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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Spain (Spanish: España (help·info), IPA: [es'paɲa]), officially the Kingdom of Spain (Spanish: Reino de España), is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish mainland is bordered almost entirely by the Mediterranean Sea to the south and east except for a small land boundary with Gibraltar; by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay to the north; and by the Atlantic Ocean and Portugal to the west. Spanish territory also includes the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands off the African coast, and two autonomous cities in North Africa that border Morocco. With an area of 504,030 km², Spain is the second largest country in Western Europe (behind France).

First settled 35,000 years ago, the area occupied by modern Spain was known as Hispania while under Roman rule. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, it came under the control of the Germanic Visigoths. In the 8th century, nearly the entire Iberian Peninsula was conquered by the Muslim Moors. Through a long process, Christian kingdoms in the north gradually rolled back Muslim rule, which was finally extinguished in 1492. That year Christopher Columbus reached the Americas, marking the beginnings of a global empire. Spain was the strongest power in Europe from the 16th to mid-17th centuries, but its status diminished considerably by the 18th century and by the end of the 19th century, it had lost most of its colonies. In the middle decades of the 20th century it came under a dictatorship, under which it went through many years of stagnation and then a spectacular economic revival. In 1986 it joined the European Union and has experienced an economic and cultural renaissance.

Spain is a constitutional monarchy organised as a parliamentary democracy, and has been a member of the European Union since 1986. It is a developed country with the ninth largest economy in the world and fifth largest in the EU, based on nominal GDP.^[1]