Iberian Peninsula

The Iberian Peninsula (IPA: /aɪˈbɪəriən/ eye-BEER-ee-ən), also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in south-western Europe. It is mostly separated from the rest of Europe by the Pyrenees mountains. The peninsula includes the countries of Peninsular Spain and Continental Portugal, along with smaller areas like Andorra, Gibraltar, and a small part of Metropolitan France.

With an area of about 583,254 square kilometres, the Iberian Peninsula is the second-largest peninsula in Europe, after the Scandinavian Peninsula. It is home to roughly 53 million people, making it a significant region in both size and population. The peninsula has a rich history and diverse cultures, influencing the languages, foods, and traditions of the area today.

Etymology

The name Iberian Peninsula comes from the River Ebro, known in ancient Greek as Ibēros and in Latin as Ibērus or Hibērus. This river was so important that early writers used the name Hiberia to describe the land near it.

Later, Greek geographers used the name Iberia for the land southwest of the Pyrenees mountains. Romans called the area Hispania, but both names were used to refer to the same place. Today, we use the term "Iberian Peninsula," a name first used by a French geographer in 1823.

Prehistory

Main article: Prehistoric Iberia

The Iberian Peninsula has been home to humans for over a million years. Early human-like creatures, known as hominins, lived in caves such as Gran Dolina. Later, Neanderthals arrived and developed their own cultures. Around 40,000 years ago, modern humans arrived and created beautiful cave paintings and artifacts.

During a time called the Neolithic, new farming communities appeared and built large stone structures called megaliths. The Chalcolithic and Bronze Age brought even more advanced cultures. People began to work with metal, trade over long distances, and build large settlements. These early societies laid the groundwork for the first civilizations in the region.

Proto-history

Main article: Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula

By the Iron Age, which began in the 8th century BCE, the Iberian Peninsula was home to many advanced societies. These included groups such as the Celtiberians, Gallaeci, Astures, Celtici, and Lusitanians, as well as the Iberians in the east and south, and the Aquitanian people near the Pyrenees.

Seafaring cultures like the Phoenicians from the Eastern Mediterranean explored and traded along the peninsula's coast as early as the 12th century BCE. They founded a trading post called Gadir or Gades, now known as Cádiz. Later, the Greeks and Carthaginians also set up colonies along the Mediterranean coast. These groups brought new ideas and technologies, helping the region's cultures grow and develop.

History

Roman rule

See also: Roman conquest of the Iberian Peninsula

In 218 BCE, during the Second Punic War against the Carthaginians, the first Roman troops occupied the Iberian Peninsula, known to them as Hispania. After 197, the territories of the peninsula most accustomed to external contact and with the most urban tradition (the Mediterranean Coast and the Guadalquivir Valley) were divided by Romans into Hispania Ulterior and Hispania Citerior. Local rebellions were quelled, with a 195 Roman campaign under Cato the Elder ravaging hotspots of resistance in the northeastern Ebro Valley and beyond.

The threat to Roman interests posed by Celtiberians and Lusitanians in uncontrolled territories lingered on. Further wars of indigenous resistance, such as the Celtiberian Wars and the Lusitanian War, were fought in the 2nd century. Urban growth took place, and population progressively moved from hillforts to the plains.

In addition to mineral extraction, of which the region was the leading supplier in the early Roman world, with production of the likes of gold, silver, copper, lead, and cinnabar, Hispania also produced manufactured goods, such as sigillata pottery, colourless glass, linen garments. Rural products included fish and fish sauce (garum), and dry crops such as wheat and, more importantly, esparto, olive oil, and wine.

The process of Romanization spurred on throughout the first century BC. The peninsula was also the battleground of civil wars between rulers of the Roman republic; such as the Sertorian War, and the conflict between Caesar and Pompey later in the century.

During their 600-year occupation of the Iberian Peninsula, the Romans introduced the Latin language which developed into the languages of the Iberian peninsula today, with the exception of Basque.

See also: Lusitania, Hispania Tarraconensis, and Hispania Baetica

Pre-modern Iberia

See also: Visigothic Kingdom, Al-Andalus, Spania, and Kingdom of the Suebi

In the early fifth century, Germanic peoples occupied the peninsula, namely the Suebi, the Vandals (Silingi and Hasdingi) and their allies, the Alans. Only the kingdom of the Suebi (Quadi and Marcomanni) would endure after the arrival of another wave of Germanic invaders, the Visigoths, who occupied all of the Iberian Peninsula and expelled or partially integrated the Vandals and the Alans. The Visigoths eventually occupied the Suebi kingdom and its capital city, Bracara (modern day Braga), in 584–585. They would also occupy the province of the Byzantine Empire (552–624) of Spania in the south of the peninsula. However, Balearic Islands remained in Byzantine hands until Umayyad conquest, which began in 703 CE and was completed in 902 CE.

Main articles: Al-Andalus and Reconquista

In 711, a Muslim army conquered the Visigothic Kingdom in Hispania. Under Tariq ibn Ziyad, the Islamic army landed at Gibraltar and, in an eight-year campaign, occupied all except the northern kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula in the Umayyad conquest of Hispania. Al-Andalus (Arabic: الإندلس, tr. al-ʾAndalūs, possibly "Land of the Vandals"), is the Arabic name given to Muslim Iberia. The Muslim conquerors were Arabs and Berbers; following the conquest, conversion and arabization of the Hispano-Roman population took place, (muwalladum or Muladí). After a long process, spurred on in the 9th and 10th centuries, the majority of the population in Al-Andalus eventually converted to Islam. The Muslims were referred to by the generic name Moors. The Muslim population was divided per ethnicity (Arabs, Berbers, Muladí), and the supremacy of Arabs over the rest of group was a recurrent causal for strife, rivalry and hatred, particularly between Arabs and Berbers. Arab elites could be further divided in the Yemenites (first wave) and the Syrians (second wave). Christians and Jews were allowed to live as part of a stratified society under the dhimmah system, although Jews became very important in certain fields. Some Christians migrated to the Northern Christian kingdoms, while those who stayed in Al-Andalus progressively arabised and became known as musta'arab (mozarabs).

The Umayyad rulers faced a major Berber Revolt in the early 740s; the uprising originally broke out in North Africa (Tangier) and later spread across the peninsula. Following the Abbasid takeover from the Umayyads and the shift of the economic centre of the Islamic Caliphate from Damascus to Baghdad, the western province of al-Andalus was marginalised and ultimately became politically autonomous as independent emirate in 756, ruled by one of the last surviving Umayyad royals, Abd al-Rahman I. Al-Andalus became a center of culture and learning, especially during the Caliphate of Córdoba. The Caliphate reached the height of its power under the rule of Abd-ar-Rahman III and his successor al-Hakam II, becoming then, in the view of Jaime Vicens Vives, "the most powerful state in Europe". Abd-ar-Rahman III also managed to expand the clout of Al-Andalus across the Strait of Gibraltar, waging war, as well as his successor, against the Fatimid Empire.

Between the 8th and 12th centuries, Al-Andalus enjoyed a notable urban vitality, both in terms of the growth of the preexisting cities as well as in terms of founding of new ones: Córdoba reached a population of 100,000 by the 10th century, Toledo 30,000 by the 11th century and Seville 80,000 by the 12th century.

During the Middle Ages, the North of the peninsula housed many small Christian polities including the Kingdom of Castile, the Kingdom of Aragon, the Kingdom of Navarre, the Kingdom of León or the Kingdom of Portugal, as well as a number of counties that spawned from the Carolingian Marca Hispanica. Christian and Muslim polities fought and allied among themselves in variable alliances. The Christian kingdoms progressively expanded south taking over Muslim territory in what is historiographically known as the "Reconquista" (the latter concept has been however noted as product of the claim to a pre-existing Spanish Catholic nation and it would not necessarily convey adequately "the complexity of centuries of warring and other more peaceable interactions between Muslim and Christian kingdoms in medieval Iberia between 711 and 1492").

The Caliphate of Córdoba was subsumed in a period of upheaval and civil war (the Fitna of al-Andalus) and collapsed in the early 11th century, spawning a series of ephemeral statelets, the taifas. Until the mid 11th century, most of the territorial expansion southwards of the Kingdom of Asturias/León was carried out through a policy of agricultural colonization rather than through military operations; then, profiting from the feebleness of the taifa principalities, Ferdinand I of León seized Lamego and Viseu (1057–1058) and Coimbra (1064) away from the Taifa of Badajoz (at times at war with the Taifa of Seville); Meanwhile, in the same year Coimbra was conquered, in the Northeastern part of the Iberian Peninsula, the Kingdom of Aragon took Barbastro from the Hudid Taifa of Lérida as part of an international expedition sanctioned by Pope Alexander II. Most critically, Alfonso VI of León-Castile conquered Toledo and its wider taifa in 1085, in what it was seen as a critical event at the time, entailing also a huge territorial expansion, advancing from the Sistema Central to La Mancha. In 1086, following the siege of Zaragoza by Alfonso VI of León-Castile, the Almoravids, religious zealots originally from the deserts of the Maghreb, landed in the Iberian Peninsula, and, having inflicted a serious defeat to Alfonso VI at the battle of Zalaca, began to seize control of the remaining taifas.

The Almoravids in the Iberian peninsula progressively relaxed strict observance of their faith, and treated both Jews and Mozarabs harshly, facing uprisings across the peninsula, initially in the Western part. The Almohads, another North-African Muslim sect of Masmuda Berber origin who had previously undermined the Almoravid rule south of the Strait of Gibraltar, first entered the peninsula in 1146.

Somewhat straying from the trend taking place in other locations of the Latin West since the 10th century, the period comprising the 11th and 13th centuries was not one of weakening monarchical power in the Christian kingdoms. The relatively novel concept of "frontier" (Sp: frontera), already reported in Aragon by the second half of the 11th century become widespread in the Christian Iberian kingdoms by the beginning of the 13th century, in relation to the more or less conflictual border with Muslim lands.

By the beginning of the 13th century, a power reorientation took place in the Iberian Peninsula (parallel to the Christian expansion in Southern Iberia and the increasing commercial impetus of Christian powers across the Mediterranean) and to a large extent, trade-wise, the Iberian Peninsula reorientated towards the North away from the Muslim World.

During the Middle Ages, the monarchs of Castile and León, from Alfonso V and Alfonso VI (crowned Hispaniae Imperator) to Alfonso X and Alfonso XI tended to embrace an imperial ideal based on a dual Christian and Jewish ideology. Despite the hegemonic ambitions of its rulers and the consolidation of the union of Castile and León after 1230, it should be pointed that, except for a brief period in the 1330s and 1340s, Castile tended to be nonetheless "essentially unstable" from a political standpoint until the late 15th century.

Merchants from Genoa and Pisa were conducting an intense trading activity in Catalonia already by the 12th century, and later in Portugal. Since the 13th century, the Crown of Aragon expanded overseas; led by Catalans, it attained an overseas empire in the Western Mediterranean, with a presence in Mediterranean islands such as the Balearics, Sicily and Sardinia, and even conquering Naples in the mid-15th century. Genoese merchants invested heavily in the Iberian commercial enterprise with Lisbon becoming, according to Virgínia Rau, the "great centre of Genoese trade" in the early 14th century. The Portuguese would later detach their trade to some extent from Genoese influence. The Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, neighbouring the Strait of Gibraltar and founded upon a vassalage relationship with the Crown of Castile, also insinuated itself into the European mercantile network, with its ports fostering intense trading relations with the Genoese as well, but also with the Catalans, and to a lesser extent, with the Venetians, the Florentines, and the Portuguese.

Between 1275 and 1340, Granada became involved in the "crisis of the Strait", and was caught in a complex geopolitical struggle ("a kaleidoscope of alliances") with multiple powers vying for dominance of the Western Mediterranean, complicated by the unstable relations of Muslim Granada with the Marinid Sultanate. The conflict reached a climax in the 1340 Battle of Río Salado, when, this time in alliance with Granada, the Marinid Sultan (and Caliph pretender) Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Othman made the last Marinid attempt to set up a power base in the Iberian Peninsula. The lasting consequences of the resounding Muslim defeat to an alliance of Castile and Portugal with naval support from Aragon and Genoa ensured Christian supremacy over the Iberian Peninsula and the preeminence of Christian fleets in the Western Mediterranean.

The 1348–1350 bubonic plague devastated large parts of the Iberian Peninsula, leading to a sudden economic cessation. Many settlements in northern Castile and Catalonia were left forsaken.

The 14th century was a period of great upheaval in the Iberian realms. After the death of Peter the Cruel of Castile (reigned 1350–69), the House of Trastámara succeeded to the throne in the person of Peter's half brother, Henry II (reigned 1369–79). In the kingdom of Aragón, following the death without heirs of John I (reigned 1387–96) and Martin I (reigned 1396–1410), a prince of the House of Trastámara, Ferdinand I (reigned 1412–16), succeeded to the Aragonese throne. The Hundred Years' War also spilled over into the Iberian peninsula, with Castile particularly taking a role in the conflict by providing key naval support to France that helped lead to that nation's eventual victory.

During the 15th century, Portugal, which had ended its southwards territorial expansion across the Iberian Peninsula in 1249 with the conquest of the Algarve, initiated an overseas expansion in parallel to the rise of the House of Aviz, conquering Ceuta (1415) arriving at Porto Santo (1418), Madeira and the Azores, as well as establishing additional outposts along the North-African Atlantic coast. In addition, already in the Early Modern Period, between the completion of the Granada War in 1492 and the death of Ferdinand of Aragon in 1516, the Hispanic Monarchy would make strides in the imperial expansion along the Mediterranean coast of the Maghreb.

Throughout the late Middle Ages, the Crown of Aragon took part in the mediterranean slave trade, with Barcelona (already in the 14th century), Valencia (particularly in the 15th century) and, to a lesser extent, Palma de Mallorca (since the 13th century), becoming dynamic centres in this regard, involving chiefly eastern and Muslim peoples. Castile engaged later in this economic activity, rather by adhering to the incipient atlantic slave trade involving sub-saharan people thrusted by Portugal (Lisbon being the largest slave centre in Western Europe) since the mid 15th century, with Seville becoming another key hub for the slave trade.

By the end of the 15th century (1490) the Iberian kingdoms (including here the Balearic Islands) had an estimated population of 6.525 million (Crown of Castile, 4.3 million; Portugal, 1.0 million; Principality of Catalonia, 0.3 million; Kingdom of Valencia, 0.255 million; Kingdom of Granada, 0.25 million; Kingdom of Aragon, 0.25 million; Kingdom of Navarre, 0.12 million and the Kingdom of Mallorca, 0.05 million).

In the late 15th century, the imperial ambition of the Iberian powers was pushed to new heights by the Catholic Monarchs in Castile and Aragon, and by Manuel I in Portugal.

See also: Massacre of 1391

The last Muslim stronghold, Granada, was conquered by a combined Castilian and Aragonese force in 1492. Muslims and Jews throughout the period were variously tolerated or shown intolerance in different Christian kingdoms. After the fall of Granada, all Muslims and Jews were ordered to convert to Christianity or face expulsion—as many as 200,000 Jews were expelled from Spain.

In 1497, King Manuel I of Portugal forced all Jews in his kingdom to convert or leave.

A series of case studies by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University demonstrated that the change of relative supremacy from Portugal to the Hispanic Monarchy in the late 15th century was one of the few cases of avoidance of the Thucydides Trap.

Modern Iberia

Challenging the conventions about the advent of modernity, Immanuel Wallerstein pushed back the origins of the capitalist modernity to the Iberian expansion of the 15th century. During the 16th century Spain created a vast empire in the Americas, with a state monopoly in Seville becoming the center of the ensuing transatlantic trade, based on bullion. Iberian imperialism, starting by the Portuguese establishment of routes to Asia and the posterior transatlantic trade with the New World by Spaniards and Portuguese (along Dutch, English and French), precipitated the economic decline of the Italian Peninsula. The 16th century was one of population growth with increased pressure over resources; in the case of the Iberian Peninsula a part of the population moved to the Americas meanwhile Jews and Moriscos were banished, relocating to other places in the Mediterranean Basin.

In 1580, after the political crisis that followed the 1578 death of King Sebastian, Portugal became a dynastic composite entity of the Hapsburg Monarchy; thus, the whole peninsula was united politically during the period known as the Iberian Union (1580–1640). During the reign of Philip II of Spain (I of Portugal), the Councils of Portugal, Italy, Flanders and Burgundy were added to the group of counselling institutions of the Hispanic Monarchy, to which the Councils of Castile, Aragon, Indies, Chamber of Castile, Inquisition, Orders, and Crusade already belonged, defining the organization of the Royal court that underpinned the Polysynodial System through which the empire operated. During the Iberian union, the "first great wave" of the transatlantic slave trade happened, according to Enriqueta Vila Villar, as new markets opened because of the unification gave thrust to the slave trade.

By 1600, the percentage of urban population for Spain was roughly 11.4%, while for Portugal the urban population was estimated as 14.1%, which were both above the 7.6% European average of the time (edged only by the Low Countries and the Italian Peninsula). Some striking differences appeared among the different Iberian realms. Castile, extending across a 60% of the territory of the peninsula and having 80% of the population was a rather urbanised country, yet with a widespread distribution of cities. Meanwhile, the urban population in the Crown of Aragon was highly concentrated in a handful of cities: Zaragoza (Kingdom of Aragon), Barcelona (Principality of Catalonia), and, to a lesser extent in the Kingdom of Valencia, in Valencia, Alicante and Orihuela. The case of Portugal presented an hypertrophied capital, Lisbon (which greatly increased its population during the 16th century, from 56,000 to 60,000 inhabitants by 1527, to roughly 120,000 by the third quarter of the century) with its demographic dynamism stimulated by the Asian trade, followed at great distance by Porto and Évora (both roughly accounting for 12,500 inhabitants). Throughout most of the 16th century, both Lisbon and Seville were among Western Europe's largest and most dynamic cities.

The 17th century has been largely considered as a very negative period for the Iberian economies, seen as a time of recession, crisis or even decline, the urban dynamism chiefly moving to Northern Europe. A dismantling of the inner city network in the Castilian plateau took place during this period (with a parallel accumulation of economic activity in the capital, Madrid), with only New Castile resisting recession in the interior. Regarding the Atlantic façade of Castile, aside from the severing of trade with Northern Europe, inter-regional trade with other regions in the Iberian Peninsula also suffered to some extent. In Aragon, suffering from similar problems than Castile, the expelling of the Moriscos in 1609 in the Kingdom of Valencia aggravated the recession. Silk turned from a domestic industry into a raw commodity to be exported. However, the crisis was uneven (affecting longer the centre of the peninsula), as both Portugal and the Mediterranean coastline recovered in the later part of the century by fuelling a sustained growth.

The aftermath of the intermittent 1640–1668 Portuguese Restoration War brought the House of Braganza as the new ruling dynasty in the Portuguese territories across the world (bar Ceuta), putting an end to the Iberian Union.

See also: History of Andorra, History of Gibraltar, History of Portugal, History of Spain, and History of France

Despite both Portugal and Spain starting their path towards modernization with the liberal revolutions of the first half of the 19th century, this process was, concerning structural changes in the geographical distribution of the population, relatively tame compared to what took place after World War II in the Iberian Peninsula, when strong urban development ran in parallel to substantial rural flight patterns.

Geography and geology

Main articles: Geography of Spain, Geography of Portugal, and Geography of Andorra

The Iberian Peninsula is the westernmost of three major southern European peninsulas. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the southeast and east, and the Atlantic Ocean to the north, west, and southwest. The Pyrenees mountains separate it from the rest of Europe. The peninsula stretches from Punta de Tarifa in the south to Punta de Estaca de Bares in the north, and from Cabo da Roca in the west to Cap de Creus in the east.

The land includes wide plateaus and many mountain ranges, with the highest point being Mulhacén in the Sierra Nevada at 3,478 meters. Major rivers such as the Ebro, Douro, Tagus, Guadiana, and Guadalquivir flow through valleys between these mountains. The climate varies from oceanic in the northeast to Mediterranean across most of the peninsula, with some areas having steppe or even desert-like conditions.

Political divisions

The Iberian Peninsula is mostly made up of Portugal and Spain, along with the small country of Andorra. A tiny part of France, called French Cerdagne, and the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar are also on the peninsula. The Pyrenees mountains separate it from the rest of Europe. Some islands, like the Azores, Madeira, and the Canary Islands, belong to Portugal and Spain but are not part of the mainland Iberian Peninsula.

Cities

The Iberian Peninsula has many important cities. Three of the biggest cities are Barcelona, Lisbon, and Madrid. These cities are very busy places with lots of people and activities. There are also four other big cities: Bilbao, Porto, Seville, and Valencia. Among all these cities, Madrid is especially important because it has many services and is well-connected to other places.

Some areas around these cities have more than one million people living in them. You can learn more about the cities in Spain and Portugal.

Ecology

Forests

Main article: Forests of the Iberian Peninsula

The Iberian Peninsula has special woodlands that are home to unique plants and animals. One famous animal is the endangered Iberian lynx, which lives in the forests there. Recently, scientists discovered a new type of lizard called Podarcis virescens near rivers in the area.

East Atlantic flyway

The Iberian Peninsula is a key stop for birds traveling from northern Europe to Africa. Many birds, like curlew sandpipers, rest here, especially around the Bay of Cádiz. Millions of birds spend their winters in the wet areas and coastal regions, such as in Galicia, the Aveiro Lagoon in Portugal, and the Algarve. These places welcome many different kinds of birds, including pied avocet, common ringed plover, and red knot.

Languages

Main article: Languages of Iberia

Further information: Languages of Andorra, Languages of Gibraltar, Languages of France, Languages of Spain, and Languages of Portugal

Most languages spoken today in the Iberian Peninsula come from an ancient language called Vulgar Latin. These languages are part of a group called Western Romance languages. One special language is Basque, which has an unknown origin and is not related to most other European languages.

Today, the most common languages are Spanish, spoken by millions in Spain, and Portuguese, spoken by millions in Portugal. Other languages include Catalan, Galician, and Basque. Spanish and Portuguese are also spoken in many other parts of the world. There are also smaller languages like Astur-Leonese and Aragonese, spoken by fewer people. In Gibraltar, English is the official language, and a special mix of English and Spanish called Llanito is also used.

Transportation

Spain and Portugal have used a special rail track size since the 1800s. Spain now has a big network of fast trains, starting with a line between Madrid and Seville in 1992. Other fast rail lines connect major cities like Barcelona and Valencia. Portugal stopped planning fast trains after money problems in 2008.

There are only a few rail links between Spain and France because of the big Pyrenees mountains. Spain and Portugal also have several places where their railroads meet, such as Valença do Minho and Tui.

Many important undersea internet wires, like the Fibre-optic Link Around the Globe and MAREA, have stations in the Iberian Peninsula. There are also plans for new cables to connect to South America and other places.

Gas pipelines from Morocco and Algeria bring natural gas to Spain, but one of these pipelines will stop working after October 31, 2021.

Economy

The main currency used across most of Iberia is the Euro, except in Gibraltar where the Gibraltar Pound is used. Important jobs in the area include fishing along the long coastline, mining in the Pyrenees mountains, and welcoming many visitors as tourists.

Andorra and Gibraltar are known for their special financial rules. Sadly, some illegal activities happen here too, like the arrival of cocaine in north-western Spain and hashish coming from Morocco through the Strait of Gibraltar.