History

Originally the warm and fertile country of Spain was populated by people from Iberia and Italy. Their successors disregarded the infrastructure they had constructed (streets, aquaducts, cities, wine), and divided the land into smaller areas. In the 8th Century they were driven out of the country by the Arabs that came from Marokko. This era of Al-Andalus was full of turmoil. It also brought with it a certain cultural and farming prosperity that lasted in the south west corner of Europe, until into the 13th Century. Fragments of architecture, art, cusine and the language, survived repossession by the Christians, rounded off by the fall of the Alhambra in Granada in the Year of Columbus (1492). With this, began the reign of Spain as a World Empire, in which under Carlos V. 'the sun never went down'. South America was plundered until there was nothing more to take, whilst the farming land in Spain stagnated and the country became more and more engulfed in war. This was due to arguements between the European Monarchy and their alliance, and clashes with the Catholic church. During this period the colonies of Spain were able to free themselves, so that Spain was left at the end of the 19th Century, without the colonies of Kuba and the Philippines, and without a King. A very unsettled period followed where extremes of Democracy and Military Dictatorship were experienced.
The very destructive and horrific Spanish Civil War 1933-36 was won by the fascist General Franco with the help of Nazi Germany. The resulting very Catholic, Military Dictatorship in Spain, kept well out of the Second World War, however, it supressed in no shy way the Opposition and let the country, in comparison to the rest of Europe, sink in poverty. Even though tourists lounged on the beach in the 50's, Spain was not able to build an economic bridge with Europe until after the death of Franco in 1975, when King Juan Carlos re-introduced democracy and Spain was able to join the European Union. Within a quarter of a century, Spain had developed into being one of the leading and economically speaking, most strongest members, renewing its culture in every positive way thinkable.