Hot answers tagged spain
18
Columbus was not, in fact, the first to cross the Atlantic. There were Norse communities living in Greenland from the 10th Century. They even had some temporary settlements in North America proper. However, the Norse weren't significantly better at eking out a living in the North Atlantic than the Inuit, and (after 500 years) eventually got wiped out by some ...
13
Complimentary to Tom's answer, you have to ask yourself which side they'd come in on. There's nothing really useful in terms of territory they could get out of Germany or Austria-Hungary, since both were way on the other side of Europe.
If they'd gone in on the other side, they could perhaps have gotten useful territory from France. However, French forces ...
10
Sure, it's possible. Many things are possible. Likely, however, is another question.
The link you posted describes a vague story of sailing west into the Atlantic, finding an island, trading with the locals, and returning home. Could the island be in the New World? It could, but it could just as easily be one of the islands in the Atlantic.
For me to ...
10
For Germany it was unnecessary, they weren't going to be a threat and would be a useless ally. Occupying Spain even under friendly terms would cost men and equipement. Essentially the same as Vichy France.
With Italy and France you already have all the Mediterranean bases you need. The North Atlantic convoy routes are further away from Spain than bases in ...
9
There were two power blocs, the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy), and the Triple Entente (Britain, France, Russia). Spain was part of neither and had no reason to support one or the other.(Italy later switched sides).
Spain was fortunate to be outside of the main battle areas: France, Belgium, Poland, the Balkans, western Russia. It had no ...
8
"The best thing that Euskara could contribute to the humanity is to die out" - Miguel de Unamuno
Euskara, Basque language, is a very interesting subject. It survived on two time levels. First, being an ancient language which is still in use, and now, being a minority language which is still in use in 21st century, where we have to deal with stronger and ...
8
Spain is in the western end of the Central European Time. This means despite the same clock, they have later actual sun cycle (e.g. later actual sunrise, noon, sunset, etc.) than other countries. Human activities are partly influenced by the sun cycle, so it is logical that their meal schedule is later than the rest of Europe as well.
For example, for 21 ...
8
The most important "paradigm shift" of the early 19th century was the Industrial Revolution. That was the harnessing of the steam, and later, internal combustion engines, for manufacturing advances that led to an "order of magnitude" gains (five to ten times) in the standard of living. The great powers of the time were also among the earliest beneficiaries ...
7
"The nail that sticks out gets hammer down" While a Japanese saying, it holds true for all the super powers. Be their outside enemies, inside corruption, or just economic bad luck, the hammers are numerous indeed.
Spain in particular, was cripple by mega inflation due to all the gold coming from the Indies. Portugal was assimilated into Spain and then ...
7
Primarily for convenience of trade and communications across national borders. As the countries of Western Europe have become ever more closely linked, it makes life easier if people can agree on what time it is.
The initial standardisation of times, in Great Britain at least, came with the railway - Bristol time was 11 minutes different to London, based on ...
6
Spain changed the time zone in 1940 from GMT to GMT+1, Franco thought that it would be a good idea to have same time than nazi Germany and fascist Italy (his political allies), after Germany occupied France. The United Kingdom modified the time zone too, but return back in 1945.
In the 80s, the PSOE (political party at government) institutionalized the ...
5
For many years, the Extremadura region was the border region between Christian and Moorish Spain. As a result, their inhabitants were quite literally "living at the edge." Hence they produced the largest number of "desperado" type conquerors.
It's like saying that America's most renowned Indian fighters (e.g. Buffalo Bill Cody or George A. Custer) were ...
4
In "Mein Kampf," Hitler opined, "We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the east...If we speak of the soil of Europe today, we can have primarily in mind the soil of Russia and her vassal border states."
He was concerned primarily with conquering Russia and eastern Europe. Fought France and Britain ...
4
I'm kind of suprised nobody has brought up the Siesta.
In Spain and many other subtropical and tropical climes they have a tendency to nap during the hottest parts of the day. You'd logically have to then work that much later to put in the same amount of work. That would shift your entire calendar back likewise, including the evening meal.
Its is actually ...
3
According to Colin McEvedy, in 737 after the Muslim Conquest of Spain, the population on the peninsula was around 4 million. Nearly all of that would have been in Muslim-held territory, as there simply wasn't much else but a couple of little strips of land in the mountainous northern coastal region. Toledo was the only city of any real size in Western Europe ...
3
The Spanish Civil War started as a combination of an officers' revolt, plus a coup.
The coup "failed," as such (few government leaders were captured by the Nationalists). That may have led to a false sense of security by the government.
They probably thought that it was just a rising of a few disaffected officers, and not a full-scale rebellion that would ...
3
From what I can tell, the International Brigades were mostly effective only for propaganda purposes and to camouflage the presence of Soviet assistance to the Republican government. The 32,000-35,000 men in the brigades were a grab bag of unemployed workers, middle class non-combatants, veterans from the first world war, etc; all motivated by a shared ...
3
I have been travelling in Extremadura for the past 5 days. What strikes me is the large number of rivers, some surprisingly large in June, most navigable. ALS remember the Romans took the trouble to come here overland and of course the Moors and the Castilians marched and counter marched this terrain for centuries. A theory I will advance is that after the ...
3
From reading your link over, it appears that the War of Austrian Succession (and its Americas equivalent of King George's war) started quite soon thereafter. I suspect the general military land actions were considered way more important than a single Naval battle (dominated mostly by Yellow Fever) fought out in the middle of nowhere that mostly just ...
2
Most think of the later dinner time as stemming from the need to ensure that all family members are home to eat together - which is an important tradition of cohesiveness and family-focus.
This article cites the later dinner-time in Italy as stemming from the long days that people spend out of the home - by implication, earning wage via the livelihood.
2
Spain was involved in the invasion of the soviet union by sending 15k troops called "Blue Division". In order to not putting his relations to western democracies at risk, Franco set having the involvement limited to the eastern front as a condition.
Already before WWII, ongoing from 1936, Germany supported Franco's forces during the civil war with secretly ...
1
The Wikipedia article on Al Andalus mentions this:
Arabs, and Berbers comprised eighty percent of the population of
Al-Andalus by around 1100.
BTW as well as this:
Jews constituted more than five percent of the population.
If you are looking for a source published in book form, I would recommend Ibn Khaldun: The Mediterranean in the 14th ...
1
Interesting series of questions, but I'm afraid I don't have an answer to all of them. I'll answer the language-related in order to set them into context.
It's very hard to read the the last line of the fist picture and I can only see:
"[Anteque]ra que vinieron XXX con Señor XXX Don Fernando"
The word you mention in your second question is not ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
