Spain (Spanish: España [esˈpaɲa] ( listen)), officially the Kingdom of Spain[12] (Spanish: Reino

de España),[a][b] is a country in Southwestern Europe with some pockets of territory across

the Strait of Gibraltar and the Atlantic Ocean.[12] Its continental European territory is situated on
the Iberian Peninsula. Its territory also includes two archipelagoes: the Canary Islands off the
coast of Africa, and the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. The
African enclaves of Ceuta, Melilla, and Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera,[13] make Spain the only
European country to have a physical border with an African country (Morocco).[i] Several small
islands in the Alboran Sea are also part of Spanish territory. The country's mainland is bordered
to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea except for a small land boundary with Gibraltar;
to the north and northeast by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; and to the west and
northwest by Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean.
With an area of 505,990 km2 (195,360 sq mi), Spain is the largest country in Southern Europe,
the second-largest country in Western Europe and the European Union, and the fourth-largest
country by area on the European continent. With a population exceeding 46 million, Spain is
the sixth-most populous country in Europe, and the fourth-most populous country in the
European Union. Spain's capital and largest city is Madrid; other major urban
areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Zaragoza, Málaga, and Bilbao.
Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago. Iberian cultures
along with ancient Phoenician, Greek, Celtic and Carthaginian settlements developed on the
peninsula until it came under Roman rule around 200 BCE, after which the region was
named Hispania, based on the earlier Phoenician name Sp(a)n or Spania.[14] At the end of the
Western Roman Empire the Germanic tribal confederations migrated from Central Europe,
invaded the Iberian peninsula and established relatively independent realms in its western
provinces, including the Suebi, Alans and Vandals. Eventually, the Visigoths would forcibly
integrate all remaining independent territories in the peninsula, including the Byzantine province
of Spania, into the Visigothic Kingdom, which more or less unified politically, ecclesiastically and
legally all the former Roman provinces or successor kingdoms of what was then documented
as Hispania.
In the early eighth century the Visigothic Kingdom was conquered by the Umayyad Islamic
Caliphate, that arrived to the peninsula in the year 711. The Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula
(al-Andalus) soon became autonomous from Baghdad. The handful of small Christian pockets in
the north left out of Muslim rule, along the presence of the Carolingian Empire near the
Pyreneean range, would eventually led to the emergence of the Christian kingdoms
of León, Castile, Aragon, Portugal and Navarre. Along seven centuries, an intermittent
southwards expansion of the latter kingdoms (metahistorically dubbed as a reconquest:
the Reconquista) took place, culminating with the Christian seizure of the last Muslim polity
(the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada) in 1492, the same year Christopher Columbus arrived in
the New World. A process of political conglomeration among the Christian kingdoms also
ensued, and the late 15th-century saw the dynastic union of Castile and Aragon under
the Catholic Monarchs, sometimes considered as the point of emergence of Spain as unified
country. The Conquest of Navarre occurred in 1512, while the Kingdom of Portugal was also
ruled by the Hapsburg Dynasty between 1580 and 1640.