions population speaks Euskera, and another one-sixth comprehends it. The largest proportion of Euskera speakers live in the province of Guipuzcoa.

Religion

Roman Catholicism became the official religion of Spain in 589 and has been closely identified with the country ever since. The advent of political liberalism at the beginning of the 19th century led to a series of conflicts between church and state, especially over land ownership and the control of education. Even so, Catholicism remained the official religion of the state until the Second Republic (1931 1936). After the Spanish Civil War, General Francisco Franco restored it as the state religion, and it retained that status until the proclamation of the constitution of 1978. Since then Spain has had no official religion, but the Roman Catholic Church continues to receive financial support from the state. The legalization of divorce and abortion along with educational reforms in the 1980s brought the church into conflict with the government once again but with less intensity than previously.

The vast majority of the population is Roman Catholic, yet for many and especially for those born after 1950 this has little meaning beyond being baptized, married, and buried within the church. There are several hundred thousand non-Catholic Christians in Spain. American-based Evangelical sects such as the Jehovahs Witnesses and the Seventh-day Adventists as well as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) have been active in the country since the 1970s. In addition, there are hundreds of thousands of adherents of Islam, whose numbers have grown rapidly because of immigration. Some 100,000 Jews fled Spain during the Spanish Inquisition in the late 15th century, when the inquisitor general Tomas de Torquemada persuaded the countrys rulers to expel any Jew who refused to be baptized. To remain in the country, many Jews converted to Christianity (becoming known as conversos); those known as Marranos converted to Christianity but continued surreptitiously to practice Judaism. Restrictions on Judaism were eased only in the 20th century, and by the early 21st century there were some 15,000 Jews in Spain.

Settlement patterns - Human landscape

The impact on the Spanish landscape over 35,000 years of human occupation has been both varied and profound. Human activity in prehistoric times undoubtedly led to changes in vegetation, soils, micro relief and microclimate. However, influences from northern Europe (Celtic), the eastern Mediterranean (Phoenician, Ligurian, and eventually Roman) and North Africa (Iberian) contributed more obviously to what was to become the traditional landscapeof Spain. Most of Spain%u2019s major towns have ancient origins: they began as Celtibrian settlements (Soria), as Phoenician colonies (Cadiz) and Phoenician or Greek trading emporiums (Tarragona, Ampurias, and Malaga). There were also Roman commercial centres along the Mediterranean coast or military and administrative centres in the north and west, at nodal points in the road system (Merida, Leon, and Zaragoza). Such towns were surrounded by zones of intensive, irrigated agriculture (the barros of Evora, Portugal, the vegas of Mrida and Zaragoza, the huertas of the east coast).

The Roman legacy of a gridiron town plan is preserved in many northern centres such as in Barcelona and Zaragoza, but has been largely obliterated in the cities of the south and east by Muslim urban elements. In towns such as Valencia, Cordoba, Toledo, Almeria, Granada and Sevilla, the marketplace, mosque, and high-walled domestic compounds, often with watered gardens, dominate an intricate alley network. Like their Roman antecedents, these early medieval Muslim centres were surrounded by rich agricultural huertas, in both towns and huertas water usage was rigorously controlled by institutions such as the Tribunal de las Aguas de la Vega de Valencia.

After the Reconquista (Reconquest), the establishment of isolated single farms (alqueras) within the huertas increased. In Castile and Leon, medieval urban settlements developed from Christian military foundations in an open landscape of extensive dry farming. Centres such as Pamplona, Burgos, Soria, Valladolid and Salamanca comprised a series of walled centre until new squares and broad streets were laid out in the 17th century. Rural settlement in Len and in the mountains of northern Andalusia focused on the ecclesiastical granges of the Reconquista, developing into small villages. In Castile and Len, castles similarly gave rise to clusters of hamlets. Much of this rural settlement was the result of spontaneous peasant colonization based on a now largely lost communal farming (open-field) system. In contrast, in Castille-la Mancha, lower Aragon, Andalusia, Extremadura, and parts of the Alentejo, Portugal, the rural settlement pattern testifies to the more-organized resettlement schemes of the Reconquista in the southern Meseta. Here the four great Christian military orders (the Hospitallers, the Templars, the Order of Santiago and the Order of Calatrava) acquired vast territories, which they defended with fortresses and huge, widely spaced villages, the latter sometimes now as large as to take on an urban aspect. Among these, in parts of Andalusia and Alentejo, are the courtyard farms (cortijos, montes) of the latifundios (very large estates).

History of Settlement patterns and Migration

Numerous Spaniards participated in the massive immigration to the Americas in 19th- and early 20th-century. Between 1846 and 1932 nearly five million Spaniards went to the Americas, mostly to South America, but also to Argentina and Brazil. Only Britain, Italy, Austria-Hungary and Germany had more emigrants. Significant numbers of Spaniards also immigrated to Algeria and France.

The pattern of Spanish emigration changed after World War II. Continental Europe, especially France, West Germany, and Switzerland, displaced Latin America as the favoured destination for Spanish emigrants. Between 1962 and 1976 almost two million Spaniards, mainly from Andalusia and Galicia, went to other European countries. Since the 1980s, however, as the Spanish economy improved, there has been very little permanent emigration from Spain. There was actually a reverse in migration flows, as more than 20,000 Spanish citizens, many of them retired, returned from other European countries each year.

The number of emigrants has been dwarfed by the number of people moving within Spain itself. Nearly 10 million Spaniards moved from one province to another between the early 1970s and mid -1990s, significantly affecting the distribution of population within the country. Until the mid-1970s, most internal migrants left rural areas seeking industrial jobs in the larger cities, especially Madrid and Barcelona, and in the Basque Country and Valencia. During the 1980s the decline of Spains traditional industries prompted a return migration to the less-industrialized provinces. In the 1990s the focal points for migration were medium-sized cities (with 10,000 to 50,000 inhabitants), regions with strong service sectors, and the fringes of large and medium metropolitan areas.

History of Settlement patterns and Urbanization

During the first half of the 20th century, most Spaniards lived in villages or in towns of fewer than 10,000 people, but by the end of the century about three-fourths of the population lived in urban areas. The most intense growth took place in a handful of the largest cities, such as Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Sevilla, Zaragoza, Mlaga and Murcia. Spanish cities recorded some of the highest population densities in the Western world. This explosive urban growth occurred with very little planning, and many migrants to the cities could find housing only in cheaply constructed apartment blocks in outlying districts that lacked adequate municipal services.

Since 1978 democratically elected municipal governments in many cities have tried to alleviate some of the worst effects of the uncontrolled urban boom of the 1960s. They acquired more parkland and began to provide a variety of public cultural facilities. Meanwhile, growth in the larger metropolitan areas has shifted from the central cities to the suburbs. Even smaller cities, such as Valladolid, Len, and Granada, have begun to suburbanize.

Demographic trends

Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries Spain experienced the typical pre-industrial pattern of high birth and death rates, but both began to decline shortly after 1900. The slow but relentless fall of birth rates stalled during the 20 years after the Spanish Civil War, when the Franco regime (1939 1975) followed policies that encouraged large families. In the late 1960s the decline resumed. The low birth rate, which was especially marked among young women, contributed to a rate of natural increase that was near zero at the end of the 20th century, though in the beginning of the 21st century there was an upturn fuelled by the birth rate among the immigrant population.

Death rates declined steadily after 1940, but they rose slightly during the 1990s as the population aged. Life expectancy in Spain increased dramatically, and by the end of the 20th century it was among the highest in the world. The greatest improvement was in the area of infant mortality. The striking overall change was a result of the higher standard of living made possible by the economic miracle of the 1960s and by the general availability of high-quality medical care through the government-sponsored system.

By the 1990s Spains major demographic indicators were similar to those of other industrialized countries of Western Europe. As birth rates and death rates declined and life expectancy increased, the Spanish population aged significantly during the final decades of the 20th century, posing a growing challenge to the Spanish economy and society.

The Spanish population grew rapidly in the 30 years after the Civil War, in part because the death rate fell more quickly than the birth rate but also because of changes in marriage patterns. In the years immediately after the war, economic hardship discouraged people from marrying, and the average age at first marriage rose. By the mid-1940s, however, the percentage of those who married grew significantly (especially among women), reaching its highest level between 1955 and 1960 and remaining high until the mid-1970s, when it began to decline markedly. Likewise the average age at first marriage decreased until the 1990s, when it began climbing again. By the end of the 20th century the average age of first marriage for women had risen again (to between 25 and 29), and the average age at which women had their first child was about 30.

Beginning in the 1970s, Spaniards also began to have fewer children, and at the turn of the 21st century the total fertility rate was one of the lowest in Europe and well below the rate of replacement. The size of the average household also declined during this period, and the number of Spaniards living in traditional households, composed of a married couple and their children, also dropped.

End of part 1