History of Spain: a timeline

78 moments in the history of Spain, in order, each with what happened and why it matters.

Eras

  1. Before 1492 (15000 BC–1492)
  2. Empire and the colonial Americas (1492–1808)
  3. Revolutions and new nations (1808–1898)
  4. Revolution, war and dictatorship (1898–1975)
  5. Democracy and today (1975–)

Before 1492 (15000 BC–1492)

  1. between 17000 BC and 12000 BC: The painters of Altamira — In a cave near Santillana del Mar, in Cantabria, Stone Age hunters painted bison, horses and deer, using the bumps of the rock to give them shape.
  2. c. 8th century BC: The Phoenicians found Gadir — Sailors from Tyre, in today's Lebanon, founded a trading post on an island off the Atlantic coast and called it Gadir, 'the walled place': today's Cádiz.
  3. c. 8th century BC–550 BC: Tartessos, the kingdom of silver — Greek writers told of a fabulously rich kingdom in the far west called Tartessos, ruled, said Herodotus, by a long-lived king.
  4. c. 570s BC: Greeks settle at Emporion — Around 575 BC Greek traders from Phocaea, on the coast of today's Turkey, settled on a small promontory in the bay of Roses in Catalonia, then moved to the…
  5. c. 5th century BC: Iberians, Celts and Celtiberians — In the centuries before Rome the peninsula was a patchwork of peoples.
  6. 219 BC: Hannibal takes Saguntum — After losing the First Punic War, Carthage rebuilt its power in southern Spain, where Hamilcar Barca settled at Gades in 237 BC and his family mined silver and…
  7. 218–19 BC: Rome lands in Hispania — The Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage began after Hannibal took Saguntum, a city allied to Rome.
  8. 133 BC: The fall of Numantia — Numantia, a Celtiberian hill town near today's Soria, had defeated several Roman armies.
  9. 25 BC: Augustus founds Mérida — In 25 BC, as his generals were finishing the Cantabrian wars, Augustus founded a colony for discharged veterans (emeriti) on the river Guadiana and named it…
  10. 98: Trajan, an emperor from Hispania — Marcus Ulpius Traianus was born in 53 AD in Itálica, a Roman town near today's Seville, where his family, Italian in origin, had settled.
  11. 8 May 589: The Visigoths become Catholic — The Visigoths, a Germanic people, first came into Hispania in the 410s, and by the late sixth century they ruled almost all of it from Toledo, their capital.
  12. c. 600–636: Isidore of Seville writes down the ancient world — Isidore succeeded his brother Leander as bishop of Seville around 600 and held the see until his death in 636.
  13. 654: One law for Goths and Romans — In 654 King Recceswinth issued the Liber Iudiciorum, the Book of Judgements, a code in Latin that applied to everyone in his kingdom, Goth or Hispano-Roman,…
  14. 711: The Muslim conquest — In the spring of 711 Tariq ibn Ziyad, a Berber general serving the Umayyad caliphate, crossed from Africa with about 7,000 men.
  15. between 718 and 722: Pelayo at Covadonga — In the mountains of Asturias a nobleman called Pelayo defeated a Muslim force at Covadonga, in 718 or 722: historians disagree on the year.
  16. 14 May 756: Abd al-Rahman I founds the emirate of Córdoba — When the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyad caliphs of Damascus in 750 and hunted down the family, one grandson of a caliph escaped.
  17. c. 780s: The Great Mosque of Córdoba is begun — In the 780s, near the end of his reign, Abd al-Rahman I began a great congregational mosque on the site of the Visigothic basilica of San Vicente, where…
  18. between 820 and 830: The tomb of St James — Some time around 830 (the exact year is not known) Theodemir, bishop of Iria Flavia in Galicia, declared that a Roman-era tomb found in a field was the grave…
  19. 16 January 929: The Caliphate of Córdoba — On 16 January 929 Abd al-Rahman III, emir of al-Andalus, declared himself caliph, a title that made him the equal of the rival caliphs in Baghdad and North…
  20. between 950 and 1100: The Glosas Emilianenses: the first written Romance? — In the margins of a Latin codex from the monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla, in La Rioja, a monk wrote short notes explaining Latin words in his own Romance…
  21. 25 May 1085: Alfonso VI takes Toledo — After the caliphate broke up in 1031, Toledo was the capital of one of the largest taifa kingdoms.
  22. 17 June 1094: El Cid takes Valencia — Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, a Castilian knight born near Burgos, was exiled by King Alfonso VI and for several years fought for the Muslim king of Zaragoza, which…
  23. between 1140 and 1207: The Cantar de mio Cid — The Cantar de mio Cid is the great epic poem of medieval Spain and the first major work of literature in Castilian.
  24. 16 July 1212: The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa — On 16 July 1212, in the Sierra Morena near Santa Elena, in the province of Jaén, an alliance led by Alfonso VIII of Castile, with Peter II of Aragon and Sancho…
  25. between 1236 and 1248: Valencia and Seville fall to the Christian kings — The generation after Las Navas saw the map of the peninsula redrawn.
  26. 1252–1284: Alfonso the Wise and the Castilian language — Alfonso X of Castile, king from 1252 to 1284, is called el Sabio, the Wise or the Learned.
  27. 1333–1391: The Nasrids build the Alhambra — The red hill above Granada had carried fortifications since the ninth century, but it was Muhammad ibn Nasr, called al-Ahmar, founder of the Nasrid dynasty,…
  28. March 1348–1350: The Black Death reaches the peninsula — The plague that killed perhaps a third of Europe between 1347 and 1352 arrived in the Crown of Aragon by sea.
  29. 6 June 1391–1392: The anti-Jewish riots of 1391 — For years Ferrand Martínez, archdeacon of Écija, had preached against the Jews of Seville.

Empire and the colonial Americas (1492–1808)

  1. 19 October 1469: Isabel and Fernando marry — On 19 October 1469, in Valladolid, Isabel, heir to Castile, secretly married Fernando, heir to Aragon, against the wishes of her half-brother King Henry IV.
  2. 1492: Nebrija's Castilian grammar — In 1492, the year Granada fell and Columbus sailed, Elio Antonio de Nebrija published his Gramática de la lengua castellana, the first grammar of Castilian and…
  3. 2 January 1492: The fall of Granada — After a ten-year war, Boabdil, the last Nasrid king, handed Granada over to Isabel and Fernando on 2 January 1492, ending almost eight centuries of Muslim rule…
  4. 31 March 1492: The expulsion of the Jews — On 31 March 1492 Isabel and Fernando ordered every Jew in their kingdoms to become Christian or leave by the end of July.
  5. 12 October 1492: Columbus reaches America — Christopher Columbus, a sailor most historians agree came from Genoa, persuaded Isabel and Fernando to back a voyage west to Asia; the agreement was signed at…
  6. 7 June 1494: The Treaty of Tordesillas — On 7 June 1494, in the Castilian town of Tordesillas, Spain and Portugal agreed to divide the world they were discovering.
  7. 1512: The Laws of Burgos — In December 1511 the Dominican Antonio de Montesinos preached a sermon on Hispaniola asking the colonists by what right they held the Taíno in servitude.
  8. 1520–23 April 1521: The revolt of the Comuneros — The young Charles I arrived in Spain in 1517 surrounded by Flemish advisers and asking for money.
  9. 6 September 1522: Elcano sails round the world — Five ships and about 240 men left Sanlúcar de Barrameda in September 1519 under the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan, paid for by Charles I, to reach…
  10. 20 November 1542: The New Laws of the Indies — On 20 November 1542 Charles V signed the Leyes Nuevas, the New Laws 'for the good treatment and preservation of the Indians'.
  11. August 1550–1551: The Valladolid debate — In 1550 Charles V suspended new conquests and called theologians and jurists to the Colegio de San Gregorio in Valladolid to decide whether Spain's wars in the…
  12. 1554: Lazarillo de Tormes is printed — In 1554 four printers, in Burgos, Alcalá de Henares, Medina del Campo and Antwerp, issued a short anonymous book: the life of Lázaro, a boy from the river…
  13. 1555–1571: Friars write the first grammars of American languages — To preach in the languages of the Americas, missionaries had to study them, and in doing so they wrote the first grammars and dictionaries of Nahuatl, Quechua…
  14. May 1561: Philip II moves the court to Madrid — Until 1561 the Spanish court moved from city to city.
  15. 1562: Teresa of Ávila founds San José — Teresa de Ahumada, born in Ávila in 1515, entered the Carmelite convent of the Encarnación in 1535 and, after years of illness and mystical experience, decided…
  16. 1563–1584: Philip II builds El Escorial — In a letter of 1561 Philip II explained why he wanted a monastery in the Guadarrama hills north of Madrid: a tomb for his parents and himself, dedicated to St…
  17. 7 October 1571: The Battle of Lepanto — On 7 October 1571, in the Gulf of Patras off western Greece, the fleet of the Holy League (Spain, Venice, the Papal States and smaller allies) under Don Juan…
  18. 1580–1640: Philip II becomes king of Portugal — When the young King Sebastian of Portugal died in battle in Morocco in 1578 and his old uncle Cardinal Henry in 1580, Philip II, son of a Portuguese princess,…
  19. 30 May 1588–October 1588: The Armada sails against England — In 1588 Philip II sent a fleet of about 130 ships from Lisbon to escort an army from Flanders across the Channel and invade the England of Elizabeth I, who was…
  20. January 1605: Don Quixote is published — Early in 1605 the Madrid printer Juan de la Cuesta published the first part of Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes, a former soldier who had been…
  21. 1609: Lope de Vega and the comedia — Lope de Vega, born in Madrid in 1562, sailed with the Armada in 1588 (he claimed), loved scandalously, was exiled from the court and became the most prolific…
  22. April 1609–January 1614: The expulsion of the Moriscos — The Moriscos were descendants of Spain's Muslims who had been forced to convert to Christianity in the early sixteenth century, in 1502 in Castile and in 1526…
  23. 1656: Velázquez paints Las Meninas — Diego Velázquez, born in Seville in 1599 and court painter to Philip IV since 1623, painted Las Meninas ('The Maids of Honour') in 1656 in a room of the…
  24. 1701–1714: The War of the Spanish Succession — Charles II, the last Spanish Habsburg, died childless in 1700 and left his crowns to a French prince, Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV.
  25. 26 March 1713–1750: The slave asiento goes to Britain — From the sixteenth century the Crown sold the asiento, a monopoly contract to supply enslaved Africans to its American colonies, to Portuguese, Genoese, Dutch…
  26. 3 August 1713: The Real Academia Española is founded — In 1713 Juan Manuel Fernández Pacheco, marquis of Villena, gathered a group of scholars in his Madrid house to found an academy for the Spanish language on the…
  27. 1726–1739: The Diccionario de autoridades — The Academy's first great work was a dictionary 'as copious as could be made'.
  28. 1741–2010: The ñ and the shaping of Spanish spelling — The ñ is the letter the world associates with Spanish.
  29. c. 1765–1788: The Bourbon reforms — Under Charles III (1759–88) the Crown set out to govern the Americas more tightly and profitably.
  30. 1767: Charles III expels the Jesuits — In 1767 Charles III ordered the Society of Jesus out of Spain and all its American and Asian dominions, as Portugal and France had already done.

Revolutions and new nations (1808–1898)

  1. 2 May 1808: Madrid rises against Napoleon — In 1808 French troops were in Spain, and Napoleon had drawn the Spanish royal family to Bayonne, planning to make his brother Joseph king.
  2. 19 March 1812: The Constitution of Cádiz — While French armies held most of Spain, a parliament, the Cortes, met in besieged Cádiz, with deputies from Spain and from the American colonies.
  3. October 1886: The abolition of slavery in Cuba — Cuba's sugar plantations made it one of the last slave societies in the Americas.
  4. 24 February 1895–1898: José Martí and the Cuban War of Independence — José Martí, born in Havana in 1853 to poor Spanish immigrants, was sentenced to hard labour at sixteen for his writings against Spain, exiled, educated in…
  5. 1898: The Disaster of '98 — Most of Spain's American empire had won independence in the 1810s and 1820s, but Cuba and Puerto Rico remained, along with the Philippines.

Revolution, war and dictatorship (1898–1975)

  1. 16 December 1927–August 1936: The Generation of '27 and Lorca — From 16 to 18 December 1927 a group of young poets travelled from Madrid to Seville, invited by the bullfighter and writer Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, to honour…
  2. 14 April 1931: The Second Republic — Republican parties won in the big cities in the local elections of 12 April 1931, and on 14 April the Second Republic was proclaimed; King Alfonso XIII left…
  3. 17 July 1936–1 April 1939: The Spanish Civil War — On 17 and 18 July 1936 part of the army, with General Francisco Franco among its leaders, rose against the Republic.
  4. 1951: The Association of Academies of the Spanish Language — In 1951 the president of Mexico, Miguel Alemán, convened the first congress of all the academies of the Spanish language in Mexico City.

Democracy and today (1975–)

  1. 20 November 1975–15 June 1977: Franco dies and the Transition begins — Francisco Franco died in Madrid on 20 November 1975, after thirty-six years in power.
  2. 6 December 1978: The Constitution of 1978 — On 6 December 1978 Spaniards approved a new constitution in a referendum, with almost 88 per cent of the votes cast, and it came into force on 29 December.
  3. 6 December 1978: Spain's other languages become co-official — Spanish is not the only language of Spain.
  4. 23–24 February 1981: The coup attempt of 23-F — On the evening of 23 February 1981, while Congress was voting on a new prime minister, Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo, Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero burst in with…
  5. 1 January 1986: Spain joins the European Community — In 1962 Franco's Spain asked to be associated with the European Economic Community, but the Community would not take in a dictatorship.
  6. March 1991: The Instituto Cervantes is created — In March 1991 the Spanish government created the Instituto Cervantes, a public institution whose founding law gives it the task of promoting the teaching,…
  7. 2009–2011: One grammar and one spelling for 22 countries — At the end of the 20th century the academies changed their way of working.
  8. c. 2015: The Venezuelan exodus — Venezuela, once the richest country in South America and a magnet for immigrants from Spain, Italy, Portugal and Colombia, has in a decade become the source of…
  9. 24 October 2019: Franco is moved from the Valley of the Fallen — For 44 years Franco lay in the basilica of the Valley of the Fallen, outside Madrid, a monument built between 1940 and 1958, partly by political prisoners,…
  10. 28 October 2025: Spanish today: almost 635 million speakers — According to the Instituto Cervantes's yearbook El español en el mundo 2025, presented in Madrid on 28 October 2025, almost 635 million people speak Spanish:…

Changes over time