Travelling across Spain you can’t help but be struck by the marks, physical and cultural, left by the different armies and empires that have marched through the peninsula.
Many of the churches started as Roman temples, were converted into mosques during the reign of the Moors, became Christian during the ‘Reconquista’ and are pockmarked by the scars of the Spanish Civil War. The Castellano language, spoken by 500 million people, derived from the common Latin dialect spoken by the Romans and is liberally peppered with Arabic influences.
Pivotal in establishing the rise and fall of the different powers that have laid claim to modern day Spain are the numerous wars fought in and outside of the region. This post introduces five wars that shaped Spain and have had an irrevocable influence on modern-day history.
The 2nd Punic War (218 – 201 BC)
The 2nd Punic War was the second of a series of conflicts fought between Carthage and Rome vying for dominance over the Mediterranean. In 219 BC Carthage, under Hannibal, controlled the majority of the Iberian peninsula. Looking to further consolidate his power, Hannibal captured Saguntum, a pro-Roman city on the east-coast of Spain near modern day Valencia, sparking Rome to declare war in response. My day-trip to Sagunto is covered in this post.
With Roman dominance of the sea, Hannibal famously marched his army across the Alps, achieving a series of early victories and establishing control in vast parts of Italy. After Rome took drastic steps to raise a new army, the tide began to turn. The Romans gradually recaptured the rest of Italy and used their momentum to take the offensive in Iberia. At the Battle of Ilipa (near modern day Seville), Rome won a decisive victory, forever ending the Carthaginian presence in Iberia and beginning a Roman occupation that would last for the next 700 years.
The Granada War (1482 – 1492 AD)
For the early part of the 8th century to the end of the 15th century, the Moors had a significant presence in Iberia, reaching their heyday in the 10th century, controlling almost all of the peninsula, with its capital, Cordoba, Europe’s biggest and most cultured city. The Moors endowed Spain with palaces, mosques, universities, public baths and had a profound influence on culture, including language and food, (cultivating oranges for the first time on the continent – see my post on Agua de Valencia, the orange juice based cocktail).
The Reconquista – a series of campaigns by Christian kingdoms to recapture Muslim (or Moorish) territory – ended successfully with the fall of Granada. By the late 15th century, Granada was the last state under Moorish control, the other territories long since captured by the Christians. In 1492, following a series of military campaigns over the previous decade, the Catholic monarchs – Isabel and Fernando – triumphantly strode into the city, ending the last remnant of Islamic rule. With the peninsula secured, the monarchs turned the attention outward. 1492 was the same year that Christopher Columbus would set sail to the Americas.
The War of the Spanish Succession (1701 – 1714 AD)
In the 17th century Spain was a nation of contrasts. A vast empire with global clout at odds with a weak and backward economy run by a conservative church and idle nobility. In 1700, the sickly king, Carlos the 2nd, died without a direct heir, igniting the war of the Spanish Succession, contested by Felipe of the Bourbon dynasty and Charles of Habsburgs. Whoever held the throne would control Spain, parts of Italy and the low countries, the Philippines and chunks of the Americas. With the balance of power in Europe at risk, all of the main European powers were drawn into the conflict.
After over a decade of battles across Europe and North America, the war was concluded with the Treaty of Utrecht, which would grant the Spanish throne to Felipe V (a direct ascendant of the current Spanish royal family), but Spain would have to give up its possessions in the Low Countries and Italy, and cede Gibraltar and Menorca to Britain, marking its ascension as a global power and Spain’s colonial peak.
The Spanish American War (1898 AD)
For much of the 19th century Spain was deeply divided, backward and insular. Internal conflicts raged between liberals who sought democratic reforms and conservative forces representing the church and nobility that wanted to preserve the status quo. By the end of the century, Spain was weak and barely able to hold itself together, leaving its remaining oversea possessions vulnerable.
In the 1890s Cuba was agitating for independence from Spain. The United States spotting an opportunity to expand its influence, demanded Spanish withdrawal, leading to the Spanish declaring war in response. The ensuing conflict was very one-sided, with the Spanish unprepared to fight a modern navy. The peace treaty forced Spain to renounce its remaining overseas colonies – Guam, Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines – and shocked the Spanish psyche, prompting a period of inward reflection and evaluation of Spanish society, later called the generation of 1898.
The Spanish Civil War (1936 – 1939 AD)
The war was a long time coming, with society ruptured by gross inequalities and deep class divisions. As in the previous century, the first part of the 20th century saw Spain mired in a struggle between left and right, with neither able to maintain an upper hand.
In 1936, conservative forces led by General Franco attempted a military coup against the democratically Republican government of Spain. This triggered a bloody civil war that would last for three years, with atrocities committed on both sides. The Nationalists, as Franco’s rebels called themselves, received extensive support from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, while the Republicans were initially aided by the Soviet Union and the International Brigades, volunteers from Europe and the United States.
After a war that split communities, friends and families and caused between 350,000 to 500,000 deaths, Franco marched in to Madrid in the Spring of 1939, declaring the conflict over and started a dictatorship that would last until 1975.
The political and emotional reverberations transcended the national conflict. The Civil War was a precursor to World War 2, representing an international conflict between tyranny and democracy, fascism and freedom, and depending on the perspective, communism and civilization. For Germany and Italy, Spain was an opportunity to test new methods of tank and air warfare. See my post on the air shelters in Valencia that inspired the El Refugio restaurant.
