Origins of Spain
The Kingdom of Spain is a country located in the southwest of Europe. It shares the Iberian Peninsula with Portugal and Gibraltar. To the northeast, along the Pyrenees mountain range, it borders France and the tiny principality of Andorra. It includes the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea, the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, the cities of Ceuta and Melilla in the north of Africa, and a number of minor uninhabited islands on the Mediterranean side of the strait of Gibraltar, such as the Chafarine islands, the "rocks" (es: peñones) of Vélez and Alhucemas, and the tiny Parsley Island.
The seafaring Phoenicians, Greeks and Carthaginians successively settled along the Mediterranean coast and founded trading colonies there over a period of several centuries.
The Romans arrived in the Iberian peninsula during the second Punic war in the 2nd century BC, and annexed it under Augustus after two centuries of war with the Celtic and Iberian tribes and the Phoenician, Greek and Carthaginian colonies becoming the province of Hispania. Some of Spain's present languages, religion, and laws originate from this Roman period.
Modern Spain began to take form during the Reconquista, the struggle among the Christian kingdoms that the moors left unconquered in northern peninsula and the kingdoms into which Al-Andalus had split. In 1492, Granada, the last Moorish kingdom was defeated by the Catholic Monarchs Isabella I of Castile (Isabel La Católica) and Ferdinand II of Aragon (Fernando el Católico or Ferran el Catòlic).
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