Iberian Peninsula

The Iberian Peninsula (/aɪˈbɪəriən/),[a] also known as Iberia,[b] is a peninsula in South-western

Europe, defining the westernmost edge of Eurasia. It is divided between Continental Portugal
and Peninsular Spain, comprising most of the region, as well as Andorra, Gibraltar, and a small
part of Southern France (French Cerdagne). With an area of approximately 583,254 square
kilometres (225,196 sq mi),[1] and a population of roughly 55 million,[2] it is the second-largest
European peninsula by area, after the Scandinavian Peninsula.

Name
The Iberian Peninsula and Southern France, satellite photo on a cloudless day in March 2014

Greek name

The word Iberia is a noun adapted from the Latin word "Hiberia" originating in the Ancient
Greek word Ἰβηρία (Ibēríā), used by Greek geographers under the rule of the Roman Empire to
refer to what is known today in English as the Iberian Peninsula.[3] At that time, the name did not
describe a single geographical entity or a distinct population; the same name was used for the
Kingdom of Iberia, natively known as Kartli in the Caucasus, the core region of what would later
become the Kingdom of Georgia.[4] It was Strabo who first reported the delineation of "Iberia"
from Gaul (Keltikē) by the Pyrenees[5] and included the entire land mass southwest (he says
"west") from there.[6] With the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the consolidation of
romanic languages, the word "Iberia" continued the Roman word "Hiberia" and the Greek word
"Ἰβηρία".

The ancient Greeks reached the Iberian Peninsula, of which they had heard from the Phoenicians,
by voyaging westward on the Mediterranean.[7] Hecataeus of Miletus was the first known to use
the term Iberia, which he wrote about c. 500 BCE.[8] Herodotus of Halicarnassus says of the
Phocaeans that "it was they who made the Greeks acquainted with [...] Iberia."[9] According to
Strabo,[10] prior historians used Iberia to mean the country "this side of the Ἶβηρος" (Ibēros, the
Ebro) as far north as the Rhône, but in his day they set the Pyrenees as the limit. Polybius
respects that limit,[11] but identifies Iberia as the Mediterranean side as far south as Gibraltar, with
the Atlantic side having no name. Elsewhere[12] he says that Saguntum is "on the seaward foot of
the range of hills connecting Iberia and Celtiberia."

Roman names

Main article: Hispania

See also: Hesperides

According to Charles Ebel, the ancient sources in both Latin and Greek use Hispania and
Hiberia (Greek: Iberia) as synonyms. The confusion of the words was because of an overlapping
in political and geographic perspectives. The Latin word Hiberia, similar to the Greek Iberia,
literally translates to "land of the Hiberians". This word was derived from the river Hiberus (now
called Ebro or Ebre). Hiber (Iberian) was thus used as a term for peoples living near the river
Ebro.[5][13] The first mention in Roman literature was by the annalist poet Ennius in 200 BCE.[14]
[15][16]
Virgil wrote impacatos (H)iberos ("restless Iberi") in his Georgics.[17] The Roman
geographers and other prose writers from the time of the late Roman Republic called the entire
peninsula Hispania.

In Greek and Roman antiquity, the name Hesperia was used for both the Italian and Iberian
Peninsula; in the latter case Hesperia Ultima (referring to its position in the far west) appears as
form of disambiguation from the former among Roman writers.[18] Also since Roman antiquity,
Jews gave the name Sepharad to the peninsula.[19]

As they became politically interested in the former Carthaginian territories, the Romans began to
use the names Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior for 'near' and 'far' Hispania. At the time
Hispania was made up of three Roman provinces: Hispania Baetica, Hispania Tarraconensis, and
Hispania Lusitania. Strabo says[10] that the Romans use Hispania and Iberia synonymously,
distinguishing between the near northern and the far southern provinces. (The name Iberia was
ambiguous, being also the name of the Kingdom of Iberia in the Caucasus.)

Whatever languages may generally have been spoken on the peninsula soon gave way to Latin,
except for that of the Vascones, which was preserved as a language isolate by the barrier of the
Pyrenees.

Modern name

The modern phrase "Iberian Peninsula" was coined by the French geographer Jean-Baptiste Bory
de Saint-Vincent on his 1823 work "Guide du Voyageur en Espagne". Prior to that date,
geographers had used the terms 'Spanish Peninsula' or 'Pyrenaean Peninsula'.[20]

Etymology

Northeast Iberian script from Huesca

The Iberian Peninsula has always been associated with the River Ebro (Ibēros in ancient Greek
and Ibērus or Hibērus in Latin). The association was so well known it was hardly necessary to
state; for example, Ibēria was the country "this side of the Ibērus" in Strabo. Pliny goes so far as
to assert that the Greeks had called "the whole of Spain" Hiberia because of the Hiberus River. [21]
The river appears in the Ebro Treaty of 226 BCE between Rome and Carthage, setting the limit
of Carthaginian interest at the Ebro. The fullest description of the treaty, stated in Appian,[22] uses
Ibērus. With reference to this border, Polybius[23] states that the "native name" is Ibēr, apparently
the original word, stripped of its Greek or Latin -os or -us termination.

The early range of these natives, which geographers and historians place from the present
southern Spain to the present southern France along the Mediterranean coast, is marked by
instances of a readable script expressing a yet unknown language, dubbed "Iberian". Whether
this was the native name or was given to them by the Greeks for their residence near the Ebro
remains unknown. Credence in Polybius imposes certain limitations on etymologizing: if the
language remains unknown, the meanings of the words, including Iber, must also remain
unknown. In modern Basque, the word ibar[24] means "valley" or "watered meadow", while
ibai[24] means "river", but there is no proof relating the etymology of the Ebro River with these
Basque names.

Prehistory
Main article: Prehistoric Iberia

Palaeolithic

The Iberian Peninsula has been inhabited by members of the Homo genus for at least 1.2 million
years as remains found in the sites in the Atapuerca Mountains demonstrate. Among these sites is
the cave of Gran Dolina, where six hominin skeletons, dated between 780,000 and one million
years ago, were found in 1994. Experts have debated whether these skeletons belong to the
species Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, or a new species called Homo antecessor.
According to other authors, the archaeo-palaeontological records in Sierra de Atapuerca, inside
the caves and in the open-air sites, have confirmed a continuous settlement from the Lower
Pleistocene (Lower Paleolithic) to the Holocene (Bronze Age), with several species of hominids
(Homo antecessor, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens)
exploiting the same territory. [25][26][27] According to these authors, in the surroundings of Sierra de
Atapuerca, the archaeological consequence of the continuous territorial occupation of the same
area from 1.3 Ma to the Bronze Age (2100-850 cal. BC) has been the deposition of hundreds of
open-air sites, with campsites, flintknapping workshops and other sites with complementary
economic activities.[25][26][27]

In the Iberian Peninsula Oldowan stone tools (Mode 1) have been found at the following sites
(caves and open-air sites): Fuente Nueva 3 (Orce, Granada), Barranco León (Orce, Granada),
Sima del Elefante (Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos), Gran Dolina TD6 (Sierra de Atapuerca,
Burgos) and in other open-air sites.[25] The archaeo-palaeontological records in Sierra de
Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain) from Lower Paleolithic have provided Oldowan stone tools
associated with Homo antecessor (Gran Dolina site, TD6 level, ca. 800,000 years BP)[25]

Acheulean stone tools (Mode 2) have been found in the Middle Pleistocene caves and in open-air
sites of the main valleys (i.e., Quaternary terraces of the rivers Ebro, Duero, Arlanzón, Arlanza,
Pisuerga, Miño, Tormes, Tajo, Guadiana, Guadalquivir, etc.)[25] The archaeo-palaeontological
records in Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain) from Lower Paleolithic have provided Acheulean
tools associated with Homo heidelbergensis (ca. 450,000 years BP)[25]

Mousterian stone tools (Mode 3) have been found in the Middle and Upper Pleistocene caves
and in open-air sites of the main valleys.[25] The archaeo-palaeontological records in the Sierra
de Atapuerca caves (Burgos, Spain) from Middle Paleolithic (i.e., Galería de las Estatuas y
Cueva Fantasma sites) have provided Mousterian stone tools associated with Homo
neanderthalensis (ca. 250,000 to 30,000 years BP).[25]

Around 200,000 BP, during the Lower Paleolithic period, Neanderthals first entered the Iberian
Peninsula. Around 70,000 BP, during the Middle Paleolithic period, the last glacial event began
and the Neanderthal Mousterian culture was established. Around 37,000 BP, during the Upper
Paleolithic, the Neanderthal Châtelperronian cultural period began. Emanating from Southern
France, this culture extended into the north of the peninsula. It continued to exist until around
30,000 BP, when Neanderthal man faced extinction.

About 40,000 years ago, anatomically modern humans entered the Iberian Peninsula from across
the Pyrenees.[28] Haplogroup R1b is common in modern Portuguese and Spanish males. On the
Iberian Peninsula, modern humans developed a series of different cultures, such as the
Aurignacian, Gravettian, Solutrean and Magdalenian cultures, some of them characterized by the
complex forms of the art of the Upper Paleolithic.

Neolithic

The Iberian Epipaleolithic, —also described as Mesolithic—, is divided into three stages from
9300 cal. BC to 5200 cal BC. The Neolithic began on the Iberian Peninsula in 5700/5600 cal. BC
according to several sites in the Levant area of the Peninsula. On the Northern Iberian Plateau is
present in the karst records and the open air sites from the last third of the VI millennium cal.
BC. [25][26][27]

During the Neolithic expansion, various megalithic cultures developed in the Iberian Peninsula.
[29]
An open seas navigation culture from the east Mediterranean, called the Cardium culture, also
extended its influence to the eastern coasts of the peninsula, possibly as early as the 5th
millennium BCE. These people may have had some relation to the subsequent development of
the Iberian civilization.

As is the case for most of the rest of Southern Europe, the principal ancestral origin of modern
Iberians are Early European Farmers who arrived during the Neolithic. The large predominance
of Y-Chromosome Haplogroup R1b, common throughout Western Europe, is testimony to a
considerable input from various waves of (predominantly male) Western Steppe Herders from
the Pontic–Caspian steppe during the Bronze Age. Iberia experienced a significant genetic
turnover, with 100% of the paternal ancestry and 40% of the overall ancestry being replaced by
peoples with steppe-related ancestry.[30]

Chalcolithic
 A model recreating the Chalcolithic settlement of Los Millares

In the Chalcolithic (c. 3000 BCE), a series of complex cultures developed that would give rise to
the peninsula's first civilizations and to extensive exchange networks reaching to the Baltic,
Middle East and North Africa. Around 2800 – 2700 BCE, the Beaker culture, which produced
the Maritime Bell Beaker, probably originated in the vibrant copper-using communities of the
Tagus estuary and spread from there to many parts of western Europe.[31]

According to radiocarbon datings, the Pre-Bell Beaker Chalcolithic began on the Northern
Iberian Plateau in 3000 cal. BC and the Bell Beaker Chalcolithic appeared around 2500 cal. BC.
[25][26][27]

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age began on the Iberian Peninsula in 2100 cal. BC according to radiocarbon
datings of several key sites. According to the period sequence,[25][26][27] the Iberian Bronze Age is
divided into three sub-periods or phases with different diagnostic markers (lithic tools, decorated
ceramics and types of metal tools): Early Bronze Age, Middle Bronze Age and Late Bronze Age.
The Early Bronze Age began on the Northern Iberian Plateau in 2100 cal. BC and the Late
Bronze Age in 1350 cal. BC. In the three phases of the Iberian Bronze Age, different cultures
emerged, which have been defined by regions with typical names: e.g. El Argar, Las Motillas,
Bronce Atlántico, Bronce Valenciano, Montelavar, Las Cogotas and others.[25][26]

Bronze Age cultures developed beginning c. 1800 BCE,[32] when the culture of Los Millares was
followed by that of El Argar.[33][34] During the Early Bronze Age, southeastern Iberia saw the
emergence of important settlements, a development that has compelled some archeologists to
propose that these settlements indicate the advent of state-level social structures. [35] From this
centre, bronze metalworking technology spread to other cultures like the Bronze of Levante,
South-Western Iberian Bronze and Las Cogotas.

Preceded by the Chalcolithic sites of Los Millares, the Argaric culture flourished in southeastern
Iberia in from 2200 BC to 1550 BC,[36] when depopulation of the area ensued along with
disappearing of copper–bronze–arsenic metallurgy.[37] The most accepted model for El Argar has
been that of an early state society, most particularly in terms of class division, exploitation, and
coercion,[38] with agricultural production, maybe also human labour, controlled by the larger
hilltop settlements,[39] and the elite using violence in practical and ideological terms to clamp
down on the population.[40] Ecological degradation, landscape opening, fires, pastoralism, and
maybe tree cutting for mining have been suggested as reasons for the collapse.[41]
The culture of the motillas developed an early system of groundwater supply plants (the so-
called motillas) in the upper Guadiana basin (in the southern meseta) in a context of extreme
aridification in the area in the wake of the 4.2-kiloyear climatic event, which roughly coincided
with the transition from the Copper Age to the Bronze Age. Increased precipitation and recovery
of the water table from about 1800 BC onward should have led to the forsaking of the motillas
(which may have flooded) and the redefinition of the relation of the inhabitants of the territory
with the environment.[42]

Proto-history
Main article: Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula

Iberia before the Carthaginian conquests c. 300 BCE.

An instance of the Southwest Paleohispanic script inscribed in the Abóbada I

stele.[43]

According to radiocarbon datings, the Iron Age began on the Iberian Peninsula in 850/800 cal.
BC with the arrival of the Phoenicians, while on the Northern Iberian Plateau it will arrive a little
later, in 800-750 cal. BC.[25][26]

By the Iron Age, starting in the 8th century BCE, the Iberian Peninsula consisted of complex
agrarian and urban civilizations, either Pre-Celtic or Celtic (such as the Celtiberians, Gallaeci,
Astures, Celtici, Lusitanians and others), the cultures of the Iberians in the eastern and southern
zones and the cultures of the Aquitanian in the western portion of the Pyrenees.

As early as the 12th century BCE, the Phoenicians, a thalassocratic civilization originally from
the Eastern Mediterranean, began to explore the coastline of the peninsula, interacting with the
metal-rich communities in the southwest of the peninsula (contemporarily known as the semi-
mythical Tartessos).[44] Around 1100 BCE, Phoenician merchants founded the trading colony of
Gadir or Gades (modern day Cádiz). Phoenicians established a permanent trading port in the
Gadir colony c. 800 BCE in response to the increasing demand of silver from the Assyrian
Empire.[45]

The seafaring Phoenicians, Greeks and Carthaginians successively settled along the
Mediterranean coast and founded trading colonies there over several centuries. In the 8th century
BCE, the first Greek colonies, such as Emporion (modern Empúries), were founded along the
Mediterranean coast on the east, leaving the south coast to the Phoenicians.

Together with the presence of Phoenician and Greek epigraphy, several paleohispanic scripts
developed in the Iberian Peninsula along the 1st millennium BCE. The development of a
primordial paleohispanic script antecessor to the rest of paleohispanic scripts (originally
supposed to be a non-redundant semi-syllabary) derived from the Phoenician alphabet and
originated in Southwestern Iberia by the 7th century BCE has been tentatively proposed. [46]

In the sixth century BCE, the Carthaginians arrived in the peninsula while struggling with the
Greeks for control of the Western Mediterranean. Their most important colony was Carthago
Nova (modern-day Cartagena, Spain).

History
Roman rule

See also: Roman conquest of the Iberian Peninsula

Roman conquest: 220 BCE – 19 BCE

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.[47] Local rebellions were quelled, with a 195 Roman campaign
under Cato the Elder ravaging hotspots of resistance in the northeastern Ebro Valley and beyond.
[48]
The threat to Roman interests posed by Celtiberians and Lusitanians in uncontrolled territories
lingered in.[49] 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.[50]

An example of the interaction of slaving and ecocide, the aftermath of the conquest increased
mining extractive processes in the southwest of the peninsula (which required a massive number
of forced laborers, initially from Hispania and latter also from the Gallic borderlands and other
locations of the Mediterranean), bringing in a far-reaching environmental outcome vis-à-vis
long-term global pollution records, with levels of atmospheric pollution from mining across the
Mediterranean during Classical Antiquity having no match until the Industrial Revolution. [51][52]

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 (sigillata pottery, colourless glass, linen garments) fish and
fish sauce (garum), dry crops (such as wheat and, more importantly, esparto), olive oil, and wine.
[53]

The process of Romanization spurred on throughout the first century BC.[54] The peninsula was
also the battleground of civil wars between rulers of the Roman republic, such as the Sertorian
War or the conflict between Caesar and Pompey later in the century.[55]

During their 600-year occupation of the Iberian Peninsula, the Romans introduced the Latin
language that influenced many of the languages that exist today in the Iberian peninsula.

See also: Lusitania, Hispania Tarraconensis, and Hispania Baetica

Pre-modern Iberia

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

Germanic and Byzantine rule c. 560

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[citation needed]. However,
Balearic Islands remained in Byzantine hands until Umayyad conquest, which began in 703 CE
and was completed in 902 CE.[56][57]
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: ‫اإلندلس‬, tr. al-ʾAndalūs, possibly "Land of the Vandals"),[58][59] 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, [60] (muwalladum or
Muladí).[61][62] After a long process, spurred on in the 9th and 10th centuries, the majority of the
population in Al-Andalus eventually converted to Islam.[63] The Muslims were referred to by the
generic name Moors.[64] 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.[65] Arab elites could be further
divided in the Yemenites (first wave) and the Syrians (second wave).[66] Christians and Jews were
allowed to live as part of a stratified society under the dhimmah system,[67] although Jews became
very important in certain fields.[68] Some Christians migrated to the Northern Christian kingdoms,
while those who stayed in Al-Andalus progressively arabised and became known as musta'arab
(mozarabs).[69] The slave population comprised the Ṣaqāliba (literally meaning "slavs", although
they were slaves of generic European origin) as well as Sudanese slaves.[70]

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.[71] 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.[72]

Islamic rule: al-Andalus c. 1000

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".[73] Abd-ar-Rahman III also managed to expand the clout of Al-Andalus across
the Strait of Gibraltar,[73] waging war, as well as his successor, against the Fatimid Empire.[74]

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.[75]
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.[c] 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").[77]

Two warriors embrace before the siege of Chincoya Castle

(Cantigas de Santa Maria).

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);[78][79] 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.[80] 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.[81]
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.[82] The Almohads, another North-African Muslim sect of Masmuda Berber
origin who had previously undermined the Almoravid rule south of the Strait of Gibraltar,[83] first
entered the peninsula in 1146.[84]

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.[85] 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.[86]

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.[87]

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.[88] 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. [89]

Merchants from Genoa and Pisa were conducting an intense trading activity in Catalonia already
by the 12th century, and later in Portugal.[90] 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.[91] 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.[92] The Portuguese would later
detach their trade to some extent from Genoese influence.[90] The Nasrid Kingdom of Granada,
neighbouring the Strait of Gibraltar and founded upon a vassalage relationship with the Crown of
Castile,[93] 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.[94]

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.[95] 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. [96]

Map of the Iberian Peninsula and Northern Africa (inverted) by Fra

Mauro (ca. 1450)

The 1348–1350 bubonic plague devastated large parts of the Iberian Peninsula, leading to a
sudden economic cessation.[97] Many settlements in northern Castile and Catalonia were left
forsaken.[97] The plague marked the start of the hostility and downright violence towards
religious minorities (particularly the Jews) as an additional consequence in the Iberian realms. [98]

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.
[99]
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.[100] After the accession of Henry III to the throne of Castile, the
populace, exasperated by the preponderance of Jewish influence, perpetrated a massacre of Jews
at Toledo. In 1391, mobs went from town to town throughout Castile and Aragon, killing an
estimated 50,000 Jews,[101][102][103][104][105] or even as many as 100,000, according to Jane Gerber.[106]
Women and children were sold as slaves to Muslims, and many synagogues were converted into
churches. According to Hasdai Crescas, about 70 Jewish communities were destroyed.[107]

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.[108] 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.[109] During the Late Middle Ages, the Jews acquired considerable power and
influence in Castile and Aragon.[110]
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.[111] 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.[111] Following the
advance in the conquest of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada, the seizure of Málaga entailed the
addition of another notable slave centre for the Crown of Castile.[112]

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).[113]

For three decades in the 15th century, the Hermandad de las Marismas, the trading association
formed by the ports of Castile along the Cantabrian coast, resembling in some ways the
Hanseatic League, fought against the latter,[citation needed] an ally of England, a rival of Castile in
political and economic terms.[114] Castile sought to claim the Gulf of Biscay as its own.[115] In
1419, the powerful Castilian navy thoroughly defeated a Hanseatic fleet in La Rochelle.[100][115]

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.[88]

See also: Massacre of 1391

Iberian Kingdoms in 1400

The last Muslim stronghold, Granada, was conquered by a combined Castilian and Aragonese
force in 1492. As many as 100,000 Moors died or were enslaved in the military campaign, while
200,000 fled to North Africa.[116] 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.[117][118][119][120] Approximately 3,000,000 Muslims fled or
were driven out of Spain between 1492 and 1610.[121] Historian Henry Kamen estimates that
some 25,000 Jews died en route from Spain.[122] The Jews were also expelled from Sicily and
Sardinia, which were under Aragonese rule, and an estimated 37,000 to 100,000 Jews left.[123]
In 1497, King Manuel I of Portugal forced all Jews in his kingdom to convert or leave. That
same year he expelled all Muslims that were not slaves,[124] and in 1502 the Catholic Monarchs
followed suit, imposing the choice of conversion to Christianity or exile and loss of property.
Many Jews and Muslims fled to North Africa and the Ottoman Empire, while others publicly
converted to Christianity and became known respectively as Marranos and Moriscos (after the
old term Moors).[125] However, many of these continued to practice their religion in secret. The
Moriscos revolted several times and were ultimately forcibly expelled from Spain in the early
17th century. From 1609 to 1614, over 300,000 Moriscos were sent on ships to North Africa and
other locations, and, of this figure, around 50,000 died resisting the expulsion, and 60,000 died
on the journey.[126][127]

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.
[128]

Modern Iberia

Expelling of the moriscos in the Port of Denia

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.[129] 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.[130] 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.[131] The 16th century was one of
population growth with increased pressure over resources;[132] 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.[133] Most of the Moriscos remained in
Spain after the Morisco revolt in Las Alpujarras during the mid-16th century, but roughly
300,000 of them were expelled from the country in 1609–1614, and emigrated en masse to North
Africa.[134]
 An anonymous picture depicting Lisbon, the centre of the
slave trade, by the late 16th century.[135]

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.[136] 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.[137]

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).[138] 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.[139] 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.[139] 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,[140] followed at great
distance by Porto and Évora (both roughly accounting for 12,500 inhabitants).[141] Throughout
most of the 16th century, both Lisbon and Seville were among the Western Europe's largest and
most dynamic cities.[142]

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,[143] the urban dynamism chiefly
moving to Northern Europe.[143] 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.[144] 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.[145] 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.[146] 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.[147]

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.[148]