The Iberian Peninsula in approx. AD 10, showing in purple the senatorial province of Hispania Baetica (modern Andalusia, Spain).

Position of the province of Hispania Baetica in the Roman Empire.

Hispania Baetica was one of three Imperial Roman provinces in Hispania, (modern Iberia). Hispania Baetica was bordered to the west by Lusitania, and to the northeast by Hispania Tarraconensis. Baetica was part of Al-Andalus under the Moors in the 8th century and approximately corresponds to modern Andalucia. Its capital was Corduba

Before Romanization, the mountainous area that was to become Baetica was occupied by several settled Iberian tribal groups. Celtic influence was not as strong as it was in the Celtiberian north. According to the geographer Claudius Ptolemy, the indigenes were the powerful Turdetani, in the valley of the Guadalquivir in the west, bordering on Lusitania, and the partly Hellenized Turduli with their city Baelon, in the hinterland behind the coastal Phoenician trading colonies, whose Punic inhabitants Ptolemy termed the "Bastuli". Phoenician Gadira (Cadiz) was on an island against the coast of Hispania Baetica. Other important Iberians were the Bastetani, who occupied the Almería and mountainous Granada regions. Towards the southeast, Punic influence spread from the Carthaginian cities on the coast: New Carthage (Roman Cartago Nova, modern Cartagena), Abdera and Malaca (Málaga).

Some of the Iberian cities retained their pre-Indo-European names in Baetica throughout the Roman era. Granada was called Eliberri, Illiberis and Illiber by the Romans; in Basque, "iri-berri" or "ili-berri", still signifies "new town".

The south of the Iberian peninsula was agriculturally rich, providing for export wine, olive oil and the fermented fish sauce called garum that were staples of the Mediterranean diet, and its products formed part of the western Mediterranean trade economy even before it submitted to Rome in 206 BC. After the defeat of Carthage in the Second Punic War, which found its casus belli on the coast of Baetica at Saguntum, Hispania was significantly Romanized in the course of the 2nd century BC, following the uprising initiated by the Turdetani in 197. The central and north-eastern Celtiberians soon followed suit. It took Cato the Elder, who became consul in 195 BC and was given the command of the whole peninsula to put down the rebellion in the northeast and the lower Ebro valley. He then marched southwards and put down a revolt by the Turdetani. Cato returned to Rome in 194, leaving two praetors in charge of the two Iberian provinces. In the late Roman Republic, Hispania remained divided like Gaul into a "Nearer" and a "Farther" province, as experienced marching overland from Gaul: Hispania Citerior (the Ebro region), and Ulterior (the Guadalquivir region). The battles in Hispania during the 1st century BC were largely confined to the north.

In the reorganization of the Empire in 14 BC, when Hispania was remade into the three Imperial provinces, Baetica was governed by a proconsul who had formerly been a praetor. Fortune smiled on rich Baetica, which was Baetica Felix, and a dynamic, upwardly-mobile social and economic middling stratum developed there, which absorbed freed slaves and far outnumbered the rich elite. The Senatorial province of Baetica became so secure that no Roman legion was required to be permanently stationed there. Legio VII Gemina was permanently stationed to the north, in Hispania Tarraconensis.

Betica amphora found in Essaouira, 1-2nd century CE.

Hispania Baetica was divided into four conventūs, which were territorial divisions like judicial circuits, where the chief men met together at major centers, at fixed times of year, under the eye of the proconsul, to oversee the administration of justice: the conventus Gaditanus (of Gades, or Cádiz), Cordubensis (of Cordoba), Astigitanus (of Astigi, or Écija), and Hispalensis (of Hispalis, or Seville). As the towns became the permanent seats of standing courts during the later Empire, the conventūs were superseded (Justinian's Code, i.40.6) and the term conventus is lastly applied to certain bodies of Roman citizens living in a province, forming a sort of enfranchised corporation, and representing the Roman people in their district as a kind of gentry; and it was from among these that proconsuls generally took their assistants. So in spite of some social upsets, as when Septimius Severus put to death a number of leading Baetians— including women— the elite in Baetica remained a stable class for centuries.

Columella, who wrote a twelve volume treatise on all aspects of Roman farming and knew viticulture, came from Baetica. The vast olive plantations of Baetica shipped olive oil from the coastal ports by sea to supply Roman legions in Germania. Amphoras from Baetica have been found everywhere in the Western Roman empire. It was to keep Roman legions supplied by sea routes that the Empire needed to control the distant coasts of Lusitania and the northern Atlantic coast of Hispania.

Baetica was rich and utterly Romanized, facts that the Emperor Vespasian was rewarding when he granted the Ius latii that extended the rights pertaining to Roman citizenship (latinitas) to the inhabitants of Hispania, an honor that secured the loyalty of the Baetian elite and its middle class. The Roman Emperor Trajan, the first emperor of provincial birth, came from Baetica, though of Italian stock,^[1] and his kinsman and successor Hadrian came from a family resident in Baetica, though Hadrian himself was born at Rome (which however some say he made up Hadrian#cite note-5). Baetia was Roman until the brief invasion of the Vandals and Alans passed through in the 5th century, followed by the more permanent kingdom of the Visigoths. The province formed part of the Exarchate of Africa and was joined to Mauretania Tingitana after Belisarius' reconquest of Africa. The Catholic bishops of Baetica, solidly backed by their local population, were able to convert the Arian Visigoth king Reccared and his nobles. In the 8th century the Islamic Berbers ("Moors") of North Africa established the Caliphate of Cordoba conquering Baetica. The region was known to them as "al-Andalus", under which name its later history is continued.

The early 20th century composer Manuel de Falla wrote a Fantasia Baetica for piano, using Andalusian melodies.

See also[link]

• Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula
• Romanization of Hispania
• Spania

References[link]

• A.T. Fear, Rome and Baetica: Urbanization in Southern Spain, C.50 BC-AD 150 in the series "Oxford Classical Monographs".
• Evan Haley, Baetica Felix: People and Prosperity in Southern Spain from Caesar to Septimius Severus, (excerpt from the Introduction).
• El Housin Helal Ouriachen, 2009, La ciudad bética durante la Antigüedad Tardía. Persistencias y mutaciones locales en relación con la realidad urbana del Mediterraneo y del Atlántico, Tesis doctoral, Universidad de Granada, Granada.

External links[link]

• "Baetica, the great olive oil producer"
• Detailed map of the Pre-Roman Peoples of Iberia (around 200 BC)

v t e Provinces of the Roman Empire at its greatest extent (117 AD) Achaea Aegyptus Africa Alpes Cottiae Alpes Maritimae Alpes Poeninae Arabia Petraea Armenia Asia Assyria Bithynia et Pontus Britannia Cappadocia Cilicia Corsica et Sardinia Creta et Cyrenaica Cyprus Dacia Dalmatia Epirus Galatia Gallia Aquitania Gallia Belgica Gallia Lugdunensis Gallia Narbonensis Germania Inferior Germania Superior Hispania Baetica Hispania Tarraconensis Italia Iudaea Lusitania Lycia et Pamphylia Macedonia Mauretania Caesariensis Mauretania Tingitana Mesopotamia Moesia Inferior Moesia Superior Noricum Pannonia Inferior Pannonia Superior Raetia Sicilia Syria Thracia

Hispania
← 218 BC–400 →
Roman provinces of Hispania
Capital	Baetica - Corduba Ulterior - Emerita Augusta Citerior - Tarraco
Language(s)	Latin, various Paleohispanic languages
Religion	Traditional indigenous and Roman religion, followed by Christianity
Government	Autocracy
Emperor
- AD 98 - AD 117	Trajan
- AD 117 - AD 138	Hadrian
- AD 379 to AD 395	Theodosius I
Legislature	Roman Senate
Historical era	Classical antiquity
- Established	218 BC
- Disestablished	400
Population
-  est.	5,000,000 or more

Hispania was the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula. Under the Republic, Hispania was divided into two provinces: Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior. During the Principate, Hispania Ulterior was divided into two new provinces, Baetica and Lusitania, while Hispania Citerior was renamed Tarraconensis. Subsequently, the western part of Tarraconensis was split off, first as Hispania Nova, later renamed Callaecia (or Gallaecia, whence modern Galicia). From Diocletian's Tetrarchy (AD 284) onwards, the south of remaining Tarraconensis was again split off as Carthaginensis, and probably then too the Balearic Islands and all the resulting provinces formed one civil diocese under the vicarius for the Hispaniae (that is, the Celtic provinces). The name, Hispania, was also used in the period of Visigothic rule. The modern name Spain derives from Hispania.

Name[link]

The origin of the word Hispania is much disputed and the evidence for the various speculations are based merely upon what are at best mere resemblances, likely to be accidental, and suspect supporting evidence. One theory holds it to be of Punic derivation, from the Phoenician language of colonizing Carthage.^[1] Specifically, it may derive from a Punic cognate of Hebrew אי-שפניא (i-shfania) meaning "Island of the Hyrax" or "island of the hare" or "island of the rabbit" (Phoenician-Punic and Hebrew are both Canaanite languages and therefore closely related to each other). Another theory, proposed by the etymologist Eric Partridge in his work Origins, is that it is of Iberian derivation and that it is to be found in the pre-Roman name for Seville, Hispalis, which strongly hints at an ancient name for the country of *Hispa, an Iberian or Celtic root whose meaning is now lost. It may alternatively derive from Heliopolis (Greek for "city of the sun"). Occasionally it was called Hesperia, the western land, by Roman writers, or Hesperia ultima.

Archaeological Roman Ensemble of Mérida (Emerita Augusta), Extremadura, Spain. The Tower of Hercules in A Coruña, Galicia, Spain, is the world's oldest Roman lighthouse still used as a lighthouse.[2] The roman Aqueduct of Segovia, Castile, Spain. The Roman Temple of Évora (Liberatias Iulia), Alentejo, Portugal.

Another theory holds that the name derives from Ezpanna, the Basque word for "border" or "edge", thus meaning the farthest area or place.^[3][4] Isidore of Sevilla considered Hispania derived from Hispalis.^[5]

Although "Hispania" is the Latin root for the modern name "Spain", substituting Spanish for Hispanicus or Hispanic, or Spain for Hispania, though sometimes done by historians in the more general context of a common peninsular history, is anachronistic and can be misleading, since the borders of modern Spain do not coincide with those of the Roman province of Hispania or of the Visigothic Kingdom of the same name which succeeded it, and have always shifted, and so does not even include the territory of present day Portugal. The Latin term Hispania was often used during Antiquity and the High Middle Ages as a geographical name for the Iberian Peninsula, but its modern cognates, Spain and Spanish, have become increasingly associated with the Kingdom of Spain alone, after the union of the central peninsular Kingdom of Castile with the eastern peninsular Kingdom of Aragon in the 15th century under the Catholic Monarchs.

Pre-Roman history[link]

The Iberian peninsula has long been inhabited, first by early hominids such as Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis and Homo antecessor. In the Paleolithic period, the Neanderthals entered Iberia and eventually took refuge from the advancing migrations of modern humans. In the 40th millennium BC, during the Upper Paleolithic and the last ice age, the first large settlement of Europe by modern humans occurred. These were nomadic hunter-gatherers originating on the steppes of Central Asia. When the last Ice Age reached its maximum extent, during the 30th millennium BC, these modern humans took refuge in Southern Europe, namely in Iberia, after retreating through Southern France. In the millennia that followed, the Neanderthals became extinct and local modern human cultures thrived, producing pre-historic art such as that found in L'Arbreda Cave and in the Côa Valley.

In the Mesolithic period, beginning in the 10th millennium BC, the Allerød Oscillation occurred. This was an interstadial deglaciation that lessened the harsh conditions of the Ice Age. The populations sheltered in Iberian Peninsula (descendants of the Cro-Magnon) migrated and recolonized all of Western Europe. In this period one finds the Azilian culture in Southern France and Northern Iberia (to the mouth of the Douro river), as well as the Muge Culture in the Tagus valley.

The Neolithic brought changes to the human landscape of Iberia (from the 5th millennium BC onwards), with the development of agriculture and the beginning of the European Megalith Culture. This spread to most of Europe and had one of its oldest and main centres in the territory of modern Portugal, as well as the Chalcolithic and Beaker cultures.

During the 1st millennium BC, in the Bronze Age, the first wave of migrations into Iberia of speakers of Indo-European languages occurred. These were later (7th and 5th centuries BC) followed by others that can be identified as Celts. Eventually urban cultures developed in southern Iberia, such as Tartessos, influenced by the Phoenician colonization of coastal Mediterranean Iberia, with strong competition from the Greek colonization. These two processes defined Iberia's cultural landscape – Mediterranean towards the southeast and a Continental in the northwest.

Languages[link]

Linguistic map: This shows the Linguistic variation of the Iberian Peninsula at about 200 BC (at the end of the Second Punic War).

Latin was the official language of Hispania during the Roman Empire's 600 year reign over the area ending around 400 AD, even though the native languages of the Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula persisted. Even after the fall of Rome and the invasion of the Germanic Visigoths and Suebi, Latin was spoken by the majority of the Hispano-Roman population, but, as in most areas of the Roman Empire that maintained Latin, it had by then evolved into Vulgar Latin, from which all of the modern languages of the Iberian Peninsula derive (the Iberian Romance languages) with the exception of Basque.

Carthaginian Hispania[link]

Carthaginian influence sphere before the First Punic War.

After its defeat by the Romans in the First Punic War (264 BC–241 BC), Carthage compensated for its loss of Sicily by rebuilding a commercial empire in Hispania.

The major part of the Punic Wars, fought between the Punic Carthaginians and the Romans, was fought on the Iberian Peninsula. Carthage gave control of the Iberian Peninsula and much of its empire to Rome in 201 BC as part of the peace treaty after its defeat in the Second Punic War, and Rome completed its replacement of Carthage as the dominant power in the Mediterranean area. By then the Romans had adopted the Carthaginian name, romanized first as Ispania. The term later received an H, much like what happened with Hibernia, and was pluralized as Hispaniae, as had been done with the Three Gauls.

Roman Hispania[link]

Hispania under Caesar Augustus's rule after the Cantabrian Wars 29 BC

Roman armies invaded Hispania in 218 BC and used it as a training ground for officers and as a proving ground for tactics during campaigns against the Carthaginians, the Iberians, the Lusitanians, the Gallaecians and other Celts. It was not until 19 BC that the Roman emperor Augustus (r. 27 BC–AD 14) was able to complete the conquest (see Cantabrian Wars). Until then, much of Hispania remained autonomous.

Romanization proceeded quickly in some regions where we have references to the togati, and very slowly in others, after the time of Augustus, and Hispania was divided into three separately governed provinces (nine provinces by the 4th century). More importantly, Hispania was for 500 years part of a cosmopolitan world empire bound together by law, language, and the Roman road. But the impact of Hispania in the newcomers was also big. Caesar wrote on the Civil Wars that the soldiers from the Second Legion had become Hispanicized and regarded themselves as hispanicus.

Some of the peninsula's population were admitted into the Roman aristocratic class and they participated in governing Hispania and the Roman empire, although there was a native aristocracy class who ruled each local tribe. The latifundia (sing., latifundium), large estates controlled by the aristocracy, were superimposed on the existing Iberian landholding system.

The Romans improved existing cities, such as Lisbon (Olissipo) and Tarragona (Tarraco), established Zaragoza (Caesaraugusta), Mérida (Augusta Emerita), and Valencia (Valentia), and reduced other native cities to mere villages. The peninsula's economy expanded under Roman tutelage. Hispania served as a granary and a major source of metals for the Roman market, and its harbors exported gold, tin, silver, lead, wool, wheat, olive oil, wine, fish, and garum . Agricultural production increased with the introduction of irrigation projects, some of which remain in use today. The Romanized Iberian populations and the Iberian-born descendants of Roman soldiers and colonists had all achieved the status of full Roman citizenship by the end of the 1st century. The emperors Trajan (r. 98–117), Hadrian (r. 117–138), and Marcus Aurelius (r. 161–180) were of Hispanic origin. The Iberian denarii, also called argentum oscense by Roman soldiers, circulated until the 1st century BC, after which it was replaced by Roman coins.

Hispania was separated into two provinces (in 197 BC), each ruled by a praetor: Hispania Citerior ("Nearer Hispania") and Hispania Ulterior ("Farther Hispania"). The long wars of conquest lasted two centuries, and only by the time of Augustus did Rome managed to control Hispania Ulterior. Hispania was divided into three provinces in the 1st century BC.

In the 4th century, Latinius Pacatus Drepanius, a Gallic rhetorician, dedicated part of his work to the depiction of the geography, climate and inhabitants of the peninsula, writing:

This Hispania produces tough soldiers, very skilled captains, prolific speakers, luminous bards. It is a mother of judges and princes; it has given Trajan, Hadrian, and Theodosius to the Empire.

With time, the name Hispania was used to describe the collective names of the Iberian Peninsula kingdoms of the Middle Ages, which came to designate all of the Iberian Peninsula plus the Balearic Islands.

The Hispaniae[link]

Roman Hispania in 125

During the first stages of Romanization, the peninsula was divided in two by the Romans for administrative purposes. The closest one to Rome was called Citerior and the more remote one Ulterior. The frontier between both was a sinuous line which ran from Cartago Nova (now Cartagena) to the Cantabrian Sea.

Hispania Ulterior comprised what are now Andalusia, Portugal, Extremadura, León, a great portion of the former Castilla la Vieja, Galicia, Asturias, and the Basque Country.

Hispania Citerior comprised the eastern part of former Castilla la Vieja, and what are now Aragon, Valencia, Catalonia, and a major part of former Castilla la Nueva.

In the year BC 27 the general and politician Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa divided Hispania into three parts, namely dividing Hispania Ulterior into Baetica (basically Andalusia) and Lusitania (including Gallaecia and Asturias) and attaching Cantabria and the Basque Country to Hispania Citerior.

The emperor Augustus in that same year returned to make a new division leaving the provinces as follows:

• Provincia Hispania Ulterior Baetica (Hispania Baetica), whose capital was Corduba, presently Córdoba. It included a little less territory than present-day Andalusia—since modern Almería and a great portion of what today is Granada and Jaén were left outside—plus the southern zone of present-day Badajoz. The river Anas or Annas (Guadiana, from Wadi-Anas) separated Hispania Baetica from Lusitania.
• Provincia Hispania Ulterior Lusitania, whose capital was Emerita Augusta (now Mérida) and without Gallaecia and Asturias.
• Provincia Hispania Citerior, whose capital was Tarraco (Tarragona). After gaining maximum importance this province was simply known as Tarraconensis and it comprised Gallaecia (modern Galicia and northern Portugal) and Asturias. In AD 69, the province of Mauretania Tingitana was incorporated into the Diocesis Hispaniarum.

By the 3rd century the emperor Caracalla made a new division which lasted only a short time. He split Hispania Citerior again into two parts, creating the new provinces Provincia Hispania Nova Citerior and Asturiae-Calleciae. In the year 238 the unified province Tarraconensis or Hispania Citerior was re-established.

Provinces of Hispania under the Tetrarchy

In the 3rd century, under the Soldier Emperors, Hispania Nova (the northwestern corner of Spain) was split off from Tarraconensis, as a small province but the home of the only permanent legion is Hispania, Legio VII Gemina. Beginning with Diocletian's Tetrarchy reform in AD 293, the new dioecesis Hispaniae became one of the four dioceses—governed by a vicarius—of the praetorian prefecture of Gaul (also comprising the provinces of Gaul, Germania and Britannia), after the abolition of the imperial Tetrarchs under the Western Emperor (in Rome itself, later Ravenna). The diocese, with capital at Emerita Augusta (modern Mérida), comprised the five peninsular Iberian provinces (Baetica, Gallaecia and Lusitania, each under a governor styled consularis; and Carthaginiensis, Tarraconensis, each under a praeses), the Insulae Baleares and the North African province of Mauretania Tingitana.

Christianity was introduced into Hispania in the 1st century and it became popular in the cities in the 2nd century. Little headway was made in the countryside, however, until the late 4th century, by which time Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire. Some heretical sects emerged in Hispania, most notably Priscillianism, but overall the local bishops remained subordinate to the Pope. Bishops who had official civil as well as ecclesiastical status in the late empire continued to exercise their authority to maintain order when civil governments broke down there in the 5th century. The Council of Bishops became an important instrument of stability during the ascendancy of the Visigoths.

Rome continued to dominate the area until the collapse of the Empire in the west. The Iberian population turned to the Visigoths, a Germanic people, for protection when Rome could no longer spare legions to guard the territory.

Byzantine reconquest[link]

A century later, taking advantage of a struggle for the throne between the Visigothic kings Agila and Athanagild, the eastern emperor Justinian I sent an army under the orders of Liberius to take back the peninsula from the Visigoths. This short-lived reconquest covered only a small strip of land along the Mediterranean coast roughly corresponding to the ancient province of Baetica, known as Spania.

Germanic Hispania[link]

Iberian Peninsula (AD 530–AD 570)

The Iberian Peninsula in the year 560AD

Rome's loss of jurisdiction in Hispania began in 409^{[citation needed]}, when the Germanic Buri, Suevi and Vandals, together with the Sarmatian Alans crossed the Rhine and ravaged Gaul until the Visigoths drove them into Iberia that same year. The Suevi established a kingdom in Gallaecia in what is today modern Galicia and northern Portugal. The Alans' allies, the Hasdingi Vandals, also established a kingdom in another part of Gallaecia. The Alans established a kingdom in Lusitania – modern Alentejo and Algarve, in Portugal. The Silingi Vandals briefly occupied parts of South Iberia.

Because large parts of Hispania were outside his control, the western Roman emperor, Honorius (r. 395–423), commissioned his sister, Galla Placidia, and her husband Athaulf, the Visigothic king, to restore order in the Iberian Peninsula. Honorius gave them the rights to settle in and to govern the area in return for defending it.

The highly romanized Visigoths entered Hispania in 415 and managed to compel the Vandals and Alans to sail for North Africa in 429. In 484 the Visigoths established Toledo as the capital of their monarchy. Successive Visigothic kings ruled Hispania as patricians who held imperial commissions to govern in the name of the Roman emperor. In 585 the Visigoths conquered the Suebic Kingdom of Galicia, thus controlling almost all Hispania.

Under the Visigoths, lay culture was not as highly developed as it had been under the Romans, and the task of maintaining formal education and government shifted decisively to the church because its Roman clergy alone were qualified to manage higher administration. As elsewhere in early medieval Europe, the church in Hispania stood as society's most cohesive institution. The Visigoths are also responsible for the introduction of mainstream Christianity to the Iberian peninsular; the earliest representation of Christ in Spanish religious art can be found in a Visigothic hermitage, Santa Maria de Lara. It also embodied the continuity of Roman order. In addition, Romans continued to run the civil administration and Latin continued to be the language of government and of commerce.^{[citation needed]}

Religion was the most persistent source of friction between the Roman Catholic Romans and their Arian Visigothic overlords, whom the former considered heretical. At times this tension invited open rebellion, and restive factions within the Visigothic aristocracy exploited it to weaken the monarchy. In 589, Recared, a Visigothic ruler, renounced his Arianism before the Council of Bishops at Toledo and accepted Catholicism, thus assuring an alliance between the Visigothic monarchy and the Romans. This alliance would not mark the last time in the history of the peninsula that political unity would be sought through religious unity.

Court ceremonials – from Constantinople – that proclaimed the imperial sovereignty and unity of the Visigothic state were introduced at Toledo. Still, civil war, royal assassinations, and usurpation were commonplace, and warlords and great landholders assumed wide discretionary powers. Bloody family feuds went unchecked. The Visigoths had acquired and cultivated the apparatus of the Roman state but not the ability to make it operate to their advantage. In the absence of a well-defined hereditary system of succession to the throne, rival factions encouraged foreign intervention by the Greeks, the Franks, and finally the Muslims in internal disputes and in royal elections.

According to Isidore of Seville, it is with the Visigothic domination of the zone that the idea of a peninsular unity is sought after, and the phrase Mother Hispania is first spoken. Up to that date, Hispania designated all of the peninsula's lands. In Historia Gothorum, the Visigoth Suinthila appears as the first monarch where Hispania is dealt with as a Gothic nation.

Moorish Hispania[link]

I greet you, oh king of Al-Andalus, she that was called Hispania by the ancients.

—Oton's Embassador to Abderramán III in Medina Azahara.

The Reconquista, 790–1300.

The North African Muslim, referred to as Moorish, conquest of Hispania (اسبانيا, Arabic: Isbānīya), which they called Al-Andalus (الأندلس), gave a new development, both in form and meaning, to the term "Hispania". The different chronicles and documents of the high Middle Ages designate as Spania, España or Espanha only the Muslim-dominated territory. King Alfonso I of Aragon (1104–1134) says in his documents that "he reigns over Pamplona, Aragon, Sobrarbe y Ribagorza", and that when in 1126 he made an expedition to Málaga he "went to the lands of España".

But by the last years of the 12th century the whole Iberian Peninsula, whether Muslim or Christian, became known as "Spain" (España, Espanya or Espanha) and the denomination "the Five Kingdoms of Spain" became used to refer to the Muslim Kingdom of Granada, and the Christian Kingdom of Castile and León, Kingdom of Navarre, Kingdom of Portugal and Crown of Aragon.

The process of the Reconquista (Christian Reconquest of Hispania from the Moors), produced the emergence of several Christian kingdoms, as the ones mentioned above. Some of these eventually merged into a single country. In fact, with the union of Castile and Aragon in 1479 (and especially with the incorporation of Navarre in 1512), the word "Spain" (España in Spanish, Espanha in Portuguese), began being used only to refer to the new kingdom and not to the whole of the Iberian peninsula, now composed of two independent countries, Portugal and Spain.

The economy of Hispania[link]

Before the Punic Wars, Hispania was a land with much untapped mineral and agricultural wealth, limited by the primitive subsistence economies of her native peoples outside of a few trading ports along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Occupations by the Carthaginians and then by the Romans for her abundant silver deposits developed Hispania into a thriving multifaceted economy. Besides several metals, olives, salted fish, and wines were some of the goods produced in Hispania and traded throughout the Empire.

Sources and references[link]

 This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Library of Congress Country Studies.

Modern sources in Portuguese and Spanish[link]

• Altamira y Crevea, Rafael Historia de España y de la civilización española. Tomo I. Barcelona, 1900. Altamira was a professor at the University of Oviedo, a member of the Royal Academy of History, of the Geographic Society of Lisbon and of the Instituto de Coimbra. (In Spanish.)
• Aznar, José Camón, Las artes y los pueblos de la España primitiva. Editorial Espasa Calpe, S.A. Madrid, 1954. Camón was a professor at the University of Madrid. (In Spanish.)
• Bosch Gimpera, Pedro; Aguado Bleye, Pedro; and Ferrandis, José. Historia de España. España romana, I, created under the direction of Ramón Menéndez Pidal. Editorial Espasa-Calpe S.A., Madrid 1935. (In Spanish.)
• García y Bellido, Antonio, España y los españoles hace dos mil años (según la Geografía de Estrabón). Colección Austral de Espasa Calpe S.A., Madrid 1945 (first edition 8-XI-1945). García y Bellido was an archeologist and a professor at the University of Madrid. (In Spanish.)
• Mattoso, José (dir.), História de Portugal. Primeiro Volume: Antes de Portugal, Lisboa, Círculo de Leitores, 1992. (in Portuguese)
• Melón, Amando, Geografía histórica española Editorial Volvntad, S.A., Tomo primero, Vol. I-Serie E. Madrid 1928. Melón was a member of the Royal Geographical Society of Madrid and a professor of geography at the Universities of Valladolid and Madrid. (In Spanish.)
• Pellón, José R., Diccionario Espasa Íberos. Espasa Calpe S.A. Madrid 2001. (In Spanish.)
• Urbieto Arteta, Antonio, Historia ilustrada de España, Volumen II. Editorial Debate, Madrid 1994. (In Spanish.)

• El Housin Helal Ouriachen, 2009, La ciudad bética durante la Antigüedad Tardía. Persistencias y mutaciones locales en relación con la realidad urbana del Mediterraneo y del Atlántico, Tesis doctoral, Universidad de Granada, Granada.

Other modern sources[link]

• This article draws heavily on the corresponding article in the Spanish-language Wikipedia, which was accessed in the version of 27 February 2005.
• Westermann Grosser Atlas zur Weltgeschichte (in German)
• Hispania

Classical sources[link]

• The notitia dignitatum (c. AD 400; one edition online is http://www.intratext.com/IXT/LAT0212/_PJ.HTM#1WJ)

Other classical sources have been accessed second-hand (see references above):

• Strabo, Geographiká. Book III, Iberia, written between the years 29 and 7 BC and touched up in AD 18. The most prestigious and widely used edition is Karl Müller's, published in Paris at the end of the 19th century, one volume, with 2 columns, Greek and Latin. The most reputed French translation is Tardieu, París 1886. The most reputed English translation (with Greek text) is H.L. Jones, vol. I–VIII, London 1917ff., ND London 1931ff.
• Ptolemy (Greek astronomer of the 2nd century) Geographiké Hyphaégesis, geographic guidebook.
• Pacatus (Gallic rhetorician) directed a panegyric on Hispania to the emperor Theodosius I in 389, which he read to the Senate.
• Paulus Orosius (390–418) historian, follower of Saint Augustine and author of Historiae adversus paganos, the first Christian universal history, and of Hispania Universa, an historical guide translated into Anglo-Saxon by Alfred the Great and into Arabic by Abd-ar-Rahman III.
• Lucius Anneus Florus (between 1st and 2nd century). Compendium of Roman History and Epitome of the History of Titus Livius (Livy). The relevant texts of Livy have been lost, but we can read them via Florus.
• Trogus Pompeius. Believed to be a Gaul with Roman citizenship. Historia universal written in Latin in the times of Augustus Caesar.
• Titus Livius (Livy) (59 BC–17 BC). Ab urbe condita, Book CXLII of Livy's surviving work.

Neo-modern references[link]

• E. Hübner, La Arqueologia de España (Barcelona, 1888)
• E. S. Bouchier, Spain under the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1914)

See also[link]

List of Roman sites in Spain Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula Iberian peninsula Carthaginian Iberia Iberian languages (all languages spoken, past & present, in Iberia) Tartessos (Early Iberian civilization) Tartessian language Southwest script Ophiussa Oestriminis Iberians Iberian language Iberian scripts Lusitanians Lusitanian language Lusitanian mythology Cynetes Celtiberians Celtiberian language Celtiberian script Hispania Citerior Hispania Ulterior Tarraconensis Lusitania Gallaecia Baetica Suevi Gallaecia Vandals in Hispania Alans in Hispania Visigothic Hispania Al-Andalus (Muslim Medieval Iberia) Umayyad conquest of Hispania Timeline of the Muslim Occupation of the Iberian peninsula Reconquista Portugal History of Portugal Timeline of Portuguese history Spain History of Spain

History of Portugal This article is part of a series Prehistoric Prehistoric Iberia Roman rule Lusitania and Gallaecia Germanic kingdoms Suebic Kingdom of Galicia (410-584) Visigothic Kingdom (418–718) 711–1139 Al-Garb Al-Andalus (711–1249) County of Portugal (868–1071, 1096-1139) Kingdom of Portugal Independence and expansion (1139–1279) 1279–1415 Discoveries (1415–1578) Iberian Union (1580–1640) 1640–1777 Napoleonic invasions, Liberal Revolution and Civil War (1777–1834) Constitutional Monarchy (1834–1910) Portuguese Republic First Republic (1910–1926) Ditadura Nacional (1926–1933) Estado Novo (1933–1974) Third Republic (1974–present) Topic Colonial history Economic history History of the Azores History of Madeira Language history Military history Music history Chronology Portugal Portal v t e

History of Spain This article is part of a series Early History Prehistoric Iberia Roman Hispania Medieval Spain Visigothic Kingdom Kingdom of Asturias Suebic Kingdom Byzantine Spania Al-Andalus Reconquista Kingdom of Spain Age of Expansion Age of Enlightenment Republic Reaction and Revolution First Spanish Republic The Restoration Second Spanish Republic Under Franco Spanish Civil War Francoist Spain Modern Spain Transition to Democracy Modern Spain Timeline Topics Colonial History Economic History Military History Spain Portal v t e

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Roman Hispania architecture

• Detailed map of the Pre-Roman Peoples of Iberia (around 200 BC)
• Roman buildings in Barcelona

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Coordinates: 40°13′N 4°21′W / 40.21°N 4.35°W / 40.21; -4.35

Manuel de Falla y Matheu (23 November 1876 – 14 November 1946) was a Spanish Andalusian composer. With Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados and Joaquín Turina he is one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century.

Biography[link]

Falla was born as Manuel María de los Dolores Falla y Matheu in Cádiz. He was the son of José María Falla y Franco and María Jesús Matheu y Zabal. His early teachers in music were his mother and grandfather; at the age of nine he was introduced to his first piano professor, Eloísa Galluzo. Little is known of that period of his life, but his relationship with his teacher was soon ended after she decided to then enter in a convent, Sisters of Charity, to become a nun. In 1889 he continued his piano lessons with Alejandro Odero and learned the techniques of harmony and counterpoint from Enrique Broca. At age 15 he became interested in literature and journalism and founded the literary magazines El Burlón and El Cascabel. In 1893 he was inspired by a concert of Edvard Grieg's works, later saying that at the time he felt that "my definitive vocation is music".

Madrid[link]

In 1896 he moved to Madrid where he attended the Real Conservatorio de Música y Declamación. He studied piano with José Tragó, a colleague of Isaac Albéniz and composition with Felipe Pedrell. In 1897 he composed Melodia for cello and piano and dedicated it to Salvador Viniegra who hosted evenings of chamber music that Falla attended. In 1899, by unanimous vote, he was awarded the first prize at the piano competition at his school of music. He premiered his first works: Romanza para violonchelo y piano, Nocturno para piano, Melodía para violonchelo y piano, Serenata andaluza para violín y piano, and Cuarteto en Sol y Mireya. That same year he started to use de with his first surname, making Manuel de Falla the name he became known as from that time on. When only the surname is used, however, the de is omitted.

In 1900 he composed his Canción para piano and various other vocal and piano pieces. He premiered his Serenata andaluza y Vals-Capricho para piano in the Ateneo de Madrid. Due to the precarious financial position of his family he began to teach piano classes.

It was from Pedrell, during the Madrid period, that Falla became interested in native Andalusian music, particularly Andalusian flamenco (specifically cante jondo), the influence of which can be strongly felt in many of his works. Among his early pieces are a number of zarzuelas like La Juana y la Petra and La casa de tócame Roque. On 12 April 1902 he premiered Los amores de la Inés in the Teatro Cómico de Madrid. The same year he met the composer Joaquín Turina and saw his Vals-Capricho y Serenata andaluza published by the Society of Authors. The following year he composed and performed Allegro de concierto for the Madrid Royal Conservatory competition. Pianist Enrique Granados took first prize but the Society of Authors published Falla's works Tus ojillos negros and Nocturno. Falla then began his collaboration with composer Amadeo Vives on the zarzuelas Prisionero de guerra, El cornetín de órdenes and La cruz de Malta (only fragments of these works survive).

His first important work was the one-act opera La vida breve (Life is Short, or The Brief Life, written in 1905, though revised before its premiere in 1913). With a libretto by Carlos Fernández Shaw, La vida breve won Falla first prize in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando musical competition. In April 1905 he won the first prize in a piano competition sponsored by the firm of Ortiz and Cussó. On 15 May his work Allegro de concierto premiered in the Ateneo de Madrid and on 13 November the Real Academia presented him with his prize for La vida breve.

Paris[link]

In 1907 at the advice of Joaquín Turina and Víctor Mirecki Larramat, Falla moved to Paris. There he met a number of composers who had an influence on his style, including the impressionists Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy and Paul Dukas. In 1908 King Alfonso XIII awarded him a royal grant that enabled him to remain in Paris while he finished his Cuatro piezas españolas. Meanwhile, the dramatist Paul Milliet translated the libretto of La vida breve into French for its French premiere on 1 April 1913 at the Municipal Casino in Nice. In 1910 Falla met Igor Stravinsky and traveled briefly to London. He wrote Siete canciones populares españolas which he finished in mid-1914. Shortly afterward World War I began when Germany declared war and Falla returned to Madrid. While at no stage was he a prolific composer, it was then that he entered into his mature creative period.

Return to Madrid[link]

In Madrid he composed several of his best known pieces, including:

• The nocturne for piano and orchestra Nights in the Gardens of Spain (Noches en los jardines de España, 1916)
• The ballet El amor brujo (Love the Magician, 1915) which includes the much excerpted and arranged Ritual Fire Dance
• The ballet The Magistrate and the Miller's Wife (El corregidor y la molinera) which, after revision, became The Three-Cornered Hat (El sombrero de tres picos, 1917) and was produced by Serge Diaghilev with set design and costumes by Pablo Picasso.

Granada period[link]

From 1921 to 1939 Manuel de Falla lived in Granada, where he organized the Concurso de Cante Jondo in 1922. In Granada he wrote the puppet opera El retablo de maese Pedro (Master Peter's Puppet Show, 1923) and a concerto for harpsichord and chamber ensemble (Harpsichord Concerto, 1926). The puppet opera marked the first time the harpsichord had entered the modern orchestra; and the concerto was the first for harpsichord written in the 20th Century. Both of these works were written with Wanda Landowska in mind. In these works, the Spanish folk influence is somewhat less apparent than a kind of Stravinskian neoclassicism.

Also in Granada, Falla began work on the large-scale orchestral cantata Atlàntida (Atlantis), based on the Catalan text L'Atlàntida by Jacint Verdaguer. Falla considered Atlàntida to be the most important of all his works; posterity has not agreed with this verdict, and performances of the piece have been extremely rare. Verdaguer's text gives a mythological account of how the submersion of Atlantis created the Atlantic ocean, thus separating Spain and Latin America, and how later the Spanish discovery of America reunited what had always belonged together.

In 1936, Falla tried but failed to prevent the murder of his close friend, the poet Federico García Lorca.

Argentina[link]

Falla continued work on Atlàntida after moving to Argentina in 1939, following Francisco Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War. The orchestration of the piece remained incomplete at his death and was completed posthumously by Ernesto Halffter. He also premiered his Suite Homenajes in Buenos Aires in November 1939. In 1940, he was named a Knight of the Order of King Alfonso X of Castile. Franco's government offered him a large pension if he would return to Spain, but he refused.

Falla did spend some time teaching in exile. Among his notable pupils was composer Rosa García Ascot. His health began to decline and he moved to a house in the mountains where he was tended by his sister María del Carmen de Falla. He died of cardiac arrest on 14 November 1946 in Alta Gracia, in the Argentine province of Córdoba. In 1947 his remains were brought back to Spain and entombed in the cathedral at Cádiz. One of the lasting honors to his memory is the Manuel de Falla Chair of Music in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at Complutense University of Madrid. His image appeared on Spanish currency notes for some years. Manuel de Falla never married and had no children.

Works[link]

See List of compositions by Manuel de Falla and List of works for the stage by Falla.

Media[link]

	Spanish Dance Performed by Carrie Rehkopf Popular Spanish Suite #1 Performed by John Michel Popular Spanish Suite #5 Performed live by John Michel
Problems listening to these files? See media help.

References[link]

• Manuel de Falla and the Spanish Musical Renaissance by Burnett James (Gollancz, London, 1979)
• Manuel de Falla : a bibliography and research guide by Andrew Budwig with Preface by Gilbert Chase (Garland Publishers, 1986)
• Manuel de Falla by Nancy Lee Harper (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998)
• Manuel De Falla and Modernism in Spain by Carol A Hess (University of Chicago Press, 2001)
• Falla by Manuel Orozco Diaz (Barcelona: Salvat 1985)

See also[link]

• John Brande Trend
• Spanish poetry

Recordings by de Falla[link]

• Manuel de Falla 1876-1946 Grabaciones históricas; Centro de Documentación Musical de Andalucía. (Almaviva, HOM13080) (ref)
• Rollos de Pianola (Obras de Albéniz, Granados, Turina, Ocón, Chapí, Alonso y Otros) (Almaviva, DS - 0141) ASIN B000GI34D6

External links[link]

• The Manuel de Falla Foundation in Spanish and English
• Free scores by Manuel de Falla at the International Music Score Library Project
• Nana by Manuel de Falla from his Siete Canciones Populares Españolas (played by Duo Roldan)
• Arthur Rubinstein in De Falla's "Ritual Fire Dance" on YouTube performed by Arthur Rubinstein
• Concert version for cello performed by Julian Lloyd Webber (cello)
• Free scores by Manuel de Falla in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)

Ballet portal

v t e Manuel de Falla Operas Los amores de la Inés · La vida breve · El retablo de Maese Pedro Ballets El amor brujo · Ritual Fire Dance (from El amor brujo) · The Three-Cornered Hat Orchestral Nights in the Gardens of Spain Manuel de Falla at Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia books: Manuel de Falla