Facts about Spain
Capital Madrid · Europe
10 topics · about 20 minutes
Spain occupies most of the Iberian Peninsula and spent eight centuries under partial Muslim rule before becoming the first global empire of the modern age. Today it is a decentralised democracy of 17 autonomous communities, several with their own language and a strong sense of separate nationhood.
After Switzerland, Spain is the most mountainous country in western Europe. The Meseta Central, a plateau averaging around 650 meters, covers much of the interior and is ringed by ranges including the Pyrenees and the Sierra Nevada. That elevation gives the interior hot summers and cold winters, while the Mediterranean coast stays mild and the Atlantic north is green and rainy enough to look more like Ireland than Andalusia.
Madrid sits almost exactly in the geographic center and is the political and financial capital, while Barcelona faces the Mediterranean as the center of Catalonia. Seville, Granada and Córdoba hold the great monuments of Islamic Spain in the south, Valencia gave the world paella, and Bilbao and San Sebastián anchor the Basque north. Spain receives more than 80 million foreign visitors a year, second only to France, most of them heading for the Mediterranean and island beaches, the Andalusian cities, or Barcelona and Madrid.
- Population
- 48 million
- Area
- 505,990 km²
- Currency
- Euro (€)
- Official language
- Spanish, plus co-official regional languages
- Divisions
- 17 autonomous communities
- Highest point
- Teide, 3,715 m
The Spain course
Geography of Spain
A high central plateau ringed by mountains, plus volcanic islands off northwest Africa.
History of Spain
Eight centuries of Al-Andalus, a silver-funded empire, civil war, and democracy after 1975.
Language of Spain
Second only to Mandarin in native speakers, alongside Catalan, Galician and Basque at home.
Culture of Spain
Velázquez, Goya, Picasso and Dalí, dinner after nine, and flamenco out of Andalusia.
Economy of Spain
Over 80 million visitors a year, the largest olive oil producer, and fast-growing renewables.
Politics of Spain
Seventeen autonomous communities, and a long argument over how far that autonomy runs.
Nature & Wildlife of Spain
The most biodiverse country in Europe, and a lynx brought back from under a hundred animals.
Food & Cuisine of Spain
Regional before national, jamón ibérico above all, and tapas as a way of moving between bars.
Landmarks of Spain
A basilica still unfinished after 140 years, the Alhambra, and a cathedral inside a mosque.
People & Society of Spain
Forty-eight million, aging fast, with a rural interior Spaniards call the emptied Spain.
Geography of Spain
Spain is the second largest country in western Europe and, after Switzerland, the most mountainous. The Meseta Central, a high plateau averaging around 650 meters, covers much of the interior and is ringed by mountain ranges including the Pyrenees along the French border and the Sierra Nevada in the south.
That elevation gives the interior hot summers and cold winters, while the Mediterranean coast stays mild and the Atlantic north is green and rainy enough to look more like Ireland than Andalusia. Spain also governs the Canary Islands off northwest Africa, which are volcanic and subtropical, along with the Balearics in the Mediterranean and two cities on the Moroccan coast.
History of Spain
Roman Hispania was followed by Visigothic rule and then, from 711, by Muslim conquest. Al-Andalus made Córdoba one of the largest and most learned cities in the world, and the long Christian reconquest that pushed it back ended in 1492 with the fall of Granada. That same year Columbus sailed west under Castilian sponsorship.
Silver from the Americas funded a Habsburg empire that dominated 16th-century Europe before a long decline set in. Loss of the last major colonies in 1898 deepened a national crisis that led to the civil war of 1936 to 1939 and the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. After his death in 1975 the country moved to constitutional monarchy and democracy within a few years, joining the European Community in 1986.
Language of Spain
Spanish, which Spaniards usually call castellano, has more native speakers than any language except Mandarin, with over 480 million worldwide. It spread through the Americas after 1492 and is now official in 20 countries, though the Castilian pronunciation of Spain differs audibly from Latin American varieties.
Spain is genuinely multilingual. Catalan is spoken by millions across Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearics, Galician in the northwest is close to Portuguese, and Basque is a language isolate with no known relatives anywhere, predating the arrival of Indo-European languages in Europe. Each holds co-official status in its own region.
Culture of Spain
Spanish art has produced an unusual number of era-defining figures, from El Greco and Velázquez through Goya to Picasso, Dalí and Miró in the 20th century. Cervantes wrote Don Quixote in 1605, often called the first modern novel.
Daily rhythm runs later than in the rest of Europe, with dinner rarely before nine in the evening, a legacy partly of clock changes made in the 1940s. Flamenco, which grew out of Roma communities in Andalusia, holds UNESCO heritage status. Regional identity is powerful, and independence movements in Catalonia and the Basque Country remain central to national politics.
Economy of Spain
Spain has one of the larger economies in the eurozone, weighted toward services. Tourism alone contributes over a tenth of output, and the country receives more than 80 million foreign visitors a year, placing it second only to France.
Renewable energy has grown fast, with wind and solar supplying a large and rising share of electricity across a country that has both the land and the sunlight for it. Spain is also the world’s biggest producer of olive oil and a major exporter of cars and fresh produce. The 2008 property crash left deep scars, and youth unemployment has stayed stubbornly high ever since.
Politics of Spain
Spain is a parliamentary constitutional monarchy under King Felipe VI, whose role is ceremonial. The prime minister leads the government and answers to the Cortes Generales, a two-chamber parliament made up of the Congress of Deputies and the Senate.
The 1978 constitution created 17 autonomous communities holding substantial power over health, education and, in the Basque Country and Navarre, tax collection. How far that autonomy should extend is the defining constitutional argument, and it came to a head when Catalonia held an independence referendum in 2017 that Spanish courts had ruled illegal.
Nature & Wildlife of Spain
Spain holds more biodiversity than almost anywhere else in Europe, helped by its position between two continents and its range of altitudes. Roughly a third of the land carries some protected status, spread across 16 national parks.
The Iberian lynx was the most endangered cat in the world in the early 2000s, down to fewer than a hundred animals, and a captive breeding program has since lifted the population past two thousand. The Doñana wetlands near the Guadalquivir delta form a critical stopover for birds migrating between Europe and Africa, and the Cantabrian mountains still hold a few hundred brown bears.
Food & Cuisine of Spain
Spanish cooking varies sharply by region, from the seafood and rice of Valencia, where paella originated, to the bean stews of the wet northern coast. Olive oil, garlic and cured pork run through nearly all of it, and jamón ibérico from acorn-fed black pigs is the most prized single product.
Tapas began as small plates served alongside a drink and became a whole social format built around moving between bars rather than sitting down for one long meal. The Basque Country and Catalonia have driven modern haute cuisine for two decades, and Spanish restaurants regularly top international rankings.
Landmarks of Spain
The Sagrada Família in Barcelona has been under construction since 1882, and Antoni Gaudí’s unfinished basilica draws millions of visitors a year to a building site. The rest of his Barcelona work, including Park Güell and Casa Batlló, made the city a pilgrimage for architects.
The Alhambra in Granada is the finest surviving palace complex of Islamic Spain, and the Mezquita of Córdoba preserves a forest of striped arches with a cathedral inserted into the middle. Madrid holds the Prado, one of the great European painting collections, while the Camino de Santiago still brings hundreds of thousands of walkers to Santiago de Compostela each year.
People & Society of Spain
Spain has about 48 million residents and one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, near 1.2 births per woman. Life expectancy of roughly 84 years is among the highest anywhere, which leaves the country aging quickly.
Around 18 percent of residents were born abroad, with large communities from Morocco, Romania and Latin America, the last helped by shared language and faster routes to citizenship. Population is heavily concentrated in Madrid, along the Mediterranean coast and in the Basque industrial belt, while much of the rural interior has emptied so thoroughly that Spaniards call it la España vaciada.
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