Spain has a rich history as a nation, but in addition many of its separate towns also have a history behind that unites different eras, civilizations, cultures and religious beliefs. It is the case of Andalusia. whose history is long and outstanding. Let us now know in depth, the history of Andalusia.
first civilizations
The situation of Andalusia and the wealth of its lands have meant that, from the NeolithicSome of the most advanced civilizations in history have passed through its territory, such as the Tartessians, Phoenicians and the Greeks. It was precisely the Tartessians who founded some of the first colonies in Andalusia: Gadir (Cádiz), Malaka (Málaga) or Sexi (Almuñécar).
After these, the navigators phoenicianswho first discovered the riches of the area (silver, gold, tin and copper) They settled in Andalusia in the 11th century BC. c.founding several coastal colonies, including Gadir, the current Cadiz. In conjunction with the Phoenicians, the Pyrenees were crossed by the first tribes indo-european of Celtic descent. The greeks they also founded trading bases from these parts. For the Greeks and the descendants of the Phoenicians, the carthaginianswho took over in the 6th century, then The Romans arrived who took over and arrived in the Iberian Peninsula from the 3rd century BC.
Andalusia at the time of the Roman Empire
In the second century the carthaginians They expelled the Tartessians from Andalusia and began, during the 3rd century, a conquest that led them to dominate a large part of the east of the peninsula, next to the Mediterranean Sea. During this time, Andalusia will be known by the Carthaginians as a province Baetica.
During this period, Andalusia was the focus of important thinkers, such as Senecaand some of its cities, such as Corduba, Hispalis or Itálica, were outstanding.
After the Carthaginians, the romansthat after several years of domination, after the region is the cradle of some Roman emperors such as Trajan and Hadrian, were replaced in the domain by the Visigoths in the 5th century AD by Alaric, and then from the 7th century (711) by the Arabs of the Umayyad dynasty who, having crossed the larch of Gibraltar, in 711 established in Andalusia the center of his western emirate with the capital Cordova.
Al Andalus
The Muslim invasion expanded in a short time reaching even to overcome the Pyrenees, and being stopped only in Poitiers by Carlo Martello’s Frankish army. During the Middle Ages, the Muslim possessions in the Iberian Peninsula were called Al Andalusand from that name derives the decorative and urban style of the region.
In Andalucia, Muslim rule lasted much longer (just under eight centuries) than in the rest of Spain, gradually conquered by the Christian advance. The Arab period was the time of the region, which developed a higher level of economic, social and cultural development, being among the most advanced in the known world at that time, and where an active religious tolerance was practiced that allowed its three cultures, the Islamic, the Jewish and the Christian, live together in peace.
The farming, leather processing, mining, ceramic and textile production and trade enjoyed excellent health and brought great prosperity with its development. Cordoba, Malaga, Granada and Seville, they were embellished by the largest Arab monuments in Spain: the Mosques. Andalusia is then “invaded” by the great mosques, such as the Alcázar and the Alhambra Palace, which, respectively, were celebrated as centers of art, culture and science.
From the eleventh century the first fractures began to appear in the Muslim kingdom of Andalusia, some disagreements that would end up leading to the creation of taifas throughout the territory, that is, small independent kingdoms of great culture but little defense capacity against the advance of the Castilian kings.
With the beginning of that “decline”, lArab domination lasted until the 13th century when, with the exception of the Arab kingdom of Granada, most of the region was conquered by the kings of Castile. Granada was also conquered in turn by the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, the same year that Christopher Columbus accidentally discovered the American continent while searching for the route to the Indies.
Expulsion of Muslims and arrival of Christianity
The struggles between the Castilian kings and the Muslim people began to reach their peak in the 13th century and culminated in the siege by the Castilian troops of the Muslims in the Alhambra in Granada. The siege ended as we have mentioned in 1492when the Catholic kings They definitively took the fortress and annexed Andalusia to the Kingdom of Castile.
Until the end of the 15th century, the prosperous populations of Jews and Muslims, almost 10% of the population, practiced their religion openly and proudly, but after the Catholic siege, Spain carried out a harsh conversion, initiated by Kings Isabel and Fernando , although this did not seem enough and was Felipe III who did not hesitate to expel 300,000 descendants of the Muslim population of Spain who had converted to Christianity, the “moriscos”, at the beginning of the 17th century. The human cost was appalling. But, it was thought, Spain was finally pure.
Century XVIII
From that moment on, Andalusian prosperity progressively decreased, except for the ports of Seville and Cadiz which, trading with the New World, continued to prosper. In 1713 Gibraltar was ceded to Great Britain.oh in 1833 the region was divided into the eight current provinces. Andalusia became a stronghold of the anarchist movement during the Spanish Republic. However, he fell against the rebels in the Spanish civil war, suffering numerous harassments (among all the symbolic and terrible murders of Federico García Lorca in Granada) as we will mention later.
Much earlier, during the 18th century, Andalusia played a key role in the history of Spain during the Napoleonic invasions. In Bailen one of the most decisive battles of the war was fought and in 1812 the first Spanish Constitution in the Cortes of Cadiz.
In later years, the first attempts to modernize the industry and production. However, these processes did not have such an impact in Andalusia due to the poor distribution of land and the refusal of the most favored classes to set aside their privileges. It is during this time that the first traces of federalist, republican and radical ideas begin to emerge. It is also at this time when the typical Andalusian stereotypes begin to be forged.
Civil War and Francoism
Andalusia suffered from an endemic problem of organization, distribution and agrarian structure, a problem with which Andalusians would face the arrival of the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent arrival of Francoism. The arrival of the extreme right to power did not solve the agrarian problems of the territories and, as a consequence, during the 50s, 60s and 70s many Andalusians had to emigrate to other territories of Spain, mainly to Catalonia.
The recurrent demonstrations against Franco took place in Andalusia during the years of his dictatorship due to reprisals and subsequent repressions. On Franco’s death, Andalusia became an autonomous region of Spain in 1981. Since then, economic and cultural development has been intense with the climax represented by the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America with the Universal Exhibition of 1992 in Seville and the inauguration of the high-speed train linking the Andalusian capital with Madrid and the rest of Spain.