Spanish irredentism mainly focuses on claims over the British overseas territory of Gibraltar, whose long-standing territorial vindication as a British colony is enshrined in the Spanish foreign policy. Along history, other minor irredentist proposals have claimed territories such as the whole of Portugal, Andorra, parts of Northern Africa, the Roussillon (including Cerdanya) and the French Basque Country (including Lower Navarre).
A Spain holding all of the Iberian Peninsula became a topic in Spanish nationalism beginning in the 19th century, with proponents idealizing historical Roman Hispania when all of the Iberian Peninsula was united under the same rule. [1] The identification of a unified Hispanian cultural heritage both encompassing Portugal and Spain had been developed centuries earlier with the publishing of Juan de Mariana's History of Spain (1598), in which Mariana supported a Hispanian identity based on the Reconquista, on both countries' Roman-Visigothic heritage and their common Catholic and monarchical polities. [1]
There has been strong Spanish objection to the separation of Gibraltar from Spain since British acquisition in the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) in the aftermath of the Spanish War of Succession. [2] During the Spanish Civil War, the Carlists and the Falange (prior to the two parties' unification in 1937) both promoted the incorporation of Portugal into Spain. The Carlists stated that a Carlist Spain would retake Gibraltar and conquer Portugal. [3] The Falange, both prior to and after its merger with the Carlists, supported the unification of Gibraltar and Portugal into Spain. During its early years, the Falange produced maps that showed Portugal as a province of Spain. [4] After the victory of the Nationalist faction led by Francisco Franco in the Civil War, radical members of the Falange called for the incorporation of Portugal and the French Pyrenees into Spain. [5] Franco in a communiqué with Germany on 26 May 1942 declared that Portugal should be annexed into Spain. [6]
The years of World War II were fertile in the projection by several authors of irredentist fantasies across the Strait of Gibraltar (after all the Strait was to become the "neuralgic point of nationality" to them): [7] according to the Africanist Tomás García Figueras "Spain and Morocco are like two halves of the same geographical unity". [8] Historian Jaume Vicens Vives (1940) talked about a "vital space" conceptualised as a "geopolitical basic unit". [9] Rodolfo Gil Benumeya traced the links back to the Neolithic Era, pointing to a common Ibero-Berber people living on both sides of the Strait. [10] Gil Benumeya and Hernández Pacheco stressed the strengthening of those links due to Morocco once being "Mauritania Tingitana", part of the Roman Diocese of Hispania. Some of these authors, transcending historical arguments, even pointed at the Spanish-African union during "the Tertiary Epoch" when the Strait did not exist. [11]
To a lesser extent, territories adjacent to Equatorial Guinea were also subject to irredentist rhetoric in this time. [12] Claims were also made about the Spanishness of Andorra, Roussillon, Cerdanya, Lower Navarre, and the French Basque Country. [13] [14]
The history of Spain dates to contact the pre-Roman peoples of the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula made with the Greeks and Phoenicians. During Classical Antiquity, the peninsula was the site of multiple successive colonizations of Greeks, Carthaginians, and Romans. Native peoples of the peninsula, such as the Tartessos people, intermingled with the colonizers to create a uniquely Iberian culture. The Romans referred to the entire peninsula as Hispania, from which the name "Spain" originates. As was the rest of the Western Roman Empire, Spain was subject to the numerous invasions of Germanic tribes during the 4th and 5th centuries AD, resulting in the loss of Roman rule and the establishment of Germanic kingdoms, marking the beginning of the Middle Ages in Spain.
The Iberian Peninsula, also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in Southwestern Europe, defining the westernmost edge of Eurasia. It is divided between Peninsular Spain and Continental Portugal, comprising most of the region, as well as Andorra, Gibraltar and a small part of Southern France. With an area of approximately 583,254 square kilometres (225,196 sq mi), and a population of roughly 53 million, it is the second-largest European peninsula by area, after the Scandinavian Peninsula.
The Reconquista or the reconquest of al-Andalus was the series of military campaigns that Christian kingdoms waged against the Muslim kingdoms following the Umayyad conquest of Hispania. The beginning of the Reconquista is traditionally dated to the Battle of Covadonga, in which an Asturian army achieved the first Christian victory over the forces of the Umayyad Caliphate since the beginning of the military invasion. Its culmination came in 1492 with the fall of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada to the Catholic Monarchs.
Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country located in Southwestern Europe, with parts of its territory in the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea and Africa. It is the largest country in Southern Europe and the fourth-most populous European Union member state. Spanning across the majority of the Iberian Peninsula, its territory also includes the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea, and the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla in Africa. Peninsular Spain is bordered to the north by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; to the east and south by the Mediterranean Sea and Gibraltar; and to the west by Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean. Spain's capital and largest city is Madrid; other major urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Zaragoza, Seville, Málaga, Murcia, Palma de Mallorca, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and Bilbao.
Roussillon is a historical province of France that largely corresponded to the County of Roussillon and part of the County of Cerdagne of the former Principality of Catalonia. It is part of the region of Northern Catalonia or French Catalonia, corresponding roughly to the present-day southern French département of Pyrénées-Orientales in the former region of Languedoc-Roussillon.
Basque nationalism is a form of nationalism that asserts that Basques, an ethnic group indigenous to the western Pyrenees, are a nation and promotes the political unity of the Basques, today scattered between Spain and France. Since its inception in the late 19th century, Basque nationalism has included Basque independence movements.
Carlism is a Traditionalist and Legitimist political movement in Spain aimed at establishing an alternative branch of the Bourbon dynasty – one descended from Don Carlos, Count of Molina (1788–1855) – on the Spanish throne.
The Catalan Countries are those territories where the Catalan language is spoken. They include the Spanish regions of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, Valencian Community, and parts of Aragon and Murcia (Carche), as well as the Principality of Andorra, the department of Pyrénées-Orientales in France, and the city of Alghero in Sardinia (Italy). It is often used as a sociololinguistic term to describe the cultural-linguistic area where Catalan is spoken. In the context of Catalan nationalism, the term is sometimes used in a more restricted way to refer to just Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands. The Catalan Countries do not correspond to any present or past political or administrative unit, though most of the area belonged to the Crown of Aragon in the Middle Ages. Parts of Valencia (Spanish) and Catalonia (Occitan) are not Catalan-speaking.
The Treaty of the Pyrenees was signed on 7 November 1659 and ended the Franco-Spanish War that had begun in 1635.
The Spanish March or Hispanic March was a military buffer zone beyond the former province of Septimania, established by Charlemagne in 795 as a defensive barrier between the Umayyad Moors of Al-Andalus and the Frankish Carolingian Empire.
Fuero, Fur, Foro or Foru is a Spanish legal term and concept. The word comes from Latin forum, an open space used as a market, tribunal and meeting place. The same Latin root is the origin of the French terms for and foire, and the Portuguese terms foro and foral; all of these words have related, but somewhat different meanings.
Iberism, also known as pan-Iberism or Iberian federalism, is the pan-nationalist ideology supporting a unification of all the territories of the Iberian Peninsula. It mostly encompasses Andorra, Portugal and Spain, but may also include: Gibraltar and territories of France such as Northern Catalonia or the French Basque Country.
The military history of Spain, from the period of the Carthaginian conquests over the Phoenicians to the current Afghan War spans a period of more than 2200 years, and includes the history of battles fought in the territory of modern Spain, as well as her former and current overseas possessions and territories, and the military history of the people of Spain, regardless of geography.
Falangism was the political ideology of two political parties in Spain that were known as the Falange, namely first the Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista and afterwards the Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista. Falangism has a disputed relationship with fascism as some historians consider the Falange to be a fascist movement based on its fascist leanings during the early years, while others focus on its transformation into an authoritarian conservative political movement in Francoist Spain.
The Third Carlist War, which occurred from 1872 to 1876, was the last Carlist War in Spain. It is sometimes referred to as the "Second Carlist War", as the earlier "Second" War (1847–1849) was smaller in scale and relatively trivial in political consequence.
The Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Country of 1979, widely known as the Statute of Gernika, is the legal document organizing the political system of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country' which includes the historical territories of Alava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa. It forms the region into one of the autonomous communities envisioned in the Spanish Constitution of 1978. The Statute was named "Statute of Gernika" after the city of Gernika, where its final form was approved on 29 December 1978. It was ratified by referendum on 25 October 1979, despite the abstention of more than 40% of the electorate. The statute was accepted by the lower house of the Spanish Parliament on November 29 and the Spanish Senate on December 12.
The Basques are an indigenous ethno-linguistic group mainly inhabiting Basque Country. Their history is therefore interconnected with Spanish and French history and also with the history of many other past and present countries, particularly in Europe and the Americas, where a large number of their descendants keep attached to their roots, clustering around Basque clubs which are centers for Basque people.
The Nationalist faction or Rebel faction was a major faction in the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939. It was composed of a variety of right-leaning political groups that supported the Spanish Coup of July 1936 against the Second Spanish Republic and Republican faction and sought to depose Manuel Azaña, including the Falange, the CEDA, and two rival monarchist claimants: the Alfonsist Renovación Española and the Carlist Traditionalist Communion. In 1937, all the groups were merged into the FET y de las JONS. After the death of the faction's early leaders, General Francisco Franco, one of the members of the 1936 coup, headed the Nationalists throughout most of the war, and emerged as the dictator of Spain until his death in 1975.