Do you want to move to Spain for a few months living as the next stop on your borderless experience, but you’d like to know a bit more about the country before making the final decision? No problem. We put together these three interesting historical facts about Spain to give you some idea of the kind of country you might call home soon.
The Moors conquered over half the country
In the 8th century, half of the Iberian Peninsula, the area of today’s Portugal and Spain, was conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate, sometimes commonly known as the Moors. The Caliphate was slowly driven out of Hispania over the next couple of centuries, but their culture and their art are still visible everywhere in Spain to this day.
You will find an abundance of beautiful architecture, so much so that Spain is the third country with the most UNESCO sites. From the world-famous Albahrama to Cordoba’s Mosque to Alcazaba in Malaga, these are the architectural wonders left behind by Islamic artists. But it goes even further. The Moorish influence on Spanish culture is most visibly retained in the famous tile art as well as in food and music. To go to Spain today is to have a completely unique experience of these interwoven cultures that’s unlike anywhere else in Europe.
Spain was one of the largest European empires
Thinking of colonisation and empires, most people think of the English or French empires, but Spain was one of the largest empires of its time. After all, its influence can be seen to this day in countries like Mexico, the Caribbean, and many other places in Southern America as a result of the Spanish Conquistadors and their well-known brutal conquest of the Aztec, Inca, and Maya Empires.
They also held the Philippines for over 300 years as well as many other smaller parts of the world, making Spain, by some estimates, the first-ever global empire. However, after the Spanish-American war, Spain lost many of its important colonies in America and by the year 1900, it had no colonies in the new world. However, it still kept a few colonies in Africa until the 1970s whose independence and the decolonisation process made them sovereign nations from then on.
Spain was very influential in Europe
As part of the Habsburg family, Spain had ties with many countries in Europe between the 15th and 19th centuries. The family ties influenced politics in places like modern Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, and even the Netherlands (called the Spanish Netherlands between 1556 and 1714).
But that’s not all. The aforementioned impact of Muslim culture has been recently seen as giving the European artists and architects many of their ideas. Things like the pointed arch (credited with the signature look of Gothic architecture) have been in use in the Muslim world for centuries prior. And it is possible that Spain was one of the places through which Europe learned about these wonderful inventions, though more recent findings suggest Sicily was more likely the first place of the transmission of the pointed arch.
