Half the pleasure of traveling is in the anticipation. There is magic in waiting for the day to come, the expectation of being somewhere new, somewhere exotic, inhaling strangely fragrant air and feeling foreign breezes caressing your skin. To get the most out of your pre-trip daydream, I always think it’s worth learning a bit about where you’re going before you set foot in the door.

There are cities that can enchant you, where the flagstones of the squares and plazas can capture your imagination, basilicas and palaces where you can succumb to reflect on the generations of feet that stepped on the same place where you are now. But only if you have some idea of ​​its history.

Spain is one of those evocative destinations…a vast backdrop for some of the most intriguing, grandiose and turbulent stories ever written. In case you find yourself bound for Spain this year or next, here’s a random handful of geographical, historical, and other facts to jump-start your daydreams while you pack.

Occupying eighty-five percent of the Iberian Peninsula at the southwestern tip of Europe, Spain is the third largest country on the continent. Its outlying territories include the Balearic Islands (Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza) and the Canary Islands more than six hundred miles to the south, off the coast of North Africa.

Today’s Spain is an exuberant mix of surprising contrasts, a place where the traditional and the ultra-modern coexist. Spanish identity has been shaped by a long and checkered history and by the great footprints left by those who first invaded and colonized the land.

The ancient Greeks and Phoenicians swept across the peninsula ahead of the Romans who arrived in 300 BC. The imperial conquerors brought their highly developed language and architecture, their agricultural techniques, and unusual new crops such as wine grapes and wheat. Evidence of renowned Roman engineering, such as the amphitheater in Mérida and the great aqueduct in Segovia, remains in many parts of Spain today.

After the Romans came the Visigoths, one of the many Germanic tribes that had converted to Christianity. They ruled Iberia from their court in Barcelona for three hundred years. Next to take center stage in Spain’s drama were the North African Moors who occupied Iberia for seven centuries, imprinting what would become the Spanish language, Spanish architecture, and Spanish cuisine with their own unique oriental characteristics. His influence and legacy are particularly visible in the south, in places like Granada, where the great Muslim fortress, the Alhambra, still stands.

Until the Moors were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492, Spain remained a disconnected group of separate kingdoms. Andalusia, Galicia, Leon, Castile, Aragon, and Catalonia were autonomous and independent until Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand began the process of uniting them into a single nation, Spain.

The turn of the century that followed ushered in Spain’s Golden Age. Intrepid explorers such as Columbus, Pizarro, and Cortés sailed around the world, and for the next two hundred years Spain achieved naval and economic supremacy, making it one of the leading colonial powers of the time.

Predominantly Catholic today, the Spain of earlier times was traditionally a cosmopolitan mixed society with a reputation for humanistic tolerance. Medieval Moorish culture from 750 to 1050 was highly cultured, particularly advanced in mathematics and medicine. For centuries, a sizeable Jewish population that valued learning and philosophy endowed Spain with its wisdom and business acumen. Spanish Jews, Moors and Christians lived together in what we would now consider a very progressive liberal society. Salamanca’s great university was founded in the early 13th century and became Europe’s brightest academic beacon, second only to the famous bastions of education founded in the previous century in Paris, Bologna and Oxford. for several hundred
years the Bachelor of Science in Salamanca was the most coveted credential to which a scholar could aspire.

Over the centuries many empires scaled Iberia’s mountain ranges, inhabited its shores and marched across its arid plains. In the end they all succumbed to the siren song of Spain and were assimilated into their culture, impacting and changing it, as much as they were impacted and changed by it.

Today’s Spain is a parliamentary monarchy made up of autonomous communities. Each has a distinctive landscape, its own unique cultural history and traditions, a regional cuisine, and sometimes a different language that distinguishes its natives. The heady energy of Spain can seduce, mystify and hypnotize. Few visitors escape the lure of its charms. You can ski to the peaks and snow caps of the Pyrenees, sunbathe on endless white sand beaches, rub elbows with Marbella’s jet set, or take a dusty road to the white villages and find your soul in the raw emotion of Andalusian gypsy flamenco. . . Just bring an open heart… you won’t find a warmer welcome anywhere on the continent.

Copyright © 2006 Sue Rauch