Where is Spain? What about our History?

Hi, guys!

Before starting to write about Spain, we are going to answer some hipotetical questions that American people could make, because we know that there are even some people who don't know where Spain is, or if it is an African or South American country. Well, let's see!

Have you found Spain in this world map? If your answer is no, don't worry; our country is not very big, (specially compared to yours!) -someone once said "el tamaño importa"... sometimes it's true. 
Spain has a surface area of 504.645 square kilometres and more than 46 million of inhabitants. The main language  is  Spanish  (which is also spoken in most of South American countries due to historical reasons that we'll explain later), but there are other official languages too: Euskera, Catalan and Galician, which are only spoken in certain parts of the country.
The capital of Spain is Madrid, but we have a lot of important and beautiful cities, like Barcelona, Valencia, Santiago de Compostela, Sevilla... or León, why not?

Now that you know where we are, we can start to tell you a bit of our long, long History in a few words -because we know how boring it can be:

Our King and Queen

Nowadays, our country is a democratic kingdom where we can vote for our president, but the sad truth is that there was a dictatorship 36 years ago. Have you ever heard something about Franco? Well, this dictator governed Spain for more than three decades after winning a cruel Civil War that took place between 1936 and 1939.

Do you see the two men in the black and white photograph?? Well, one of them is Hitler, and the other one is Franco.

But, why did it all start? In other words, how did we get into that  awful situation?
Our History, as we have told you at the beginning, is veeeeeery long -for this reason we have a lot of ancient monuments that you can see if you come to visit us-, so what about  searching for answers in the beginning of the Spanish History?

.·*...a long time after Adan and Eve were created...*·.

Once upon a time there was a little Iberian Peninsula where people like Celts, Iberians or Basquets lived quitely, like shepherds do in bucolic poems. But one day, the Roman army conquered this paceful land and called it Hispania. Since then, it became part of the huge Roman Empire, which had been expanded as far as the Oriental Mediterranean shores. But such a big region was difficult to govern, and the generals' ambition was increasing, so after  Julio Cesar was killed, a lot of Civil Wars divided the Empire:  Teodosio I, who reunified all the little parts again, was the last emperor, because his sons, Arcadio and Honorio, cut the Empire into two. The Occidental Empire fell, and then the Oriental side, and when it happened, Europe emtered the Middle Age.

At that time, Hispania was conquered by German people, and then, by Arabic people who arrived from  Noth Africa to stay since 711 aC to 1492 aC, when the Christian Kingdoms (the resistance from the North of the Iberian Peninsula) fought them and expelled them. After that, all this little realms merged.

The same year, Columbus accidentaly arrived to South America (he was looking for a new way to get to India), where the Spaniards dominated the natives by making them lose their culture, traditions and language, and teaching them ours. As everybody can easily deduce, 16th and 17th centuries were a wonderful period for Spain, but not only for our economy: the best authors of our literature were alive then: Cervantes, Quevedo, Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca, Tirso de Molina, Góngora...

The red zones were Spanish settlements in the past.

But, as we've said, such a big region is usually too difficult to govern, and our colonies -the ones in red in the map- became independent like the 13 North- American colonies did in 1776. Besides, in 1713 Spain had lost its dominance with the Treaty of Utrecht, that helped to end the  Spanish Succession War, one of ours civil wars (like our  History teacher said, there's not a single century we can have peace between ourselves).
But, after all, after those innumerable wars bettwen brothers,  we can say:

*If you are a curious person and want more information about what we have explained very shortly in this post, take a look:

Spanish colonization of the Americas

Spanish Civil War

Western Roman Empire

Voyages of Christopher Columbus
Spanish Golden Age
The Catholics Monarchs