The history of Northern Spain

Inhabited from remote times, the varied regions of Northern Spain have played a significant role in the peninsula’s history. It was from here that the Reconquest began, and from here that many of Spain’s great navigators originated. The north was involved in the Carlist Wars, and was a Republican stronghold during the Spanish Civil War.

PREHISTORY

Remains of some of our earliest pre-human ancestors were discovered in caves at Atapuerca, in Burgos province, in 1976. They are estimated to be 800,000 years old. About 20,000 years ago, humans of Cro-Magnon type (very similar to modern humans) appeared on the Iberian Peninsula. Skilled artists, they decorated the walls of caves with engravings and polychrome paintings of animals. The finest of these caves is Altamira, in Cantabria, which was discovered in the 19th century. At the end of the Ice Age, several thousand years ago, people began to abandon their nomadic lifestyle for a more settled existence. Instead of hunting animals they learnt to breed them, and to cultivate crops. They began to make increasingly sophisticated tools and to smelt metals. (1846) 9

CELTS, PHOENICIANS AND GREEKS

In about 1200 BC Celts began to migrate south, settling in the peninsula. Over the following centuries they mixed with Iberian tribes, laying the foundations of the Celtiberian culture. In Northern Spain, particularly in Galicia, the Celts built distinctive hilltop settlements –castros– with round stone houses. The best-known Celtiberian tribe are the Arevacos, who famously defended Numantia against the Romans in 133 BC. The peninsula’s north- eastern coast was colonized by Greeks, who established the colony of Emporion, near present-day Barcelona, in about 600 BC. The Phoenicians, who settled in the south, founded Cádiz, the oldest town in this part of Europe. They coined the name “Spain”, meaning “Island of Rabbits”, and they also introduced the grapevine, the olive tree and the donkey. Both the Greeks and the Phoenicians were interested in Spain’s deposits of ore. Galicia, for example, yielded gold and tin, which was needed to make bronze. In time, the Phoenicians were displaced by the Carthaginians. The origins of the mysterious Basques, who already inhabited the north, are not clear, but it’s possible they are descended from the earliest inhabitants of Iberia (Cro-Magnon). The earliest written refer ence to them appears in Roman writings.

ROMAN AND VISIGOTH SPAIN

The Romans entered Spain as part of their war with the Carthaginians (the Punic Wars), trying to control the whole of the Iberian peninsula. The tribes in the north, who occupied land rich in minerals, resisted the longest, but their lands were finally taken over. The Romans also built an extensive network of roads, bridges and aqueducts. The towns of Astorga, in León, and Lugo, Galicia, still have their Roman walls, and Pamplona, founded in 74 BC by the Roman military commander Pompey, later became the capital of the kingdom of Navarra. Although Latin was widely spoken, the indigenous population continued to use local languages as late as the 2nd century (the Basques never stopped). Christianity began to spread, replacing the worship of local deities. (2080) 10 When the Roman Empire began to crumble, Germanic tribes invaded from the north. The Vandals and the Suevi occupied León and Galicia, but the Visigoths gained control, almost succeeding in creating the first unified state in Spain. However, the Visigoths failed to subjugate the Basques, who continued to expand their territory. In the final stages of the Visigothic state, Septimania (its northern part) attempted to break away. Civil wars fought under Wamba’s reign hastened the kingdom’s disintegration.

MOORISH SPAIN

In 711 the declining Visigothic kingdom was invaded and quickly conquered by the Moors. Most of the Iberian peninsula became part of a vast Islamic empire. Christians who did not accept Muslim rule retreated into the northern mountains, which remained unconquered due to their terrain, fierce resistance and an inhospitable climate. In 756 Abd al Rahman I proclaimed an independent emirate on the peninsula, and made Córdoba its capital. For 300 years the Caliphate of Córdoba was Europe’s most opulent society. Periods of peace and trade were interspersed with continual wars with the northern Christian kingdoms, and with the Frankish empire of Charlemagne from across the Pyrenees. In the late 10th century the vizier of Córdoba, Al Mansur, led 100 raids into the Christian territories, plundering towns across the north, including Santiago de Compostela (the site where St James’ relics were discovered), and halting further Christian advances for another century. Around 1013 the Caliphate disintegrated into bickering emirates.

THE RECONQUEST

The collapse of the Caliphate favoured the expansion southwards of the Christian states that had taken shape in the north. Among them was the kingdom of Asturias, whose origins date from the perhaps-legendary Battle of Covadonga in 722, when a small band led by the Visigoth Pelayo are said to have halted the Muslim advance. After the battle, seen as the starting point of the long ‘reconquest’ of Spain from the Moors, Pelayo became king of Asturias. This kingdom won its greatest victories against the Moors during the reign of Alfonso II (791-842). (2122) 11 In the 9th century, after a short period of Moorish rule in the Basque territories at the foot of the Pyrenees, the kingdom of Navarra came into being. Previously the Basques had demonstrated their independence on all sides by defeating the rearguard of Charlemagne’s army at the famous Battle of Roncesvalles (778). Another part of Christian Spain developed around 800, when Charlemagne’s armies crossed into the eastern Pyrenees, making the area the ‘Spanish March’ of the Frankish empire – the origin of the future Catalonia. Around this time vast numbers of pilgrims from all over Europe were journeying on the Road to Santiago, which resulted in Northern Spain becoming culturally and economically connected to the rest of Europe. Battles for the expansion of territory gradually took on the status of crusades against the Muslims. In 1085 Alfonso VI, king of Castile and León, captured Toledo from the Moors, and expelled the Muslim rulers. His kingdom became the dominant power in central Spain. In the 12th century Muslim Spain was again unified under the rule of two militant dynasties from north Africa – the Almoravids and their successors the Almohads – who halted the Reconquest. But in 1212, the combined forces of several northern kingdoms crushed the Almohad army at Las Navas de Tolosa, paving the way for the final victory of Christian power in the Iberian peninsula.

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