Spain

Spain: capital Madrid, population 49.4M, area 505,992 km². The 32nd most populous country, in Europe. Facts, map, neighbours and more.

Spain covers most of the Iberian Peninsula, where Roman aqueducts, Umayyad prayer halls and Nasrid palaces stand within a day's travel of one another. Translators in Toledo moved Arabic science into Latin and later into Castilian, the language whose grammar Nebrija printed in 1492. Whistled Silbo on La Gomera, ten-level castells in Catalonia and Gaudí's unfinished basilica in Barcelona share one habit: complicated structures assembled from ordinary means.

• Charcoal and ochre painting at Altamira began about 36,000 years ago; when Sanz de Sautuola published the cave ceiling in 1880, specialists rejected a prehistoric date and the dispute ran until 1902.
• Abd al-Rahman I made Córdoba an independent emirate in 756; Abd al-Rahman III took the title of caliph in 929, and in 1031 the caliphate broke apart into rival taifa kingdoms.
• Twelfth-century translators in Toledo carried Arabic science into Latin, Gerard of Cremona alone rendering more than 87 works, and under Alfonso X they began translating into Castilian instead.
• Antonio de Nebrija dedicated his Gramática de la lengua castellana to Queen Isabella in 1492, the first printed grammar of a modern European language; his Latin-Spanish dictionary followed in 1495.

• Miguel de Cervantes lost the use of his left hand at Lepanto in 1571 and was then held for ransom in Algiers for five years; the two parts of Don Quixote appeared in 1605 and 1615.
• Diego Velázquez painted himself at the easel inside Las Meninas in 1656, showing Philip IV and his queen only as a small reflection in the mirror on the back wall.
• Juan Sebastián Elcano brought the Victoria back on 6 September 1522; five ships and about 270 men had sailed in 1519, and roughly 40 of them completed the circuit of the globe.
• Santiago Ramón y Cajal shared the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Camillo Golgi, the first Spaniard to win a science Nobel; hundreds of his neuron drawings are still used in teaching.

• The Roman aqueduct at Segovia carried spring water 17 kilometres from the mountains across an arcade of 167 arches, and it stayed in service until 1973.
• Córdoba's great mosque was begun in 785 and enlarged for two centuries, its minaret finished in 958 and al-Hakam II's mihrab in 971, before a cathedral nave was inserted inside it after 1236.
• Muhammad I began the Alhambra on Sabika hill in 1238; Yusuf I and Muhammad V gave the palaces their present form in the 14th century, and Charles V added a round-courtyard palace in 1526.
• Work on the Sagrada Família started on 19 March 1882; less than a quarter of it stood when Gaudí died in 1926, and the basilica is still unfinished today.

• On La Gomera, Silbo Gomero carries whistled Spanish across ravines up to five kilometres wide; the island's schools have taught it since 1999, and UNESCO listed it in 2009.
• A Catalan castell counts as complete only when the enxaneta, the child at the top, raises one open hand; the crowd packed into the base, the pinya, doubles as the cushion if it falls.
• The Camino de Santiago grew from a ninth-century shrine in Galicia into a network of walking routes; since 2013 more than 200,000 people a year have finished it.
• Flamenco sets song, guitar, dance and handclaps against a repeating compás rather than a fixed melody; UNESCO added it to the intangible heritage list on 16 November 2010.

What is the capital of Spain?

The capital of Spain is Madrid.

What is the population of Spain?

Spain has about 49.4M people — the 32nd most populous country in the world.

How big is Spain?

Spain covers 505,992 km², making it the 51st largest country by area.

Which region is Spain in?

Spain is in Southern Europe, Europe.