If you want to experience Spain in an authentic way and be welcomed by locals as a charming traveler instead of treated as an obnoxious tourist, you have to understand the culture to a certain point. Like all cultures, Spain has unique traditions and cultural practices that if adhered to, can open a lot of doors.
When I take the time to travel somewhere new, especially far away, I want to experience the best life has to offer in that unique place. Learning a bit about how the culture evolved to what it is today helps add context and curate my experience there. Everything from what monuments or museums to see to what types of food to eat and neighborhoods to visit.
Let’s first explore the unique geographical and historical broad strokes of España in order to better appreciate the vibrant culture of modern Spain. This is not meant to be a complete history by any means. It’s more of a curation of interesting details and unique moments in time that are relevant to the Spanish adventures highlighted on Victoria Smith Living.
Spain sits on the Iberian peninsula at the southernmost tip of Europe. Madrid, the polished capital city and heart of Spain is geographically in the middle of the country.
Washington Irving said of his journey from Madrid in 1832 to the southern city of Granada in Tales of the Alhambra,
Many are apt to picture Spain as a soft southern region, decked out with the luxuriant charms of voluptuous Italy. On the contrary, though there are exceptions in some regions…the greater part is a stern, melancholy country, with rugged mountains, and long sweeping plains, destitute of trees and indescribably silent and lonesome. I will say the lonesomeness isn’t something negative, it’s more of a peace, a stillness.”
Small village in the Rioja region [©VSL]
Spain has many different climates and diverse terrains. Asturias in Northern Spain is a lush wooded region with pristine nature reserves.Today, the rugged mountains outside of Madrid tower over a patchwork of vast olive orchards dotted with little sun bleached villages. As you get further south, the olive trees begin to give way to beautiful rolling vineyards. The Southern region of Andalusia boasts fertile river valleys and snow capped Sierra Nevada mountains, even in Summer. As you drift further south, dramatic coastal cliffs and golden sand beaches run to the East along the briny blue waters of the Mediterranean ocean.
The Spanish border is pure coastline except part of its northeastern border, which it shares with France and its western border with Portugal. The Spanish-Portuguese border happens to be one of the oldest political demarcations remaining in Europe today. During the 15th and 16th centuries, the pinnacle of European exploration, it separated the world’s most pervasive colonizing imperial powers. Today, Spain largely exists within its continental borders, except for the Canary Islands, just off the western coast of the African Sahara desert.
Spain’s southernmost tip extends along the Strait of Gibraltar, its cave dotted cliffs almost touching Morocco, in Northern Africa. Oddly enough, Gibraltar is not considered Spanish soil. The British took control of the territory beginning in 1713, due to its strategic importance and built a military base into the remains of Spain’s first Moorish fortress, built in 711.
Back to 476, the fall of the Roman Empire left a power vacuum in Hispania, modern day Spain, along with the rest of Europe. Its people suffered through the Middle Ages under the fractioned rule of the Catholic remnants of Roman power. Then, in 711, the Islamic Umayyad kingdom, originally from North Africa of Amazigh (AKA Berber) and Arabic origin, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and changed Hispania’s trajectory. In less than 10 years, the Umayyad Dynasty seized control of all but Asturias, the northernmost part of Hispania, and renamed it Al-Andalus.
Under Dynastic rule, most of Spain enjoyed relative stability, religious tolerance, and general prosperity, while life in Europe outside of Al-Andalus was permeated by religious zealotry and steep intellectual, economic, and cultural decline.
The prosperous Al-Andalus period lasted for more than 700 years. Much of what is considered quintessentially Spanish today has its roots in this time period. Take the iconic bitter orange trees that line its streets of Seville and Granada for example. They were first planted by the Moors to entice the perfume trade and provide nutrition and medicine to the populace.
Spanish architecture is one of my favorite remnants of this period of Hispanic-Islamic rule. The most mysterious and grand is the Alhambra, which sits atop the highest hill in the center of Granada. A must see if visiting Southern Spain.
overlooking Granada [©VSL]
Then in the fateful year of 1492, when Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, unified the Christian kingdoms in battle against their common enemy, Al-Andalus, and eventually dethroned the Nasrid Dynasty of Granada in the reconquest of Spain. In that same year, as the first King and Queen of unified Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella used their newly pillaged bounty to fund Christopher Columbus’ infamous attempt at finding a new way to get to India by sea, during which he stumbled upon North America and all hell broke loose.
Enriched from gold and silver, profits from enslaving the Native Americans, and trading of America’s vast natural resources, Spain grew powerful, amassing boundless wealth and spurring a great artistic and economic boom. Ferdinand and Isabella launched the Spanish Inquisition, forcing conversion to Christianity and terrorizing women accused of witch craft and the once prominent Jewish and Islamic communities throughout Andalusia.
Much of Spain’s accumulated wealth and foreign control was later lost during the Napoleonic Wars, which started in 1803 and lasted for 12 years. Spain’s fall from opulence is perhaps most easily conveyed visually through the transformation of Spanish native, Francisco Goya’s artistic career. He gained notoriety when he was appointed court painter by Spanish King Charles IV, painting royal portraits and idyllic scenery in the opulent pastels of the Rococo style.
After the Napoleonic Wars and the internal turmoil of the changing Spanish government, Goya developed an embittered attitude toward mankind. He had a first-hand and acute awareness of panic, terror, and hysteria of the war ravaged masses, inspiring him to create a series of etchings on the subject. He survived two near-fatal illnesses and completely lost his hearing, likely due to his slow poisoning from the massive amounts of lead white paint, which he mixed himself. The combination of these factors is thought to have led to an even darker shift, culminating in the creation of the Black Paintings in 1819. These oil paints were private works painted directly on the walls of his dining and sitting rooms, featuring disturbing themes like Saturn Devouring His Son and the Witch’s Sabbath.
Sadly, war continued to ravage parts of Spain well into the 1900s. The US declared war on Spain in 1898. Picaso’s monochromatic blue period in the early 1900s exudes the hopelessness and poverty of Spain during that time. Next came WWI, followed by the death of more than 500,000 Spaniards in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s which only ended as WWII began. This time of dispair and poverty inspiried many powerful artistic movements including works like “Guernica”, created after a Nazi Bombing in the Basque town, Guernica.
The victorious General Francisco Franco then ruled as a brutal dictator from 1939 until his death in 1975. When he died, the government of Spain transitioned to what it is today, a constitutional monarchy, restoring many of the original Spanish royal families to power, along with Franco’s only daughter Carmen the first duchess of Franco as part of the reformed monarchy, of course.
The history of Spain reaffirms that hardship and circumstance cannot diminish pride or extinguish joy for long. In fact, it has done the opposite in Spain. Allow yourself to be overtaken by a passionate flamenco performance in the shadow of the Alhambra in Granada.
Stare across a hilltop overlooking Barcelona in Park Guell in the morning before the crowds and marvel at the fantastical bright mosaic facades. Follow echoes of laughter through the streets of Madrid on a summer evening until you find yourself in front of a bustling tapas bar, where you can quench your thirst and sample delicious tapas as they come your way. Then you will see the spirit of Spain could not be more fiery and exuberant.
Through cultural literacy, it’s easy to appreciate how the Spanish have alchemized their tumultuous layered history into the enviable lifestyle enjoyed today, enriched with a contagious appreciation of life’s simple joys and surrounded by friends and family, in a way that is at once universal and yet uniquely Spanish.