History (general outline)

I have always felt that Spanish history was far more interesting than the British history that was forced upon us in school. First - well not exactly first, but there is even less reason to discuss the Celts - when the Romans pulled out and left Britannia to their mercenary Angles and Saxons, there was no history there at all until St. Augustine arrived about 400 years later. Nothing, no evidence of a written language. It all disappeared - a forgotten land. Even later it was such an uncivilized back-water that nothing interesting happened until it came to the attention of the Normans who were most responsible for dragging it, kicking and screaming, out of the stone age. The Tudor despots, who's histories did so much to amuse my teachers, are only interesting as a study in... despotism. And there is plenty of that to study elsewhere. Perhaps, more charitably, it's interesting because what had become by then British, with their diminished history and experience, began to interact once more with the more developed cultures of the continent; which only became of real significance much later still.

Meanwhile, while the Celts were still breaking rocks, Spain (Hispania) had thriving port cities in, among other places, Cadiz (Phoenician Gadis), Cartagena (Carthaginian) and a small Greek port (the Greeks had an eye for these) on what is now the Costa Brava and called Empuries which the Romans knew as Emporium and from where we get that word ourselves. But it was they, the Romans really, who were first to push inland displacing the Iberian tribes of which some may have been Celts, but only the Basques remain.

The collapse of Roman civilization led to waves of upheavals, immigrations, dislocations, displacements, clashes of civilizations and cultures, which led to its own dark age (though not so dark as Britannia where there is no historical record at all) and had more profound effects. Not just in the records of those times, but also today.

After Rome came the Goths (in our school books Visigoths). Most major Spanish cities have their Gothic quarter today. (Gothic architecture is miss-named and comes from a different period). Then the Vandals (enough said) and from time to time and place to place the Vikings.

But it was the Moors, a mix of Berbers, Arabs, and Syrians and a more enlightened people who stayed longer, nearly a thousand years, and who had the greater influence. Except for that mountain range along the north, they conquered the whole peninsula in just two years; not so much by the sword as by the acquiescence of a people fed up with the prevailing anarchy. If they had been able to see beyond their own narrow individual self-interests to develop a more cohesive social and governing policy they would be there still. But they couldn't. So, the reconquest – initially led by descendants of the those same Goths. This period of the middle/late middle-ages, the reconquest, is the defining moment in Spanish history; more important than the accidental wealth that befell them later. And also, believe it or not, instrumental in the conquest of the Americas. Because later, when the Moors had finally been driven from the peninsula, a young Queen of Castilla y Leon and by marriage Aragon, busted flat by the struggle to secure her kingdom, hocked the only liquid asset she had left to finance an expedition and enter the spice trade. It was a long shot venture - precisely - which didn't work out exactly as planned, but didn't turn out so badly either and that's a story you already know.

That itself exemplifies to me something which prevails in the Spanish character and though it may not be unique to them, something, maybe necessity, allows them the faith to be able to sail off the edge of the earth without a compass. They have always done this. Spain has always exported population. Always. First from that coastal range that lies between the camino del norte and camino frances, the mountains of Asturias and Cantabria, to the meseta of Castilla, then south to La Mancha and Estremadura, finally to Andalucia (Arabic: Al Andalus) and the Americas. See the links to the Spanish kingdom maps at left. Leaving home for good is as Spanish as anything can be and a history that they know too well. It isn't easy. Ms MarcoPolo knows first hand. And it's so commonplace that unless it involves a queen it's hardly worth mentioning. The Camino de Santiago walks you right through the middle of this. It's all around you, everywhere, and one reason why I really want to walk that trail myself.