La Moncloa. History of Spain [Spain/History and Culture/History]

Contents

The Early Settlers Based on the findings at Atapuerca ( Burgos province ), estimated to be around 800,000 years old, the bearing of hominids on the iberian Peninsula dates back to the Lower Palaeolithic period. Experts are still debating the origin of these early settlers, who may have entered the peninsula immediately from Africa via the Straits of Gibraltar, but more probable arrived by crossing over the Pyrenees. In any case, the remains of utensils and works of art found on the peninsula are surely from this period, corresponding to the same hunter-gatherer cultures that existed in other parts of Europe. Dame of Baza ( Museo Arqueológico Nacional ) furthermore, the iberian Peninsula constituted the western boundary of a work of cultural dissemination that began in on the eastern prop up of the Mediterranean around the fifth millennium B.C. Known as the Neolithic Revolution, this serve consisted of the passage from a collector economy to a producer economy based on agriculture and stockbreeding. Another period in the history of the peninsula began around 5000 or 4000 B.C. and lasted until the sixteenth century A.D., which was characterised by the prevailing role of the Mediterranean basin and civilisations. From approximately 1100 B.C. until the middle of the third century B.C., commercial and cultural contact with the Mediterranean civilisations was articulated by the Phoenicians ( whose territories extended from the Algarve on the peninsula ‘s South Atlantic coast to Iberia ‘s Mediterranean shores in the east ) and the Greeks ( whose influence stretched from the estuary of the Ebro River to the Gulf of Roses on the north-eastern coast of Spain ). At the end of this period, both civilisations were displaced by the Romans and Carthaginians respectively.

Hence, between the 12th and 4th centuries B.C., substantial differences emerged between the Iberia that extended from the Mediterranean in the northeast to the Atlantic in the south, and the Iberia of the peninsular inland region. The latter territory was inhabited by versatile tribes, some of them Celts. With a relatively primitive social organization, these peoples engaged in migratory herd, which consisted of alternating the grazing pastures in the northern uplands that they used in the summer with those of the southerly part of the cardinal tableland, or Meseta, used in the winter. Shepherds and sheep, the conquerors of grazing lands, played a key function in the geo-history of the iberian Peninsula. By contrast, in the fourth century B.C. the peoples of the coastal area generically known as Iberians had already formed a homogeneous group of city- states ( Tartessus, the biblical Tarshish or possibly the fabled submerged Atlantis ) influenced by the more develop urban, trade, farming and mine centres of the eastern Mediterranean. The earliest written records about the peninsula date from this period. Hispania, the name the Romans gave to the peninsula, is allegedly a semitic discussion derived from Hispalis ( Seville ). The Persistent Traces of the Roman Presence The Roman presence on the peninsula basically followed the same pattern as the greek commercial bases, but unlike the Greeks, Rome ‘s introduction to Iberia was the resultant role of a baron clamber with Carthage to gain restraint of the western Mediterranean during the second hundred B.C. In any case, it was at this indicate that the iberian Peninsula as a geographic unit of measurement entered the stadium of international politics and, by merit of its inside localization between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and its rich people agrarian and mineral resources in the south, became a much coveted strategic objective. The Roman invasion and eventual seduction of the peninsula took place over the long period between 218 and 19 B.C. The Romans were alarmed by the carthaginian expansion to the northeast ; like Napoleon centuries late, they believed that the Ebro River delineated a natural boundary with Gaul, which was then a Roman state. This dispute of interests led to the Second Punic War. While Hannibal was making his legendary travel across the Alps, the Roman legions were attacking his spanish al-qaeda at Carthago Nova ( contemporary Cartagena ), with its seaport and mines. Hannibal ‘s get the better of by Publius Cornelius Scipio ( 209 B.C. ) not only marked the begin of the end for his army in Italy ; it was besides the beginning of the Roman seduction of Spain. Roman field of Mérida ( Turespaña ) The Romans did not just want to replace the Carthaginians, but to extend their dominion to the rest of the peninsula. however, these plans met with considerable resistance, particularly in the department of the interior. Of the numerous confrontations that took position throughout the Roman conquest of the inland region of Hispania, the most celebrated was the so- called Celtiberian-Lusitanian War, which lasted for twenty years ( 154-134 B.C. ). The war tactics of the lusitanian headman Viriathus and the fabled, although uncorroborated, corporate suicide of the people of Numantia under siege by the Romans were much celebrated by Latin historians. The Roman bearing in Hispania lasted seven hundred years, during which clock the basic boundaries of the peninsula in relation to other european countries were established. The interior divisions drawn up by the Romans seem curiously prophetic : Lusitania, Tarraconensis and Baetica. But the Romans bequeathed more than just a territorial social organization ; they besides left institutions such as the class whole, language, religion, law and the concept of the municipality, and their assimilation situated the peninsula firm in the Greco-Latin and belated the Judaeo-Christian global. The Romans chiefly settled along the coasts and rivers, bequeathing the enduring importance of cities such as Tarragona, Cartagena, Lisbon and particularly Mérida. interim, the huge array of populace works such as roads, bridges, aqueducts, temples arches, theatres, amphitheatres and circuses intelligibly reflects the geographic distribution of Roman settlements on the peninsula. however, at the begin of the fifth century A.D. the map of Roman colonization began to change dramatically when a variety of Germanic peoples marched into the peninsula and settled in the interior, in the event of the Visigoths, and in the west, in the case of the Suebi. At the like time, certain phenomenon had been gaining momentum since the third century A.D. such as the reduction of the urban population, the construction of fortifications around cities, the propagation of latifundismo ( the division of the state into large estates ), the lack of condom in rural areas and the weakening of the state of matter as an mental hospital. On the early hand, local anesthetic oligarchies were becoming more powerful as they offered safety in return for commitment. A major event of this time period was the begin of the Christian seduction of Hispania, although its claim origins are still unknown. St. Paul was credibly deliver in Hispania between 62 and 63 A.D., and Prudentius ‘ narrative of the third century persecution of Christianity mentions dioceses and martyr. Following Constantine ‘s Edict of Milan, which granted religious exemption, the first Council of the spanish Church was held in 314 A.D. The Visigoth Kingdom: First Attempt at Peninsular Unity By the fifth century the Visigoths were already a romanize people who saw themselves as the perpetuators of the extinct imperial power. Around the mid 500s, the pressure exerted by the Suebi in the west ( Galicia ), the Cantabrian- Pyrenean shepherds in the north, and the Byzantines in the south ( Baetica ) on three different fronts led them to establish their capital in Toledo at the concentrate of the peninsula. consolidation between Visigoths and Hispano-Romans was both rapid and successful. It was besides greatly facilitated by King Reccared ‘s conversion to the Catholic religion at the 3rd Council of Toledo ( 589 ), which enabled the Church to acquire a overriding and fiscal role in politics through the celebration of a serial of Councils of Toledo and the adoption of relatively alike social structures, contained in the Liber Judiciorum promulgated by Recceswinth that basically unifi erectile dysfunction Visigothic and Hispano-Roman police. Both cultures boasted a landed gentry and an ecclesiastical nobility, and both institutions favoured the autonomy of the nobility at the expense of royal power. Muslim Spain: Cradle of a Flourishing Culture It was precisely one of the banish noble clans, the Witiza family, which brought about the crash of the Visigothic department of state at the begin of the eighth hundred by appealing for help to the Arabic and Berber troops on the early side of the Straits of Gibraltar. In fact, the degree of decomposition within the Visigothic department of state apparatus enabled the Muslims to secure isolate pacts with the semi-independent gentry hostile to the Crown. Córdoba Mosque ( Turespaña ) By the mid-8th century, the Muslims had consolidated their occupation of the land, and in Cordoba the Umayyad prince Abd al-Rahman proclaimed himself emir of a modern state, freelancer of Damascus. During the first third of the tenth century, a penis of the Umayyad dynasty in Hispania, Abd al-Rahman III, restored and expanded the submit of Al-Andalus and became the first spanish caliph. The announcement of the caliphate had a double function. In the inside, the Umayyads were bang-up to reinforce the peninsular state. In the outlying territories, their bay was to consolidate the commercial routes in the Mediterranean that would guarantee economic relations with the easterly basin ( Byzantium ) a well as the supply of gold. Melilla was occupied in 927 and by the middle of the same century the Umayyad Caliphate controlled the triangle between Algeria, Sijilmasa and the Atlantic. The modest Christian enclaves in the union of the peninsula became modest fiefdoms of the caliph, whose superiority and arbitration they recognised. The foundations of Muslim Spain ‘s hegemony rested on considerable economic baron derived from substantial trade, a highly develop crafts industry and farming methods that were much more effective than those employed in the rest of Europe. The Caliphate of Cordoba was the first urban and commercial economy to flourish in Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire. furthermore, its capital and independent city, Cordoba, had a population of approximately 100,000, which made it the largest urban center in Europe at the time. Muslim Spain produced a brandish culture, specially following the accession of the caliph Al-Hakam II ( 961 976 ), who is attributed with creating a library of several hundred thousand volumes – an impossible feat in Europe at the time. The most characteristic trait of this culture was its swift re-adoption of classical philosophy, most notably by Ibn Masarra, Abentofain, Averroes and the jewish philosopher Maimonides. But above all, Hispano-Muslim scholars were noted for their contributions to the fields of medicine, mathematics and astronomy. The atomization of the Caliphate of Cordoba occurred at the end of the beginning decade of the eleventh hundred and was brought about by the acute military aggressions perpetrated by its death leaders, combined with asphyxiating fiscal pressure. The successors of the unitary caliphate were known as taifas or petty kingdoms, and the news has passed into the spanish language as a synonym of the bankrupt that generated the atomization and disunity of the peninsula. As a solution of this gradual sabotage of the state, by the mid-13th hundred Muslim Spain had been reduced to the Nasrid kingdom of Granada. From the Early Christian Resistance to the Reconquest of Spain The foremost Christian bristle occurred in the inaugural third gear of the eighth hundred in Covadonga, located in the mountains of Asturias. however, this early christian resistance was more a question of survival than a deliberate offensive campaign or “ reconquest. ” In the tenth century, Alfonso III advanced from Oviedo to Leon, en path to the Duero River Valley. On the Meseta, this expansion led to the initiation of the county and then the kingdom of Castile, which late united with the kingdom of Leon under the reign of Ferdinand III in 1230. meanwhile, in 1143 the Atlantic flank of the peninsula became the kingdom of Portugal. During the 12th and 13th centuries, the four main Christian kingdoms of the iberian Peninsula were formed : Portugal, Castile-Leon, Navarre and Aragon- Catalonia. Court of the Lions, La Alhambra ( Turespaña ) From a continental position, the Reconquest took place within the context of the emergence and unsavory expansion that characterised the history of the western segment of Europe between the 10th and 13th centuries against Hungarian, Slavic and Muslim invaders. The result of these dynamics was the initiation of the area we now call Western Europe around 1300 A.D. By the final third of the thirteenth century the Muslim presence had been reduced to the Muslim presence had been reduced to the Nasrid kingdom of Granada until 2 January 1492. The end of the Reconquest – or, in Roman- Visigothic terminology, the recovery of Hispania – had a heavy impact on Christian Europe, being regarded as compensation for the fall of Constantinople to the Turks. Given that the Reconquest lasted so long, there were several periods of co-existence and even, at certain times in the twelfth hundred, a type of frontier society. In any case, the Christian sovereign conquered through colonization, offering farming to anyone who promised to occupy, cultivate and defend it. This gave ascend to transfers and migrations from the north of the iberian Peninsula and Europe, a rare phenomenon in other latitudes at the time. Those colonisers gradually formed a peasant company that was relatively freer than its contemporaries in other parts of Europe, where oppression to the feudal lords was much greater. Between the 9th and 11th centuries, these semi-free peasants were grouped into towns governed by elected councils to which the monarch granted extra charters ( fueros ) based on certain exemptions and privileges. subsequently, in the twelfth century, these burghers sat down with the other two branches of club – the nobility and the clergy – in assemblies known as Cortes, where they discussed and voted on matters pertaining to taxes. The Catholic Monarchs: Peninsular Unity and the Imperial Enterprise of the Spanish Renaissance The quest for one did not end with the last military victory of 1492 and the seduction of Granada, but continued – in its ambition for religious, heathen and cultural uniformity – with the expulsion that lapp year of the Jews who refused to convert to Catholicism and then of the Moriscos, or moorish converts. The unmanageable situation in which the Jews found themselves was not confined entirely to Spain. Since the Council of Letran in 1215, they had unfortunately suffered a similar if not harsher destine in the perch of Europe. Until 1492, Christian territory in Spain had been a melting potentiometer of Jewish, Muslim and Christian cultures, most famously giving rise to the alleged disputas or debates between scholars of the three cultures united in a movement sponsored by King Alfonso X and known as the Toledo Translation School. The work produced by this school enriched european polish with the skill of the Greeks and the achievements of the Arabs. expansion of the quality described above undoubtedly created a frontier economy with the skill of huge spaces. Since the thirteenth century the Hispanic kingdoms were based on quickly growing societies, the dynamics of which were distinctly reflected in the economic and political boom experienced by the kingdom of Aragon with the conquest of Sardinia, Sicily and Naples in the Mediterranean. San Juan de la Peña Monastery ( Turespaña ) Thanks to a combination of economic interests and a seafaring career, Castile was able to occupy a vanguard position in the quest for and consolidation of raw commercial routes with the East. In this race, the Castilians found an highly active rival in another iberian state-Portugal. A inaugural attempt at resolving the competition between the two kingdoms for the operate of the nautical eastern trade routes was the Treaty of Alcaçovas. Signed in 1479, this agreement enabled Castile to maintain the Canary Islands in return for renouncing all easterly voyages around the African slide, which was assigned to Portugal. Such an unfair division can only be explained by the fact that the treaty besides addressed an age-old return of the iberian states, namely, the integrity of the peninsula. Although the internalization of Navarre in 1512 better peninsular integrity, the cycle of fusion was truly completed with the capture of Granada in 1492. That lapp year, Nebrija published the first grammar of a popular speech – castilian – and a spanish flit reached the coasts of America. The fabled aura surrounding Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic Monarchs, has hindered the job of providing an adequate assessment of their context and a sober evaluation of their work. internally, they invested all their efforts in reinforcing the state apparatus and the authority of the Crown, seeking support in the exist legal and administrative institutions and creating new ones, frequently inspired by those of other european countries. such was the character, for case, of the Tribunal of the Inquisition. Introduced at a by and by date in Spain than elsewhere, this motor hotel not only served religious purposes but was besides an instrument used by sovereign to reinforce the authority of the department of state. In 1492 the spanish monarchy represented one of the earliest modern states in Renaissance Europe. Its outward expansion across the Atlantic ( the Americas and Flanders ) and the Mediterranean ( Italy ) was based precisely on this. indeed, Spain ‘s alien policy at the fourth dimension was orchestrated by the universe of a permanent state staffed by civil servants and diplomats, with a unitary but flexible and confederate concept of the monarchy. Although Castile had lost its african routes to Portugal, its self-control of the Canary Islands provided it with an excellent springboard for option routes. This is precisely what Christopher Columbus offered the submit, which was clearly in want of such an offer, although it had prepared for and become accustomed to enterprises of this nature. By 1492 the unite Spain boasted mighty war machinery, a solid economy, an external presence, experience at sea and in exploring new commercial routes, and considerable scientific and technical foul expertness : mathematicians, geographers, astronomers and shipbuilders, forged in the melt batch of the three cultures. The Conquest of America: The New Frontier of the Largest Western Empire By the mid-16th hundred, the main viceroyalties had been established and settled : Mexico on the Atlantic flank and Peru in the south american Pacific. On 6 September 1522, Juan Sebastián Elcano returned to the peninsula as a survivor of the first circumnavigation of the global initiated by Magellan, thereby providing Spain with a path to the East. Thereafter, Havana- Veracruz ( the Tierra Firme fleet ) in the Atlantic and Acapulco-El Callao-Philippines ( the China transport ) in the Pacific, together with control of the western Mediterranean – under ageless threat from the Turks – became the critical arteries of the Spanish Empire ‘s oversea territories. The convoy of spanish galleons maintained these routes open despite attacks from marauding English and Dutch ships until the decisive Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. San Lorenzo de El Escorial Monastery ( Turespaña ) In many respects the conquest of America was exchangeable to the peninsular expansion that preceded it. In both cases, confrontations were a final resort, used only after intense attempts to avoid them. The spanish sought allies in the tribe they subjugated and in discontent leaders ; they agreed to capitulations in substitute for privileges ; they distributed the fresh lands among spanish colonists ; and they reorganised the autochthonal settlements. In Italy the spanish monarchy adopted the custom of engaging in confrontations with France and alliances with England. The Battle of Pavia in 1521, which resulted in the capture of King Francis I of France by the spanish infantry regiments, consolidated Spain ‘s superiority until the mid-17th century. finally, in their quest to further Spain ‘s diplomatic and commercial relations with the Netherlands, Ferdinand and Isabella joined the spanish Crown to the Duchy of Burgundy. The fabulous bequest embodied in the flemish Prince Charles, grandson of the Emperor Maximilian and the Catholic Monarchs, was to condition spanish and european politics until the eighteenth century. The solution adopted by the spanish Hapsburgs to manage this enormous bequest was to establish an across-the-board, flexible monarchy, consisting of a constellation of kingdoms and domains united in a huge confederation around a single Crown. There would have been no one without the figure of the king, since each kingdom maintained its own institutions, language, laws, and even its own borders. The carolingian Empire was therefore a pudding stone of territories randomly united under a common autonomous. The first consequence to arise from this was the complete absence of any attack to create an institutional organization common to the hale empire. similarly, the irregular consequence was that no attempt was made to secure any character of political or economic cooperation between the diverse territories, which would have helped consolidate the idea of an empire – that is, the participation of all parties in a share enterprise. The most luminary accomplishment of Spain under the Hapsburgs was its ability to retain master over its huge territories spread around the worldly concern. No early country in the 16th and 17th centuries was faced with such an enormous administration problem. Spain had to explore, colonize and govern a new world. The Spanish Empire and its “Black Legend” This credence of differences by the spanish Hapsburgs encompassed all domains except for one : religion. They strove to create a universal empire founded on the Madrid-Brussels-Vienna triangle, which did not sit well with the emerging nationalist states and was even less palatable to the individualist mentality of the Reformation. These two ingredients – nationalism and Protestantism – met read/write head on in the dutch bristle against Philip II, who had succeeded the Emperor Charles in the Duchy of Burgundy and on the throne of the spanish kingdoms in 1556. The conquest of America was an attack to annex the territory and subjugate the population. barely as the Roman Empire had done, terminology, religion, laws, presidency and crossbreeding provided the vehicles for the Hispanicisation of America, all of which guided the celibate firm into the western fold. several Spaniards, including Bartolomé de las Casas, spoke out against the abuses of the conquerors, which gave raise to the alleged “ Black Legend ” of spanish cruelty in the Americas. Catechism in autochthonal american hieroglyph ( Archivo Histórico Nacional ) The issue became the subject of intense political argue ; the alleged “ amerind motion ” consisted of doubts regarding Spain ‘s right of conquest, which was finally justified as an evangelising mission. Against such a background it is barely storm that it was the spanish, through Francisco de Vitoria, who first advocated the concept of international law. Fiscal Crisis, Centralism and the Decline of the Spanish Empire The state that had gradually been forged, first by the Catholic Monarchs and former by Philip II, was the prototype of the modern absolutist state. The spanish Empire invented an administrative apparatus that was highly complex for the time, based on a system that put security before all else and attained enormous prestige. The state grew well, assuming responsibilities and duties that were besides much for the increasingly deprive agrarian society of the ancien régime to bear. But rather than reducing the size of the department of state and eradicating duties, the imperialists chose to asphyxiate society. The breakdown of the system became apparent in 1640 with the rebellion of Catalonia and the separation of Portugal. The decline of the spanish Empire, brought about by fiscal exhaustion, coincided with a gradual decay of the band together system, which was subjected to centralist practices. In addition to these two factors, Spain was besides the victim of its own achiever : The incorporation of the Americas and the expansion of transoceanic seafaring shifted the european geo-economic axis from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, and more precisely to the basins of the Thames, Rhine, Seine and Scheldt, relegating Spain to a peripheral position. however, peripheral is not to be confused with fringy, and Spain maintained its condition as a great ability and a key player in Europe with the Americas and Naples still under its dominance. Following the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, it had ceded its hegemonic function 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 reform politics of seventeenth hundred enlightened dictatorship. Charles II, the death of the spanish Hapsburgs, was childless and bequeathed his inheritance to a grandson of his sister Maria Theresa and Louis XIV of France, Philip of Anjou. Crowned King of Spain and the Indies in 1701, Philip V inaugurated the dynasty of the spanish Bourbons. His reign prolonged the Enlightenment in Spain, a period of foreign policy equilibrium, reform and home progress. Spain under the House of Bourbon and the Enlightenment The rest of Europe viewed the will of Charles II with intuition. This led to the spanish War of Succession ( 1705-1713 ), with the Treaty of Utrecht signifying victory for Philip V. 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 universalize creation of the Spanish-Austrian monarchy and the begin of the nationalization of spanish politics. symmetry and peace in Europe became the two goals pursued by Spain throughout the eighteenth century. however, this ambition was thwarted by England ‘s commercial and colonial expansion on the one hand, and by the competition between England and France on the other. Spain ‘s desire for disinterest and peace was best embodied by Ferdinand VI ( 1746-1759 ). During the predominate of Charles III ( 1759-1788 ), the politics articulated by Prime Minister Floridablanca managed to keep Spain out of military conflicts, despite a doubtful interposition in the American War of Independence. Charles III ‘s bequest was a country at peace and well on the road to progress, and it took a hanker meter for the french Revolution of 1789 to derail this passive, non- interventionist policy. The germination of a spanish nationality in extraneous policy was accompanied by a analogue phenomenon in the country ‘s domestic politics ; indeed, the two developments were close relate. During the War of Succession, the Kingdom of Aragon had backed the austrian candidate, a choice that presented the triumphant Philip V with a perfective 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 raw set about, which aimed to reorganise the nation ) was to internal politics what the treaty of Utrecht was to extraneous 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, therefore bringing the allied monarchy of the Hapsburgs to an end. This marked the inaugural step on the road to centralization, which was completed a hundred and a half late by big governments. The disproportionate and chronic deficit of the seventeenth century was reduced and a tendency towards budgetary counterweight recovered, which was merely broken at the end of the eighteenth 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 consequence of a more efficient fiscal system but besides because spanish company was more booming. Aranjuez Royal Palace ( Turespaña ) The Bourbons were exemplary figures of the reformism of Europe during the Enlightenment. They sought progress and effective organization for the country according to the theories of their time, which were influenced by mercantilist ideas, interventionist methods and, to a lesser degree, broad impulses. A major step forward was made with the removal of all obstacles to trade and diligence. The elimination of “ dry ports, ” which economically isolated certain areas from others, and the possibility of all the ports in the kingdom provided a major promote to the craft conducted not alone between these national ports but besides with foreign ports, so that by the end of the hundred 75 % of the trade with the Americas had been recovered. similarly, the Catalonian cotton industry began to take off ; this growth was then marked that, prior to the french invasion of 1808, it represented two-thirds of the british cotton industry. The progressive liberalization of farm prices and the limitation of the privileges of the Mesta ( a brawny association of sheep ranchers in the medieval Kingdom of Castile ) contributed to provide a greater quantity of down for polish and an addition in agricultural production. however, in Spain as in the rest of Europe still governed by the social ordain of the ancient régime, the nation trouble consisted of huge expanses purloined from the market and placed in the hands of either the Church – which owned 15 % of the arable area – the municipal councils or the nobility. The confiscation policy initiated – albeit shyly – by the clear governments formed separate of a general policy aimed at reducing tax and other exemptions, particular privileges, judicial and territorial domains, and even the cleric and baronial populations ( the former still represented 3 % of the total population, while in the latter character the number of gentry fell from 700,000 in 1763 to 400,000 in 1787 ). The Bourbons besides did away with a big proportion of the motley administrative apparatus inherited from the Hapsburgs and reduced the Councils. They promoted the initiation of Secretarías ( Ministries ) and send dealings with the king as partially of a plan intended to marginalise the amphetamine nobility from, as Louis XIV of France put it, “ anything that could give them separate of the government ”. The Bourbons recruited their senior civil servants from among the local and enlightened lower nobility, giving get up to a fresh social category – an ambitious middle-class nobility tidal bore for advancement at the service of the state. These civil servants were people of their time, enlightened in their think and convinced of their reform mission, alarm to the ideas of the period, much with foreign friends and a command of early languages. For exemplar, Floridablanca was a acquaintance of Benjamin Franklin and kept up a parallelism with Voltaire. In his Informe sobre la Ley Agraria ( Report on the Agrarian Law ), Jovellanos demonstrated his cognition of the recent reforms introduced by Adam Smith, and he besides wrote frequently to Lord Holland. The paradox ballad in the fact that neither of these two figures enjoyed a repute among their colleague countrymen, although at least they did not suffer the sad fortune 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 ( 1807 ) 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. The crisis of the ancien régime that paved the way for the Napoleonic invasion was besides a dynastic crisis that hard undermined the enormous prestige and authority of an ancient Crown. When Charles IV abdicated in favor of his son, the monarchy was irreparably damaged. The political government that the Bonapartes attempted to unify was laid out in the Statute of Bayonne, signed on 8 July 1808. Although this text file is enormously authoritative from a historical point of view, 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 one-third of May 1808 ” by Francisco de Goya ( Museo Nacional del Prado ) The reforms established in this Statute could not be implemented by Joseph Bonaparte due to the fact that a huge symmetry of the spanish population rejected them, as they saw the fresh monarchy as bastard and the product of an act of treachery. The leave was a general get up 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 inaugural political emigrants. The disasters that Goya reflected in his paintings clearly evoke the cruelty of a long conflict in which the guerrilla parties used the strategy of preventing normal life in the country as means of perpetually harassing the invaders. aged Provincial Juntas emerged ad lib in most of the spanish provinces, but in the face of military defeats and the miss of fiscal resources they finally saw the need for a higher structure to coordinate all their efforts, giving rise to the creation of the Central Junta. The Central Junta appointed a Regency, founded in the city of Cadiz, which summoned the Cortes ( Parliament ). The Constitution of 1812 The inaugural session of the modern Cortes was held on 24 September 1810 and was attended by approximately 100 representatives, around half of whom were stand-ins. This assembly ratified the play along basic principles : that reign lay with the state, that Ferdinand VII was the legitimate king of Spain, and that the representatives were entitled to parliamentary immunity. The Constitution of 1812 proclaimed the figure of the king to be inviolable and immune, not subject to liability and with the right to sanction and ordain laws. It besides established the issue of ministers, who were accountable for the king ‘s actions and in the Cortes for submission with the law of the land. In relation to the judiciary, the courts were creditworthy for applying the jurisprudence, and the rotatory concept of adjective law was introduced. entirely two particular fueros or charters were granted : to the clergy and to the militia. The constitution besides 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 unmarried department of education system for the entire kingdom. freedom of formula and of the press was besides established. A Century of Liberal Revolutions and Moderate Governments When the spanish diplomats attended the Congress of Vienna in 1814, they represented a triumphant state but a lay waste to and divide nation. The profound crisis in the mother country had badly damaged the latin american Empire, from which continental America separated in 1824 following the Battle of Ayacucho. In the words of the Count of Aranda, the spanish Empire had coped better with the minor defeats of the seventeenth hundred than with the fierce victories of the nineteenth hundred. The patriots of Cadiz had responded to the dynastic crisis and the power vacuum with three independent stances on national reign. For some, this lie with the Crown and the traditional institutions ( the Cortes ) ; consequently, they initially defended a hark back to an absolutist government ( 1815-1819 ), then a more moderate one ( 1824-1834 ), and finally adopted the appoint of Carlists to signify their support of the king ‘s reactionary buddy, Don Carlos. Others defended a state based on the Cortes and the King. These subsequently became known as moderate or doctrinarian liberals ( between 1834 and 1875 ), and then as conservatives ( 1876-1923 ). ultimately, a little but highly active group supported the idea of home reign based entirely on the spanish people. A more moderate interpretation of the french Jacobeans, these went down in history first as exaltados or extreme point radicals ( 1820-1823 ), then as progressives ( 1823-1869 ), and last as constitutionalists ( 1870-1880 ) and fusionist liberals ( 1881-1923 ). The Carlists had a hard follow in the countryside – specially 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 club. They were besides supported by the lower clergy and authoritarian powers such as Russia. politically, Carlism advocated the return of the ancien régime. By contrast, the liberals – who defended the succession of Isabella II, daughter of Ferdinand VII – desired a radical change to create a club 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, particularly in the Latin world, as opposed to russian expansionism, and the victory of the liberal monarchy in France in 1830. 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 arable nation and agrarian output. At the begin of the century, Spain imported wheat and eat rye bread, while by the end of the century it exported cereals and the boodle was made from pale yellow. The liberals besides believed in the detached marketplace, and through the confiscation of land they attempted to create a much wide, national market to achieve a victory over dictatorship. however, they did not pursue an agrarian reform like that advocated by early powers years late, in the twentieth hundred. The Impossibility of Rotation and the Coup d’état Tradition The liberals, who believed they had solved a problem of country, were in fact creating one of government by drawing up constituent and electoral legislation that was markedly biased and designed to ensure the permanence in world power of their party. This turn rotation in position into the spanish political problem par excellence, although in world it was besides a conflict profoundly rooted in social issues, for the small parties of the time seek supporters among the employed, unemployed people and occupation 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 1870 in Spain the military rise was the basic and daring – but no less effective – instrument used by the parties in resistance to impose the rotation denied to them by governments entrenched in agency. An outsize, ambitious and undisciplined officers corps, everlastingly exposed to the terror of being discharged, with no job and only one-half give, were easy prey for political groups bang-up to take by effect what the exclusivist policy of the party in power denied them. however, it would be mistaken to view these coups as arm conflicts : they just provided a method for precipitating political solutions with a minimum of military confrontations. In 1868, what started out as a classical coup d’etat staged by the progressives degenerated into a rotation that deposed Isabella II and ushered in a six-year period of strong political mobilization with the establishment of a probationary government and the portrayal of a new constitution ( 1869 ) that paved the manner for the ephemeral reign of Amadeus of Savoy ( 1869-1873 ). The First Republic: The Carlist Uprising Following the abdication of Amadeus I, who lacked democratic accompaniment, on 11 February 1873 the National Assembly ( Congress and Senate ) proclaimed the First Republic by 258 votes to 32 against. Although highly ephemeral – it only lasted until 29 December 1874 – this democracy advocated new theories that shaped the immediate future : federalism, socialism and cantonalism. Following four consecutive presidencies – Estanislao Figueras, Francisco Pi y Margall, Nicolás Salmerón and Emilio Castelar – the coup d’état led by General Pavía dissolved the National Assembly ( 3 January 1874 ) and on 29 December of the same class, following the uprising led by General Martínez Campos, the monarchy was restored in the person of Alfonso XII, Isabella ‘s eldest son. The Republic met with a major rebellion of the Carlists. The general political sentiment had begun to swing from the extreme point right to the extreme left, in keeping with events in Europe at the time, such as the Paris Commune in 1871 and the conservative reaction it provoked. Cuban War ( Instituto Nacional de Tecnologías Educativas ) The liberals soon became disillusioned with the revolution and frightened by the Carlist reaction. All of these sentiments provided the ideal conditions for the Restoration of Alfonso XII. The Restoration: The Loss of the Last Colonies The begin of Alfonso XII ‘s predominate was marked by two successes : the goal of the Third Carlist War and the blessing of a new constitution ( 1876 ), and a certain constancy based on the being of two political formations that represented the majority of the electorate : the Conservative Party led by Cánovas, supported by the court and latifundista nobility, landowners and people of mugwump means, and Sagasta ‘s Liberal Party, whose members included people from the professional and middle classes, vitamin a well as merchants and industrialists. Their rotation in power, specially after the death of the king and the regency of his wife Maria Christina ( 1885-1902 ), gave rise to a time period of stability interrupted lone in its last phase by the incidents and confrontations in Morocco and the passing in 1898 of the stopping point two remaining colonies : Cuba and the Philippines. The Early 20th Century The click of the twentieth hundred in Spain was marked by a series of fundamental unsolved problems. Some of these problems were geomorphologic ; the population had about doubled since the begin of the former hundred, rising from 11 to 18.5 million in a land of restrict resources. There were besides agrarian problems : latifundismo, gloomy yields and a high percentage of land left lowbrow. In accession to these problems, capital funds and the existing infrastructure were insufficient to launch heavy diligence, and consumer capacitance was very low, all of which gave lift 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 former hundred became more acute. In addition to the political and intellectual frustration resulting from Spain ‘s passing of influence on the world stage, plus the fade of its colonial empire, the nation nowadays had to face the regionalist problem, either in the form of federalism or claims for a retort to the old regimen of fuerismo, the system of special privileges that had characterised the Carlists. similarly, the cantonalism expressed during the ephemeron First Republic raised its head again. however, the main trouble undoubtedly emerged from the social and trade union movements of the working class, which was destined to play a historic and decisive function throughout the twentieth century. Working classify associations first emerged in Spain in 1830 and gave rise to moments of bang-up social agitation, even including a general rap ( 1855 ). In 1868, Fanelli, a follower of Bakunin, established sections of the International Workers ‘ Association in Spain, quickly recruiting 100,000 members in Catalonia and Andalusia. After several periods of carry through and consecutive repressions, in 1911 the apparent motion evolved into the CNT ( Confederación Nacional del Trabajo – National Confederation of Labour ), which retained the support of the spanish work class until the end of the Civil War. The arrival in Spain of Lafargue, sent by Marx, failed to halt the development of Bakunism, as described by F. Engels in his celebrated solicitation of articles. On 2 May 1879 the PSOE ( Partido Socialista Obrero Español – spanish socialistic Workers ‘ Party ) was formed, followed in 1888, after several conferences, by the formation of the socialistic union UGT ( Unión General de Trabajadores – cosmopolitan Workers ‘ Union ). The socialist claims found a wide support base in industrial areas : among miners in Asturias, alloy workers in the Basque Country and printers in Madrid. In Catalonia mighty regional parties emerged, such as the Regionalist League that won the elections in Barcelona in 1901. The Basque Nationalist Party ( PNV ) was founded in 1895. One more secede action besides took place during this period – the interval of political Spain from intellectual Spain. The confrontation between traditional ideas and progressive ideas besides spread to the literary and scientific fields, where the most significant intellectual motion, Krausism ( based on the ideas of german philosopher Karl Christian Friedrich Krause ), had a particularly strong influence on education – the rationalism Institución Libre de Enseñanza run by Giner de los Ríos – and on research – the alleged Junta belem la Ampliación de Estudios ( Board of Further Study ) promoted and run by Cajal, Castillejo and Bolívar. spanish intellectuals, creators of extraordinary philosophic, literary, diachronic and scientific schools of remember – Unamuno, Ortega, Azaña, Altamira, Sánchez Albornoz, Menéndez Pidal, Marañón, Negrín, Moles and many others – took sides and, in some cases, served as political leaders in the dilemma of 1931. Spain and the First World War: The Authoritarianism of Primo de Rivera In 1902, Alfonso XIII took the throne and the emergence of modern political forms threw the Canovite and liberal-conservative bipartisan system into crisis. There were besides several important expressions of sociable unrest, such as the Tragic Week of 1909 in Barcelona and democratic resistor to the drawing of troops for the war in Morocco. Spain ‘s neutral place during the First World War was only a parenthesis. Price increases and the contraction of the european market generated enormous instability, leading in 1917 to the summons of the Parliamentary Assembly in Barcelona, which recommended the reform of the fundamental law, and a general affect in August of the lapp year. Following the bankruptcy of constitutional reform, the regional problem reappear, this time more acutely, and there were outbreaks of social and peasant unrest in both Andalusia and Catalonia. Coinciding with all of this ( 1921 ), the PCE ( Partido Comunista de España-Communist Party of Spain ) was formed when the PSOE failed to join the Comintern, created as a consequence of the victory of the October Revolution in Russia. But above all, the crisis was rooted in the Moroccan War. When spanish troops were massacred at Annual ( 1921 ), unleashing a wave of criticism against the government and the military administration, General Primo de Rivera staged a coup d’etat d’état ( 13 October 1921 ) and installed a military government. Described as “ balmy dictatorship ”, Primo de Rivera ‘s dictatorship attempted to solve several problems by ending the Moroccan War, developing infrastructure for the area and promoting public works. Although ideologically aligned with the authoritarian regimes in Europe, it adopted a more traditional, monarchal and Catholic doctrine than the one adopted in Mussolini ‘s newfangled state. Its failure was chiefly political, despite attempts to create a single party and involve certain sectors of the workers ‘ bowel movement in political life sentence. Neither was it able to re-organise industrial relations on the footing of corporations, nor solve the agrarian and regional problems. An undertake to reform the constitution through the creation of a advisory National Assembly in 1926 besides failed to materialise, and when the fiscal doss of 1930 occurred, the dictator was forced to resign. He was replaced by General Berenguer. The Collapse of the Monarchy and the Second Republic Azaña ‘s Cabinet in 1933 ( Bettman and Corbis ) In August 1930, Republican, Socialist and Catalonian patriot politicians signed the Pact of San Sebastian, and on 12 December a military uprise in prefer of the democracy took set in Jaca. Officers Galán and García Hernández were shot, which led to the resignation of Berenguer, and a group of intellectuals – Ortega yttrium Gasset, Marañón, Pérez de Ayala – declared themselves to be “ At the Service of the Republic ”. The last monarchal government was formed in February 1931 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. Alfonso XIII left Spain and went into voluntary expatriate. The Republicans called general elections on 28 June, announced religious exemption and drew up a new united states constitution, approved on 9 December. Its preamble stated, “ Spain is a democratic democracy of workers of all classes, organised in exemption and judge. The powers of its bodies rest with the people. The republic is a fully-integrated department of state, compatible with the autonomy of the municipalities and the regions. ” The organization of the state was expressed as democratic, worldly, decentralised, and equipped with a single representational house and a constitutional Court. A preoccupation with reform marked the beginning two years of the democracy ( 1931-1933 ) under the leadership of Alcalá Zamora and Azaña, who adopted a three-pronged overture : the Basic Law of agrarian Reform, the solution to the regional problem with statutes of autonomy for Catalonia and the Basque Country, and a detail emphasis on educational and cultural policy. however, two issues created considerable tension : religion and military policy, which the Azaña Law failed to solve and only aggravated even further. evidence of this was provided by General Sanjurjo ‘s abortive coup d’etat on 10 August 1932. The watch year began with the repression of the rise at Casas Viejas and municipal elections that showed a clear swing to the right. This vogue was represented by the CEDA ( Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas – spanish Confederation of Autonomous Right-Wing Parties ) ( Gil Robles ) ; Renovación Española ( spanish Revival ) ( Calvo Sotelo ) and Comunión Tradicionalista ( Traditional Communion ). On 29 October, José Antonio Primo de Rivera founded the Falange Española, or spanish Falangist Movement. New general elections on 19 November gave a clear victory to the properly and the government led by Lerroux and CEDA was formed. The modern government revoked several laws, including the agrarian Reform, and issued an amnesty for the rebel troops involved in the abortive coup d’etat of 1932. Following Lerroux ‘s resignation, the Cortes were dissolved and the elections of 16 February 1936 were won by the Popular Front, a coalescence group uniting Azaña ‘s Republican Left, Esquerra Catalana led by Companys ( Catalonian Left ), Largo Cabellero ‘s Socialist Party, Martínez Barrio ‘s Republican Union and the Communist Party. The initial government led by Azaña announced a general amnesty and reinstated the agrarian reform and the statutes of autonomy for Catalonia and the Basque Country, and later Galicia. In May, Azaña was elected President of the Republic and Casares Quiroga set up a new administration. On 17 July, the military forces at the Melilla garrison staged an uprise, marking the outbreak of the spanish Civil War. The Military Uprising and the Outbreak of the Civil War On 18 July the military coup spread and the following day Francisco Franco took command of the army in Morocco. By the end of 1936, the Nationalist troops had seized most of Andalusia, Extremadura, Toledo, Ávila, Segovia, Valladolid, Burgos, Leon, Galicia, depart of Asturias, Vitoria, San Sebastian, Navarre and Aragon, a well as the Canary and Balearic Islands, except for the island of Minorca. Madrid, New Castile, Catalonia, Valencia, Murcia and Almeria, Gijón and Bilbao became republican bastions. 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 headway of the politics and commander-in headman of the united states army. The republican politics reacted to this by creating the democratic Army and reorganising the militia into professional armies. help oneself from abroad besides arrived for both bands – the International Brigades to support the Republicans, and italian and german troops to provide aid to the Francoist troops. The year 1937 was characterised by an intensification of the war in the north. The Republicans reacted by establishing fronts in Guadalajara ( March ), Brunete ( July ) and Belchite ( August ). The year closed with the begin of the Battle of Teruel. At that time, the Francoist troops concentrated their efforts in Aragon, winning back Teruel and, after their exultant entrance in Castellón in June 1938, dividing the Republican zone in two. The government response was the alleged Battle of the Ebro ( July-November 1938 ), which ended with a republican defeat and 70,000 lives lost. Having lost their final examination stronghold, the Republicans began to seek exile in France and on 10 February 1939 the Francoist troops claimed control of Catalonia. merely Madrid hush held out, and when the peace proposals of its Defence Committee ( Casado, Besteiro ) failed, the Francoist troops occupied the capital on 28 March 1939. A fi nal war dispatch by General Franco on 1 April announced the end of the conflict. Franco’s Dictatorship The new government was characterised by three factors : repression of the defeated band, economic adversity, and a alteration of the internal balance of ability as the leave of changes on the international degree brought about by World War II. Despite an initial declaration of its disinterest and then its “ non-belligerence ”, the new government became isolated from the outside world. Franco met with Hitler and Mussolini, thereafter entrusting foreign policy to the Germanophile Serrano Suñer. Although statesmanship under France played the anti-communist card, it could not avoid execration from the United Nations, the withdrawal of ambassadors and the closure of the french edge. In economic terms, international isolation and, to a lesser academic degree, ideological differences generated an authoritarian and corporatist approach, which more or less accompanied the government throughout its history. In agricultural terms, the nation experienced a dramatic arrested development in sexual intercourse to previous periods, giving rise to a deficit of basic supplies and the introduction of ration. The Cold War and Economic Development The begin of the Cold War provided a promote for Franco ‘s government, although Spain was excluded from the reconstruction of Europe. In 1953, the Holy See signed a covenant with Spain and the United States signed a treaty of reciprocal help in military matters. meanwhile, in the political sphere, the UN accepted the reclamation of diplomatic relations in 1950, and in 1955 Spain occupied its seat in the international forum. A class later the spanish protectorate was abolished in Morocco, which declared independence. Social unrest had emerged, albeit shyly, in the 1951 labor fall upon in Barcelona and late with the first gear scholar riots in 1956. inordinately eminent inflation led to the introduction of a Stabilisation Plan ( 1959 ) to offset the miss of currentness. Although the effect of this was economic stagnation and new outbreaks of social agitation in Asturias, it did pave the direction for the First Development Plan ( 1963 ), which was merely orientational for the private sector but binding for the public sector. In holy order to promote regional and local anesthetic development, the socalled “ development poles ” – areas zoned for economic activities – were created. Drawn up according to guidelines issued by the International Monetary Fund and the european Organisation for Economic Cooperation, the Stabilisation Plan boosted the economy and laid the foundations for an authoritarian model of exploitation. In accordance with these guidelines, in 1967 the spanish peseta was devalued and in 1968 the Second Development Plan, like in oscilloscope to the first one, was launched. By this clock time the population of Spain had reached 33 million, of which 12 million ( 38.3 % ) represented the working population, about distributed into three peer parts as follows : agriculture ( 28 % ), industry ( 38 % ) and services ( 34 % ). Thousands of people emigrated from the deprive rural areas to the industrial cities ( Madrid, Bilbao, Barcelona ), while thousands of others departed for Europe in research of better opportunities. The funds these workers sent back to their families in Spain constituted a crucial contribution to the state ‘s poise of payments. politically, the regimen attempted to organise a alleged “ organic democracy ” with a referendum to approve the Organic Law of the State ( 1966 ). Two years late Guinea gained independence, followed in the like class by the resolution of a express of emergency in the northerly province of Guipúzcoa. The Twilight of the Dictatorship The economic changes that concluded a long process of development besides produced social changes. The politicians who had emerged in the Civil War – military groups, Falangists, traditionalists, Catholic- Nationalists – were replaced by technocrats, chiefly senior civil servants, who advocated the need for economic progress and advanced policies.

This led to a period of good will and renewed relations with countries of the East and the touch in 1970 of a discriminatory barter agreement between Spain and the european Common Market. A class earlier, on 22 July 1969, Parliament had appointed Don Juan Carlos de Borbón as Franco ‘s successor as oral sex of state, with the entitle of baron. Since the early on 1960s, opposition to Franco ‘s government had become strong as a result of the profound social changes produced by economic alterations in the state. In addition to the engagement of expatriate politicians and institutions in international forums, internal opposition movements had besides gradually taken determine. Students, teachers and intellectuals represented a democratic leftist front, while the working classify focused their struggles through the trade unions and a civil front. These movements were the beginning of the political forces that late played a moderate function in Spain ‘s transition to democracy. In the political sphere, the monarchy – embodied in the person of the Count of Barcelona, Juan de Borbón – proposed the need for a return to democracy. An extremely active PCE ( spanish Communist Party ) had launched its policy of national reconciliation and proposed overcoming the government by passive means. The socialists and christian democrats besides called for a return to democracy as the entirely viable means of consolidation with Europe. The Church ‘s isolation was increasingly apparent. Rank-and-file priests, specially in Catalonia, the Basque Country and Madrid, were openly critical of the government, and were joined in their condemnations by respective prelates. meanwhile, these stances coincided with the radicalisation of nationalist positions and the emergence of ETA ‘s terrorist natural process. A series of political trials were held. In 1969, a group of Basque priests were tried by court-martial, and in 1970 the “ Burgos Trial ” was held and nine death sentences were passed down, although the condemned men were late pardoned. At the end of 1969 a new cabinet with a technocrat majority was formed, which was subsequently replaced in 1973 by a cabinet with alike leanings. The latter proved to be ephemeral ; in December, the cabinet president Carrero Blanco was killed in a terrorist attack by ETA. Arias Navarro was then appointed president of the united states and formed what was to be the last cabinet under Franco ‘s government. In July 1974 Franco was afflicted with thrombophlebitis. Prince Juan Carlos took over as probationary head of submit on 30 October 1975, and on 20 November Franco died. On 22 November, Juan Carlos I was crowned King of Spain. Another chapter in Spain ‘s history closed and the doors of exemption and hope opened for all Spaniards. The Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy From the beginning, the new sovereign adopted a determined but prudent attitude to ensure the rapid democratization of Spain, turning the mental hospital he embodied into a “ monarchy of all Spaniards ”. however, this was no easy tax. He was obligated to “ respect ” the legal structure inherited from Franco ‘s regimen, angstrom well as most of the existing political frameworks. H. M. the King sanctioning the spanish Constitution ( Manuel H. de León, Efe ) Following the resignation of Arias Navarro, the king entrusted the leadership of the area to a group of young reformists headed by Adolfo Suárez, who was sworn in as president of Spain on 3 July 1976. Under the insomniac center of the king, it was up to him to achieve the transition from dictatorship to democracy. numerous leftist politicians and intellectuals – Madariaga, Sánchez Albornoz, Pasionaria, Sénder, Guillén and Llopis – returned from exile and on 15 June 1977, in a context of sum freedom and open democracy, the first general elections were held. The spanish right did not hesitate to accept the democratic rules of play under the leadership of Manuel Fraga, a early minister under Franco and the founder of Alianza Popular ( Popular Alliance ). The Communist Party of Spain, headed by a former drawing card of Republican Spain who had been exiled for years ( Santiago Carrillo ), participated in the blueprint of the constitution and besides embraced the function of the democratic institutions. however, the electorate – to the surprise of many – voted for more moderate options than these two formations and the day was won by the UCD ( Unión de Centro Democrático ), the centrist party founded by Suárez to support the transition. With a relative majority, this party obtained 165 seats, followed by 118 seats for the PSOE ( the historic Socialist Party, in which a young coevals led by Felipe González had merely replaced the old guard of exiles who even clung to the memory of the Civil War ). The Catalans and Basques were represented by a kind of parties. support from the press for the transition to democracy was all-important. thus besides was the prudence exercised by all the political and trade union groups, who at the end of October of the lapp class signed the Moncloa Pacts to consolidate democracy and provide a boost to the economy, which was already threatened by the first signs of recession. The transition, in which Adolfo Suárez played a cardinal role, transformed Spain into a modern nation in all respects : freedoms of all types were guaranteed and a multiparty parliamentary system was established ; the sociable affair of political parties and deal unions was recognised ; and the state adopted a decentralized form of politics, paving the way for the formation of autonomous regions throughout the nation. These changes were backed by a far-flung consensus, demonstrating the degree to which the Spanish had overcome the wounds of the Civil War and were adequate to of looking towards the future rather than remaining mired in the by. Without a doubt, this is the most crucial bequest of the transition initiated in 1977. Spain had already had a number of constitutions, a long history of parliamentary life and even the experience of a former democracy, but this was the first time that changes were introduced of park agreement. Dialogue and negotiations formed the footing for establishing the widest possible social consensus. This climate of consensus and the passive nature of the transition to democracy attracted the sake of politicians and analysts in numerous countries, particularly the citizens of Latin America and the erstwhile soviet bloc nations of Eastern Europe searching for the best way to achieve their own transitions from dictatorship to exemption. The reign of Don Juan Carlos, who has been on the enthrone for more than thirty years now, received far-flung popular patronize from the beginning, and this has increased over the years thanks to the baron ‘s free will in the exercise of his constitutional duties. The transition brought about a genuine national reconciliation, demanding sacrifices in every stern. Conceived as a legal evolution from the existing institutions, it was incompatible with the need for punishing those who had supported the dictatorship. On the contrary, its premises were to offer a generous amnesty and to strive for total majority rule. The procedure of consensus that had been undertaken, in which all the political parties had to make sacrifices ( for exercise, the Socialists and Communists abandoned their dream of a republic ), permitted the initiation of a probationary software of self-government measures in Catalonia and the Basque Country and the drafting of the fundamental law, which was approved by a huge majority ( 87.87 % ) on 6 December 1978. S pain after the Constitution of 1978 New general elections held on 1 March 1979 maitained the national balance of power ( UCD, 34.3 % ; PSOE, 30 % ; PCE, 10.6 % ). however, the first base municipal elections ( 19 April ) gave leftist coalitions 77 % of local anesthetic councils in the chief cities, marking the beginning of the end for the UCD. The first base four presidents of democratic Spain ( J. M. Espinosa, Efe ) The de-escalate of this party and the variety of president of the united states coincided with a concluding authoritarian attempt to overthrow majority rule. On 23 February 1981, members of the Civil Guard abound into Congress and held the representatives hostage, while one of the military headquarters ordered its troops to take the streets. The critical intervention of the king foiled the attempted coup d’etat and the spanish people took to the streets in defense of majority rule. however, the incident served to weaken both the administration and the party it represented flush further. On the stage of international politics, Spain ‘s incorporation into the group of democratic countries was dispatch. The country applied for membership in the EEC on 28 July 1977 and on 1 January 1986, Spain became a extremity state. Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, Suárez ‘s successor as president of the united states, proposed and gained approval from Congress for membership in NATO ( 29 October 1981 ), which was belated ratified in a popular referendum held in 1986. On 28 October 1982, fresh general elections were held in which the PSOE obtained an absolute majority ( 202 seats ) and 106 seats were given to a new rightist alliance of the AP-PDP ( Alianza Popular-Partido Demócrata Popular – popular Alliance-Popular Democratic Party ). The elections had two major losers : the UCD, which scraped by with merely 7.2 % of the votes, and the PCE with 3.8 %. On 3 December, Felipe González constituted his first government. The PSOE managed to retain its majority in the be two elections, held on 22 June 1985 and 29 October 1989. By then, the party had become a moderate and progressive party of sociable democrats, abandoning its traditional marxist ideology. Backed by consecutive electoral victories, it governed until 1996 and carried out a brush modernization of the country. Thanks to this period of noteworthy political stability, it was possible to make up for lost clock time in fields such as education, health and taxation, while the army was made professional, industry was streamlined, populace infrastructures were built, social services were extended, etc. furthermore, in 1992 this mod, dynamic Spain, capable of joining the European Union ( 1986 ) and exercising its periodic presidencies of the Union ( 1989, 1995 and 2002 ) with efficiency and creativity, presented a new picture to the world with the organization of the World Fair in Seville, the european Cultural Capital in Madrid and the Olympic Games in Barcelona. With the former isolation of the dictatorship relegated to the past, Spain returned to the international sphere as an agent of peace and harmony, promoting latin american english Summits ( since 1991 ), participating in the United Nations ‘ peace-keeping forces in Africa, the Balkans, Middle East and Central America, hosting conversations between Israel and the Arabic nations ( Madrid Conference, 1991 ), dramatically increasing its aid to developing countries ( through the spanish Cooperation Agency ), exporting the activities of its technicians and clientele leaders to distant markets ( with strong investment in Latin America ), reinforcing the bearing of the spanish terminology and polish around the world ( through the Cervantes Institute, created in 1991 ). Although in the elections of 6 June 1993 the PSOE still managed to obtain the most votes ( 159 seats ), enabling Felipe González to form a non-coalition government ( inaugurated on 8-9 July 1993 ), the loss of the absolute majority forced the party to turn to other parliamentary groups in holy order to gain sufficient digest in the Congress and Senate to ensure the stability of the politics. In the end this was made potential by agreements reached with the CiU ( Convergencia one Unió – overlap and Union ). interim the Partido Popular had been restructured and renamed in 1989 around the new leadership of José María Aznar and an ethos based on liberal ideals and Christian democracy, oriented towards the reformer center. Its favorable results at the municipal, regional and european elections in 1995 culminated in victory at the general elections in 1996, which with subscribe from the moderate nationalist groups of Catalonia ( Convergencia one Uniò ), the Basque Country ( PNV ) and the Canary Islands ( Coalición Canaria – canary yellow Coalition ) placed the presidency in Aznar ‘s hands. The Partido Popular was again triumphant in the cosmopolitan elections of 2000, obtaining a comfortable absolute majority. The economic policy pursued by this administration focused on controlling inflation and the public deficit as a mean of reactivating economic growth. The successes achieved in the economic arena were crowned by Spain ‘s admission to the first group of countries to adopt the individual european currency – the euro – in 2002, after the spanish economy had successfully met all the necessity requirements. Spain ‘s presidency of the European Union in the first half of 2002 coincided with the insertion of the euro, thereby completing a significant bicycle in the recent history of the area ; coincidentally, the euro was adopted as the appoint of the single currency at the Council of Europe held in the second one-half of 1995, when Spain besides happened to be holding the presidency of the Union. On Thursday, 11 March 2004, Spain was dealt a dramatic blow by a kind of terrorism that bore small resemblance to that of the terrorist administration ETA. A group of radical Islamist extremists killed 192 people and wounded about 2,000 more in Madrid, in the worst terrorist attack perpetrated in Europe to date. Three days later, the people of Spain turned out to cast their votes in the general elections as planned. H. M. the King with the current president of the Government and his predecessors ( Efe ) On 14 March 2004, the PSOE won the general elections, making José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero the fifth president to take power in democratic Spain ( 164 seats ). This led to the formation of Spain ‘s first ever gender-balanced government. The measures adopted by this politics included the withdrawal of spanish troops from Iraq, the Common Law on Domestic Violence, the Common Law on Equality, the Common Law on Historic Memory, the Common Law on Dependence and that legalizing same-sex marriage. Zapatero besides proposed the international Alliance of Civilizations enterprise, which was adopted as an official program of the United Nations in April 2007. On 9 March 2008, the Partido Socialista Obrero Español again won the general elections with 169 seats. This signalled the moment term of office for José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, which was marked by the international and domestic economic crisis. During this period, a new regional fund agreement was concluded, which was approved by the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council that represents all of the autonomous communities. It was besides agreed to remove advertising from Radio Televisión Española ( RTVE ) to strengthen its character as a populace service. The Common Law on sustainable Economy was besides adopted during this period, which sought to establish the bases for boosting Spain ‘s production model in what has been the toughest international economic crisis of in holocene years. For the purpose of building certainty in the political forces and institutions in this unmanageable economic context, the future general elections were called four months ahead of the deadline marking the end of the legislature, on 20 November 2011. This time, the Partido Popular obtained the most votes, with an absolute majority ( 186 seats ). The new government, led by Mariano Rajoy, marked out an ambitious course of study to address the economic crisis and achieve recovery. It includes the adoption of versatile initiatives and measures with two complementary color aims : budgetary constancy by reducing the deficit and practising austerity in public spend, and boosting economic growth and problem creation through morphologic reform. Prehistory

• 1,500,000 B. C. First homo findings on the iberian Peninsula
• 40,000-15,000 B. C. Altamira cave paintings

Spain before the Romans

• 1,200-800 B. C. Indo-Europeans, Phoenicians and Greeks invade the iberian Peninsula
• 800-500 B. C. Tartessus

Roman Hispania (218 B. C.-409 A.D.) The Visigothic Kingdom (472-710) Moorish Spain (710-1492)

• 756-929 Umayyad emirate
• 929-1031 Caliphate
• 1031-1090 Taifa kingdoms
• 1090-1146 Almoravid invasion
• 1146-1224 Almohad invasion
• 1224-1232 Marinid invasion
• 1232-1492 Nasrid kingdom of Granada

Christian Spain (710-1492)

• 803 Kingdom of Navarre
• 1137 Crown of Aragón
• 1230 Kingdom of Castile and Leon
• 1479 Union of the Crowns of Castile and Aragón with the Catholic Monarchs
• 1492 Conquest of Granada, Columbus ‘ discovery of America and the publication of the first spanish grammar text ( Gramática Castellana )
• 1512 Incorporation of Navarre
• 1535-1545 Viceroyalties of Mexico and Peru

House of Habsburg (1516-1700)

• 1516-1556 Charles I
• 1526 Treaty of Madrid
• 1556 Philip II
• 1571 Battle of Lepanto
• 1598-1621 Philip III
• 1605 Don Quixote .
• 1621-1665 Philip IV
• 1640 Secession of Portugal
• 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees
• 1665-1700 Charles II

House of Bourbon (1700-1808)

• 1700-1746 Philip V
• 1713 Treaty of Utrecht
• 1746-1759 Ferdinand VI
• 1759-1788 Charles III
• 1760-1790 Enlightenment and reform
• 1788-1808 Charles IV
• 1805 Battle of Trafalgar
• 1807 Treaty of Fontainebleau

Dissolution of the Old Regime and the Peninsular War (1808- 1814)

• 1808 Abdication of Charles IV and Ferdinand VII in Bayonne. entrance of Joseph Bonaparte I in Madrid .
• 1810-1812 The Cortes and Constitution of Cádiz

Liberal reaction and Revolution (1814-1833)

• 1814 Arrival of Ferdinand VII in Madrid
• 1814-1820 First Absolutist Restoration
• 1820-1823 The uprise and Liberal Triennium
• 1823-1833 Second Absolutist Restoration

Regency periods (1833-1843)

• 1833-1841 Death of Ferdinand VIl and Regency of Maria Christina Carlist War
• 1834 Royal Statute
• 1837 Liberal Constitution
• 1841-1843 Regency of Espartero

Reign of Isabella II (1843-1868)

• 1843-1854 Moderate Decade
• 1845 constitution
• 1854-1856 Liberal Biennium
• 1856 “ Non nata ” fundamental law
• 1856-1868 Moderate predomination

Revolutionary Six Years (1868- 1874)

• 1869 united states constitution of 1869
• 1869-1871 Regency of General Serrano
• 1871-1873 Reign of Amadeus of Savoy
• 1873-1874 First Spanish Republic
• 1874 Coup staged by Martínez Campos on behalf of Alfonso XII .

Restoration (1875-1923)

• 1875 submission of Alfonso XII in Madrid
• 1876 fundamental law
• 1881 broad government
• 1885 Death of Alfonso XII Regency of Maria Christina
• 1890 Universal right to vote
• 1898 Spanish-American War and Treaty of Paris
• 1902-1931 Reign of Alfonso XIII

Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the fall of the Monarchy (1923-1931)

• 1931 municipal elections ( 14 April ) and Proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic

Second Republic and Spanish Civil War (1931-1939)

• 1931 Republican Constitution
• 1933 Electoral victory of CEDA
• 1936 Electoral victory of the Popular Front ( February ) and military coup ( July )
• Civil War ( 1936-1939 )

General Franco’s regime (1939-1975)

• 1959 Stabilization Plan
• 1969 Appointment of Prince Juan Carlos as successor

Democratic transition

• 1975 Death of Franco Proclamation of King Juan Carlos I
• 1976 Common Law on Political Reform (November) and Referendum (December)
• 1977 General elections (15 June) Relative majority for the UCD President Adolfo Suárez (4 July) Spain requests membership in the EEC (28 July)
• 1978 Constitutional referendum (6 December) Constitution sanctioned by H.M. the King on 27 December in Parliament Enters into force on 28 December

Constitutional Monarchy

• 1979 general elections ( 1 March ) .
• 1979 Congress approves Spain ‘s entree to NATO ( 29 October )
• 1982 General elections. Absolute majority for the PSOE ( 28 October ). New government with Felipe González as president of the united states ( 3 December )
• 1985 signature of Spain ‘s treaty of adhesion to the EEC ( 12 June )
• 1986 Spain and Portugal become full EEC members ( 1 January ). Prince Felipe swears commitment to the Constitution in Parliament ( 30 January ). convinced results in the referendum on Spain remaining in NATO ( 12 March ). general elections. New absolute majority for the PSOE ( 22 June )
• 1989 spanish presidency of the EC ( first half ). european elections ( 15 June ). general elections. victory for the PSOE ( 29 October ). Felipe González takes the presidential curse of agency before Parliament ( 5 December )
• 1993 general elections ( 6 June ). relative majority for the PSOE. Felipe González takes the presidential oath of agency before Parliament ( 9 July )
• 1995 spanish presidency of the European Union ( second one-half ). The european Council of Madrid approves the name of the future european currentness : the euro ( 15-16 December )
• 1996 general elections ( relative majority for the PP ). José María Aznar is sworn in as president of the united states before Parliament ( 3 May )
• 2000 cosmopolitan elections ( victory with an absolute majority for the PP ). José María Aznar takes the presidential oath of office before Parliament ( 25 April )
• 2002 spanish presidency of the European Union ( first half )
• 2004 general elections ( victory for the PSOE with a relative majority ). José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero takes the presidential curse of function before Parliament ( 17 April ). european elections ( 13 June )
• 2005 european Constitution Referendum ( 20 February )

  Read more: Jahrein 60sn’de Maritime izliyor – Kliplerimiz [15]

• 2008 general elections ( victory for the PSOE with a relative majority ). José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero takes the presidential oath of office before Parliament ( 8 April )
• 2010 spanish presidency of the European Union ( first half )
• 2011 general elections ( 20 November ). victory for the PP with an absolute majority. Mariano Rajoy takes the presidential oath of office before Parliament ( 20 December )