Spain 

(Spanish: España, [esˈpaɲa] ( listen)), or the Kingdom of Spain (Reino de España),[f] is a

country primarily located in southwestern Europe with parts of territory in the Atlantic Ocean and
across the Mediterranean Sea.[11][g] The largest part of Spain is situated on the Iberian Peninsula;
its territory also includes the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, the Balearic Islands in the
Mediterranean Sea, and the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla in Africa. The country's
mainland is bordered to the south by Gibraltar; to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea;
to the north by France, Andorra and the Bay of Biscay; and to the west by Portugal and the
Atlantic Ocean. With an area of 505,990 km2 (195,360 sq mi), Spain is the second-largest
country in the European Union (EU) and, with a population exceeding 47.4 million, the fourth-
most populous EU member state. Spain's capital and largest city is Madrid; other major urban
areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Zaragoza, Málaga, Murcia, Palma de Mallorca, Las
Palmas de Gran Canaria and Bilbao.
Anatomically modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 42,000 years ago.
[12]
 Pre-Roman peoples dwelled in the territory, in addition to the development of coastal trading
colonies by Phoenicians and Ancient Greeks and the brief Carthaginian rule over the
Mediterranean coastline. The Roman conquest and colonization of the peninsula (Hispania)
ensued, bringing a Roman acculturation of the population. Hispania remained under Roman rule
until the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fourth century, which ushered in
the migration of Germanic peoples and the Alans into the peninsula. Eventually,
the Visigoths emerged as the dominant power in the peninsula by the fifth century. In the early
eighth century, most of the peninsula was conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate and during early
Islamic rule, Al-Andalus became the dominant peninsular power, centered in Córdoba. Several
Christian kingdoms emerged in Northern Iberia, chief among
them León, Castile, Aragón, Portugal, and Navarre and over the next seven centuries, an
intermittent southward expansion of these kingdoms, known as Reconquista, culminated with the
Christian seizure of the Emirate of Granada in 1492. Jews and Muslims were forced to choose
between conversion to Catholicism or expulsion and the Morisco converts were
eventually expelled. The dynastic union of the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon was
followed by the annexation of Navarre and the 1580 incorporation of Portugal (which ended in
1640). In the wake of the Spanish colonization of the Americas after 1492, the Crown came to
hold a large overseas empire, which underpinned the emergence of a global trading system
primarily fuelled by the precious metals extracted in the New World.[13] Centralisation of the
administration and further state-building in mainland Spain ensued in the 18th and 19th
centuries, during which the Crown saw the loss of the bulk of its American colonies a few years
after the Peninsular War. The country veered between different political regimes; monarchy and
republic, and following a 1936–39 devastating civil war, the Francoist dictatorship that lasted until
1975. With the restoration of democracy under the Constitution of Spain and the entry into the
European Union in 1986, the country experienced profound social and political change as well as
an important economic growth.
Spanish art, music, literature and cuisine have been influential worldwide, particularly in Western
Europe and the Americas. As a reflection of its large cultural wealth, Spain has the world's fourth-
largest number of World Heritage Sites (49) and is the world's second-most visited country. Its
cultural influence extends over 570 million Hispanophones, making Spanish the world's second-
most spoken native language.[14]
Spain is a developed country, a secular parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy,
[15]
 with King Felipe VI as head of state. It is a high-income country and an advanced economy,
[16]
 with the world's fourteenth-largest economy by nominal GDP and the sixteenth-largest by
PPP. Spain has one of the longest life expectancies in the world at 82 years in 2020.[17] It ranks
particularly high in healthcare quality,[18] with its healthcare system considered to be one of the
most efficient worldwide.[19] It is a world leader in organ transplants and organ donation.[20][21] Spain
is a member of the United Nations, the European Union, the Eurozone, the Council of
Europe (CoE), the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI), the Union for the Mediterranean,
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD), Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the World
Trade Organization (WTO) and many
The Renaissance scholar Antonio de Nebrija proposed that the word Hispania evolved from
the Iberian word Hispalis, meaning "city of the western world".
Jesús Luis Cunchillos [es] argued that the root of the term span is the Phoenician word spy,
meaning "to forge metals". Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean "the land where metals are forged".
[23]
 It may be a derivation of the Phoenician I-Shpania, meaning "island of rabbits", "land of
rabbits" or "edge", a reference to Spain's location at the end of the Mediterranean; Roman coins
struck in the region from the reign of Hadrian show a female figure with a rabbit at her feet,
[24]
 and Strabo called it the "land of the rabbits".[25] The word in question (compare modern
Hebrew Shafan,  ‫ )שפן‬actually means "Hyrax", possibly due to Phoenicians confusing the two
animals.[26]
Hispania may derive from the poetic use of the term Hesperia, reflecting the Greek perception of
Italy as a "western land" or "land of the setting sun" (Hesperia, Ἑσπερία in Greek) and Spain,
being still further west, as Hesperia ultima.[27]
There is the claim that "Hispania" derives from the Basque word Ezpanna meaning "edge" or
"border", another reference to the fact that the Iberian Peninsula constitutes the southwest corner
of the European continent.[27]
Two 15th-century Spanish Jewish scholars, Don Isaac Abrabanel and Solomon ibn Verga, gave
an explanation now considered folkloric: both men wrote in two different published works that the
first Jews to reach Spain were brought by ship by Phiros who was confederate with the king of
Babylon when he laid siege to Jerusalem. Phiros was a Grecian by birth, but who had been given
a kingdom in Spain. Phiros became related by marriage to Espan, the nephew of king Heracles,
who also ruled over a kingdom in Spain. Heracles later renounced his throne in preference for his
native Greece, leaving his kingdom to his nephew, Espan, from whom the country
of España (Spain) took its name. Based upon their testimonies, this eponym would have already
been in use in Spain by c. 350 BCE.[28]