Spain

Spain is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in southwestern Europe, between Portugal, France and Andorra. Its territory also takes in the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands in the Atlantic and the cities of Ceuta and Melilla on the North African coast.

Madrid is the capital. Spanish, named castellano in the 1978 constitution, is official across the whole state, and other Spanish languages may share that status inside their own autonomous communities. Cave paintings at Altamira in Cantabria were made as early as 35,600 BC. Under Rome the peninsula became Hispania, whose ports shipped gold, wool, olive oil and wine, and the Visigoths later ruled it from Toledo. Muslim armies took almost all of it between 711 and 718, and Córdoba grew into the center of Al-Andalus.

Isabella I of Castile married Ferdinand II of Aragon in 1469, joining two crowns. In 1492 Granada passed to Castile, and Isabella paid for the voyage on which Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean. Spanish sailors later finished the first trip around the globe, and Habsburg kings from 1516 and Bourbons from 1700 governed an empire stretching over the Americas, the Indo-Pacific and much of Europe. A first constitution came from the Cortes of Cádiz in 1812. Under the 1978 constitution Spain is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy, made up of 17 autonomous communities and two autonomous cities. It entered the European Economic Community in 1986 and took up the euro in 2002.

The mainland and islands cover 505,992 km2 (195,365 sq mi), and Mount Teide on Tenerife reaches 3,715 m (12,188 ft). Car plants, tourism and farming drive the economy, and high-speed trains link Madrid with Barcelona, Valencia, Seville and Málaga. Diego Velázquez painted Las Meninas, while Francisco Goya, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró followed in later centuries and Antoni Gaudí shaped Barcelona. Flamenco comes from western Andalusia, paella from Valencia, and the football clubs Real Madrid and FC Barcelona have won titles across Europe.