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Travel to Spain — Unbiased reviews and
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Spain
Kingdom of Spain National
name: Reino de España Ruler: King Juan Carlos I (1975) Prime Minister: José Luis
Rodríguez Zapatero (2004)
Current government officials
Land area: 192,819 sq mi (499,401 sq km);
total area: 194,896 sq mi (504,782 sq km)1 Population (2007
est.): 40,448,191 (growth rate: 0.1%); birth rate: 10.0/1000;
infant mortality rate: 4.3/1000; life expectancy: 79.8; density per sq
mi: 210
Capital and largest city (2003 est.):
Madrid, 5,130,000 (metro. area), 3,169,400 (city
proper) Other large cities:
Barcelona, 1,528,800; Valencia, 741,100; Seville, 679,100 Monetary unit: Euro (formerly peseta)
Languages:
Castilian Spanish 74% (official nationwide);
Catalan 17%, Galician 7%, Basque 2% (each official regionally)
Ethnicity/race:
composite of Mediterranean and Nordic
types
Religions:
Roman Catholic 94%, other 6% Literacy rate: 98% (2003 est.) Economic summary: GDP/PPP (2007est.):
$1.352 trillion; per capita $30,100. Real growth rate: 3.8%.
Inflation: 2.8%. Unemployment: 8.3%. Arable land:
27%. Agriculture: grain, vegetables, olives, wine grapes,
sugar beets, citrus; beef, pork, poultry, dairy products; fish.
Labor force: 20.67 million; agriculture 5.3%, manufacturing,
mining, and construction 30.1%, services 64.6% (2004 est.).
Industries: textiles and apparel (including footwear), food and
beverages, metals and metal manufactures, chemicals, shipbuilding,
automobiles, machine tools, tourism, clay and refractory products,
footwear, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment. Natural resources:
coal, lignite, iron ore, uranium, mercury, pyrites, fluorspar,
gypsum, zinc, lead, tungsten, copper, kaolin, potash, hydropower,
arable land. Exports: $194.3 billion f.o.b. (2005 est.):
machinery, motor vehicles; foodstuffs, pharmaceuticals, medicines,
other consumer goods. Imports: $271.8 billion f.o.b. (2005
est.): machinery and equipment, fuels, chemicals, semifinished goods,
foodstuffs, consumer goods, measuring and medical control instruments.
Major trading partners: France, Germany, Portugal, Italy, UK,
Netherlands (2004). Communications:
Telephones: main lines in use: 17.336 million (1999); mobile
cellular: 8.394 million (1999). Radio broadcast stations: AM
208, FM 715, shortwave 1 (1998). Radios: 13.1 million (1997).
Television broadcast stations: 224 (plus 2,105 repeaters);
note: these figures include 11 television broadcast stations and 88
repeaters in the Canary Islands (1995). Televisions: 16.2
million (1997). Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 56 (2000).
Internet users: 7.89 million (2002). Transportation: Railways: total: 14,189 km
(2002). Highways: total: 663,795 km; paved: 657,157 km
(including 10,317 km of expressways); unpaved: 6,638 km (1999).
Waterways: 1,045 km. Ports and harbors: Aviles,
Barcelona, Bilbao, Cadiz, Cartagena, Castellon de la Plana, Ceuta,
Huelva, La Coruna, Las Palmas (Canary Islands), Malaga, Melilla,
Pasajes, Gijon, Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Canary Islands), Santander,
Tarragona, Valencia, Vigo. Airports: 152 (2002). International disputes: Gibraltar residents
vote overwhelmingly in referendum against “total shared
sovereignty” arrangement worked out between Spain and UK to
change 300-year rule over colony; Morocco protests Spain's control
over the coastal enclaves of Ceuta, Melilla, and Penon de Velez de la
Gomera, the islands of Penon de Alhucemas and Islas Chafarinas, and
surrounding waters; Morocco also rejected Spain's unilateral
designation of a median line from the Canary Islands in 2002 to set
limits to undersea resource exploration and refugee interdiction;
Morocco allowed Spanish fishermen to fish temporarily off the coast of
Western Sahara after an oil spill soiled Spanish fishing grounds;
Portugal has periodically reasserted claims to territories around the
town of Olivenza, Spain. 1.
Including the Balearic and Canary Islands.
Major sources and definitions
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Geography
Spain occupies 85% of the Iberian Peninsula, which it shares with
Portugal, in southwest Europe. Africa is less than 10 mi (16 km) south at
the Strait of Gibraltar. A broad central plateau slopes to the south and
east, crossed by a series of mountain ranges and river valleys. Principal
rivers are the Ebro in the northeast, the Tajo in the central region, and
the Guadalquivir in the south. Off Spain's east coast in the Mediterranean
are the Balearic Islands (1,936 sq mi; 5,014 sq km), the largest of which
is Majorca. Sixty mi (97 km) west of Africa are the Canary Islands (2,808
sq mi; 7,273 sq km).
Government
Parliamentary monarchy.
History
Spain, originally inhabited by Celts, Iberians, and Basques, became a
part of the Roman Empire in 206 B.C., when it
was conquered by Scipio Africanus. In A.D. 412,
the barbarian Visigothic leader Ataulf crossed the Pyrenees and ruled
Spain, first in the name of the Roman emperor and then independently. In
711, the Muslims under Tariq entered Spain from Africa and within a few
years completed the subjugation of the country. In 732, the Franks, led by
Charles Martel, defeated the Muslims near Poitiers, thus preventing the
further expansion of Islam in southern Europe. Internal dissension of
Spanish Islam invited a steady Christian conquest from the north.
Aragon and Castile were the most important Spanish states from the 12th
to the 15th century, consolidated by the marriage of Ferdinand II and
Isabella I in 1469. In 1478, they established the Inquisition, to root out
heresy and uncover Jews and Muslims who had not sincerely converted to
Christianity. Torquemada, the most notorious of the grand inquisitors,
epitomized the Inquisition's harshness and cruelty. The last Muslim
stronghold, Granada, was captured in 1492. Roman Catholicism was
established as the official state religion and most Jews (1492) and
Muslims (1502) were expelled. In the era of exploration, discovery, and
colonization, Spain amassed tremendous wealth and a vast colonial empire
through the conquest of Mexico by Cortés (1519–1521) and Peru
by Pizarro (1532–1533). The Spanish Hapsburg monarchy became for a
time the most powerful in the world. In 1588, Philip II sent his
invincible Armada to invade England, but its destruction cost Spain its
supremacy on the seas and paved the way for England's colonization of
America. Spain then sank rapidly to the status of a second-rate power
under the rule of weak Hapsburg kings, and it never again played a major
role in European politics. The War of the Spanish Succession
(1701–1714) resulted in Spain's loss of Belgium, Luxembourg, Milan,
Sardinia, and Naples. Its colonial empire in the Americas and the
Philippines vanished in wars and revolutions during the 18th and 19th
centuries.
In World War I, Spain maintained a position of neutrality. In 1923,
Gen. Miguel Primo de Rivera became dictator. In 1930, King Alfonso XIII
revoked the dictatorship, but a strong antimonarchist and republican
movement led to his leaving Spain in 1931. The new constitution declared
Spain a workers' republic, broke up the large estates, separated church
and state, and secularized the schools. The elections held in 1936
returned a strong Popular Front majority, with Manuel Azaña as
president.
On July 18, 1936, a conservative army officer in Morocco, Francisco
Franco Bahamonde, led a mutiny against the government. The civil war that
followed lasted three years and cost the lives of nearly a million people.
Franco was aided by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, while Soviet Russia
helped the Loyalist side. Several hundred leftist Americans served in the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade on the side of the republic. The war ended when
Franco took Madrid on March 28, 1939. Franco became head of the state,
national chief of the Falange Party (the governing party), and prime
minister and caudillo (leader).
In a referendum in 1947, the Spanish people approved a Franco-drafted
succession law declaring Spain a monarchy again. Franco, however,
continued as chief of state. In 1969, Franco and the Cortes
(“states”) designated Prince Juan Carlos Alfonso Victor
María de Borbón (who married Princess Sophia of Greece in
1962) to become king of Spain when the provisional government headed by
Franco came to an end. Franco died on Nov. 20, 1975, and Juan Carlos was
proclaimed king on Nov. 22.
Under pressure from Catalonian and Basque nationalists, Prime Minister
Adolfo Suárez granted home rule to these regions in 1979. Basque
separatists committed hundreds of terrorist bombings and kidnappings. With
the overwhelming election of Prime Minister Felipe González
Márquez and his Spanish Socialist Workers Party in the Oct. 20,
1982, parliamentary elections, the Franco past was finally buried.
Spain entered NATO in 1982. Spain, along with Portugal, joined the
European Economic Community, now the European Union, in 1986. General
elections in March 1996 produced a victory for the conservative Popular
Party, and its leader, José María Aznar, became prime
minister. He and his party easily won reelection in 2000.
In Aug. 2002, Batasuna, the political wing of the Basque terrorist
organization ETA, was banned. The wisdom of driving the party underground
instead of permitting it a legitimate political outlet has been
questioned.
Aznar's backing of the U.S. war in Iraq was highly unpopular—90%
of Spaniards opposed the war. (Spain sent no troops to Iraq during the war
but contributed 1,300 peacekeeping forces during the reconstruction
period.) Yet Aznar's Popular Party did extremely well in municipal
elections in May 2003. The country's relative prosperity and the prime
minister's tough stance against the ETA were thought to be responsible for
the strong showing.
On March 11, 2004, Spain suffered its most horrific terrorist attack:
191 people were killed and 1,400 were injured in bombings at Madrid's
railway station. The government at first blamed ETA, but soon evidence
emerged that al-Qaeda was responsible. When record numbers of voters went
to the polls days later, Aznar's Popular Party experienced a stinging
defeat, and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of the Socialist
Party became the new prime minister. Many Spaniards blamed Aznar's staunch
support of the U.S. and the war in Iraq for making Spain an al-Qaeda
target. Others were angered by what they saw as the government's
politically motivated position that ETA was to blame for the attacks at
the same time that links to al-Qaeda were emerging. By April, a dozen
suspects, most of them Moroccan, were arrested for the bombings. On April
4, several suspects blew themselves up during a police raid to avoid
capture. In May, the new prime minister made good on his campaign promise,
recalling Spain's 1,300 soldiers from Iraq, much to the displeasure of the
United States, which said Spain was appeasing terrorists.
In June 2005, despite strong opposition from the Catholic Church, Spain
legalized gay marriage. (Three other countries permit same-sex marriage:
Belgium, the Netherlands, and Canada.)
After four decades of violence, the militant Basque separatist group
ETA, responsible for more than 800 deaths and for terrorizing Spanish
society with its bombings and other attacks, announced a permanent
cease-fire on March 24, 2006. In June 2007, however, ETA renounced the
cease-fire and vowed to begin a new offensive.
In a June 2006 referendum, the region of Catalonia voted for greater autonomy from Spain.
The government dissolved Parliament in January 2008 and called for new
elections. In the March election, Prime Minister Zapatero of the Socialist
Party was reelected, taking 43.7% of the vote. Mariano Rajoy of the
Popular Party garnered 40.1%. On April 12, Zapatero announced his cabinet,
which for the first time includes more women than men.
A new citizenship law was passed in December 2008, allowing descendants
of those exiled from Spain during the Spanish Civil War to lay claim to
Spanish citizenship. The new law is part of the "law of historical memory"
legislation that was passed the previous year.
See also Encyclopedia: Spain. U.S. State Dept. Country Notes:
Spain National Institute of Statistics www.ine.es/ .
Information Please® Database, © 2007 Pearson
Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
More on Spain from Infoplease:
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