Spain: Spain on the Iberian Peninsula offers more than sunshine, football, and pilgrimage routes. The distinct experiences of Castile, Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia, Andalusia, and other regions continue to shape the country alongside memories of empire, scars from civil war, the transition to democracy, secularisation, and new migration. Keys to the culture: sobremesa · convivencia · pueblo · memoria histórica. Geography and history, the church, films and books, and prayer for this land.
Spain on the Iberian Peninsula offers more than sunshine, football, and pilgrimage routes. The distinct experiences of Castile, Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia, Andalusia, and other regions continue to shape the country alongside memories of empire, scars from civil war, the transition to democracy, secularisation, and new migration.
Spain occupies most of the Iberian Peninsula. It meets France and Andorra across the Pyrenees to the north and Portugal to the west, with coasts on the Atlantic, the Bay of Biscay, and the Mediterranean. The Balearic and Canary Islands and the North African cities of Ceuta and Melilla also form part of the country. Mountain ranges divide the Meseta plateau in the peninsula’s centre. The northern Atlantic coast is wet, while the southeast is relatively dry. The Tagus, Ebro, and Guadalquivir rivers connect agriculture and cities with disputes over water. Heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, and floods are exposing the cost of the “eternal sunshine” promoted to tourists.
Madrid is the political and transport centre; Barcelona is known for Catalan culture and its industrial port. The Basque Country, Galicia, Andalusia, and the islands each have distinct languages, histories, and economies. Spanish is the official language nationwide. Catalan or Valencian, Basque, Galician, and Aranese have differing legal status in their respective regions. Population growth increasingly depends on immigration, and communities from Latin America, Morocco, Romania, Ukraine, China, and many other places are rewriting everyday urban life together. Spain is one country, but it has never had only one accent, one memory, or one form of belonging.
The Iberian Peninsula was home from early times to Iberians, Celts, and Phoenician and Greek settlements, and later most of it became part of the Roman Empire. The Visigothic kingdom ruled the peninsula after Roman authority receded. Muslim armies from North Africa arrived from 711, and under successive dynasties al-Andalus became an important world of agriculture, cities, scholarship, and cross-cultural exchange. Christians, Muslims, and Jews at times cooperated and at times fought within unequal systems. Later accounts of convivencia, or coexistence, should neither romanticise this past nor reduce it to perpetual war.
Christian kingdoms in the north gradually expanded. The marriage of the Castilian and Aragonese crowns deepened their union. Granada fell in 1492; in the same year, the monarchs expelled Jews and sponsored Columbus’s voyage across the Atlantic. Muslims were subsequently forced to convert and later expelled. The Spanish Empire expanded through the Americas, Asia, and Europe, building wealth through conquest, slavery, silver, and mission, while also leaving mixed societies, languages, and violence. Wars, fiscal crises, and centralisation under Habsburg and Bourbon monarchs repeatedly reshaped the country.
During the nineteenth century, Napoleon’s invasion, conflicts between liberalism and conservatism, colonial independence, and repeated civil wars tore society apart. The loss of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines in 1898 prompted another crisis of national identity. The Second Republic, established in 1931, pursued secularisation, education, and reform but also faced class conflict, regional disputes, and anticlerical hostility. A military rebellion in 1936 began the Civil War. Both sides committed violence. Franco’s forces prevailed with support from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, establishing a dictatorship in 1939 that executed, imprisoned, and exiled opponents and suppressed public use of Catalan, Basque, and other languages.
After Franco died in 1975, the monarchy, political parties, trade unions, and social forces advanced a transition to democracy. The 1978 constitution established a parliamentary monarchy and a system of autonomous communities, and Spain joined the European Communities in 1986. The transition avoided renewed mass conflict, but at the cost of a long silence about many victims and mass graves. In the twenty-first century, financial crisis, youth unemployment, the Catalan independence dispute, migration, and housing problems have exposed inequality. Historical memory laws have also advanced the search for the disappeared and removal of symbols of dictatorship. Democracy is not the quiet purchased by forgetting the past. It allows different memories to be spoken within law, justice, and a shared life.
Christianity entered Iberia under Roman rule, and important episcopal centres and councils developed in the Visigothic era. Christian communities continued under Muslim rule. As the northern kingdoms expanded, pilgrimage to Santiago, monasteries, urban dioceses, and military conquest became intertwined. Intellectual exchange among medieval Jews, Muslims, and Christians was real, while church and crown also participated in exclusion. The Spanish Inquisition, established in 1478, investigated converts suspected of secretly keeping their previous faith and became an instrument of religious and state control. Jews were expelled in 1492, and Muslims were later forced to convert and expelled as well.
Sixteenth-century Catholic reform in Spain produced the spiritual and missionary traditions of Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Ávila, and John of the Cross, while harshly suppressing Protestant thought. Imperial missionaries accompanied colonisation in the Americas and the Philippines. Some defended Indigenous people and documented their languages; others bound the gospel to royal power, forced labour, and cultural destruction. This history cannot be summarised only as “bringing faith to the world,” nor should every missionary be cast in the same role.
Liberal governments in the nineteenth century confiscated church property and promoted separation of church and state, deepening the Catholic Church’s alliance with the conservative order. Under the Second Republic, religious orders, schools, and church property faced restrictions, while anticlerical violence killed clergy and believers. Franco’s forces then subjected their opponents to mass repression during the Civil War. Many bishops described the rebellion as a “crusade,” and after the war the church received educational and public privileges from the regime. Some clergy, local believers, and figures in the Basque church opposed violence. Writing the church solely as a victim in this period obscures its contribution to the dictatorship’s legitimacy.
After the Second Vatican Council, worker ministries, base communities, and some bishops increasingly supported human rights and democracy. The 1978 constitution established that Spain had no state religion, while the government signed agreements with the Holy See in 1979. Catholicism retains deep influence in schools, charities, festivals, and family ceremonies, even as self-identification and participation continue to decline. Evangelical, Orthodox, Muslim, and other religious communities have grown with migration. Within Catholicism, historical abuse, financial transparency, women’s roles, and the memory of dictatorship also demand attention.
What churches elsewhere can learn from Spain is how a former majority church responds when it no longer possesses unquestioned authority: whether it will repent, protect survivors, work with neighbours of different beliefs, and bear witness to Christ through a credible life rather than institutional privilege. Pilgrimage and Holy Week can carry faith, or become cultural consumption alone. Renewal begins with real accompaniment, accountability, and welcome in local parishes and congregations.