Spain

Spain is a nation in southwestern Europe. It is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentarian system.

The country began its political unification under King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castille in 1479. Before that, the region was under the domination of the Celts, Carthage, the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire, Germanic tribes, and the Moors, in that order. The modern state of Spain was formed in 1516, under the reign of Carlos I, grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, who'd inherited the crowns of nearly all the major Spanish kingdoms.

After unification, Spain became one of the first European powers to fully explore, colonize and exploit the New World. For a time, Spain was Europe's leading power. However, by the 18th century, Spain's power had diminished. It endured defeats at the hands of Britain in colonial wars, costing it territory. Throughout the 19th century, Spain endured the loss of its New World possessions as its various colonies followed the United States' lead and gained independence. Spain's defeat at the hands of the U.S. in 1898 during the Spanish-American War confirmed that Spain's glory days were done.

The 20th century saw the Spanish Civil War, and the rise of Francisco Franco as its repressive fascist leader. While initially something of a pariah given Franco's ties to Nazi Germany during the Civil War, Franco's opposition to the Soviet Union led to closer ties between Spain and the United States during the Cold War period. Upon Franco's death in 1975, a new democratic constitution was adopted, and King Juan Carlos I took the throne.

Spain in Agent of Byzantium
By the early 1300s, the Byzantine Empire had reconquered the south-eastern part of Ispania, along the coast of the Inner Sea and up to the Pyrenees. The north-western areas and the western part of the coast remained in barbarian hands.

Spain in Atlantis
Spain, much like France, came by its Atlantean holdings in a roundabout way. After Edward Radcliffe of England established New Hastings in northern Atlantis, a settlement called Gernika was established by Basques further south. Galicians soon followed suit. Spain itself was still divided between two kingdoms, and the Basques and the Galicians saw Atlantis as an opportunity to flee the chaos of the Iberian Peninsula.

In the 1460s, Basque sailors made the first voyages to Terranova, bringing back the indigenous peoples as slaves.

In the meantime, Spain had unified under one kingdom. It began to take a more active hand in running the Basque holdings in Atlantis and southern Terranova. By the early 16th century, Spain had a substantial empire in Terranova, subduing the gold-rich indigenous Terranovan empires. Its Atlantean holdings, however, were now an afterthought.

After peaking in the mid 16th century, Spain's power in the region began to wain. In the 17th century, Spain's ships fell prey to Atlantean pirates based in Avalon. However, Spain did not contribute to the fleet that destroyed the pirates.

In the mid-18th century, Spain and France were at war with England. Spain's Atlantean possessions were attacked by English Atlanteans under the command of Major Victor Radcliff, demonstrating their vulnerability. Spain's ally France was completely defeated. France lost its Atlantean possessions, and Spain lost its buffer against England. Worse still, Radcliff's attack began an insurrection among the slaves which raged on even after the war in Atlantis had ended, although it was ultimately put down.

Spain and Spanish Atlantis did not participate in the Atlantean War of Independence; fighting stayed within English-controlled Atlantis, and Spain did not join France in declaring war on Britain.

In the early part of the 19th century, generations after the United States of Atlantis gained its independence, Spain sold its Atlantean holdings to the new country.

Spain in Crosstime Traffic
Crosstime Traffic was aware of an alternate in which the Spanish Armada conquered England in 1588 and Spain created an empire that bordered Russia. In another alternate, the descendants of Alexander the Great ruled half a dozen empires that stretched from Spain to the borders of China. Footage taken in both of these alternate were shown to Jeremy Solters and his fellow students in US history class.

Spain in In High Places
In one alternate visited by Crosstime Traffic, the Great Black Deaths wiped out 80% of the population of Europe, including the equivalent of Spain, which had been on the verge of pushing out its Muslim rulers. Spain was left virtually empty by the Great Black Deaths but eventually managed to rebuild itself.

This time, the Muslims made sure of their control of the peninsula, resulting in a Spain with a Muslim character persisting into the 21st century. While in the countryside there remained a substantial number of Christian peasants speaking Castilian or Catalan, these were reduced to peasant dialects, with the high classes and urban population being Arabic in language and culture.

Secret visitors from the Crosstime Traffic Company noted that in this alternate, as in the home timeline, Madrid became one of Europe's most cosmopolitan cities, eclipsing older urban centers of the peninsula. This Madrid had a population numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

In the 20th Century, ships from Spain - as from other European countries, both Muslim and Christian - discovered the continent across the Western Ocean and found that its copper-skinned inhabitants could not resist their weapons. By the 21st Century, Spain was on the verge of embarking on large-scale conquest and colonization.

A group of illegal Crosstimers set up a slavery ring in this Madrid and in still another alternate's Spain. In this second alternate, the Roman Republic had been defeated in the Samnite Wars of the fourth Century B.C. and the Roman Empire never came into being, nor did anybody else create a comparable empire in the Mediterranean. This 21st Century analog of Spain was divided between Punic people along the shores, whose ancestors came from Carthage, and people similar to Basques in the interior, including in the countryside on the site of Madrid. Gunpowder had not been invented, and the people used bows and arrows.

When the renegade Crosstimers first appeared in their timeline, setting up an estate with slaves, some locally captured and other imported from different timelines, the people resisted courageously but hopelessly, faced with the home timeline's weapons, and were again and again slaughtered.

Annette Klein managed to escape from slavery and alert Crosstime Traffic to what was going on. In the home timeline, Spain was a constitutional monarchy and an affluent member of the European Union. Crosstime Traffic maintained a large office in Madrid and was on good terms with the authorities. The Spanish police took care of raiding the renegades' Madrid headquarters, while the Spanish Army loaned a unit to Crosstime, which was taken to the timeline where the renegades conducted their illegal activities.

The renegades' slave-estate was broken up, and the people of this alternate Spain were mostly left to themselves, except for a few hidden observers from the regular Crosstime Traffic.

The home timeline Madrid was the first high-tech city seen by the former soldier Jacques from the Kingdom of Versailles. He was impressed with its size and cleanliness and was happy to find that in this timeline Spain was a Christian country, though it did not recognise Henri, the hero of the Final Testament.

Spain in A Different Flesh
Spain was the first country to explore the New World, establishing some colonies in South America. By the end of the 17th century, only two of those colonies were successful: Argentina and New Granada. The Spanish settlers had a difficult time maintaining long-term colonies, as the climate of South America was not conducive to the agricultural practices of Europe. Moreover, the creatures known as sims were a constant threat to the safety and well-being of the settlers.

Spanish explorers brought sims back to Europe for study and servitude. It was believed by many in England that Spaniards copulated with female sims, and that they baptized the sims, converting them to Catholicism.

Spain in "Eyewear"
The golden age of Spain's colonial empire owed much to the Mask of the Sun, or its analogs. This fact was known to a scant few.

Spain in The Hot War
Spain was ruled by Francisco Franco at the time of the outbreak of World War III in February, 1951. Franco, a former Axis ally, had built an alliance with the U.S. in the years after World War II. However, Spain didn't join NATO, and didn't enter World War III.

Spain in In the Presence of Mine Enemies
Spain was one of the independent nations that was allied with the Greater German Reich. It maintained its colonies in Africa. Its head of state used the title of Caudillo.

Spain in The Man With the Iron Heart
Spain had remained neutral throughout World War II despite the close relationship between Francisco Franco's fascist regime and Nazi Germany. After the war, Spain proved a welcoming safe harbor for many renegade Nazi fugitives, including the German Freedom Front hijackers of a commercial flight which was landed in Madrid and held hostage. Spanish authorities arrested the hijackers but refused to extradite them to the Allies, encouraging Reichsprotektor Joachim Peiper to attempt such hijackings again in the future.

Spain in "Report of the Special Committee on the Quality of Life"
Spain in 1491 had an extensive bureaucracy led by King Fernando and Queen Isabella. In considering the possibility of an excursion to China via the Atlantic Ocean, Spain's Special Committee on the Quality of Life, led by Jaime Nosénada prepared a report about Cristóbal Colón's proposed voyage, which suggested that such a voyage was not in the country's best interests.

Spain in Ruled Britannia
Under King Philip II, Spain became the most powerful Catholic nation in Europe reaching the height of its power when it successfully contended with France for European hegemony, absorbed Portugal and its colonies into the empire, defeated the Ottoman Turks in the Mediterranean, occupied the Netherlands, and, finally, invaded and conquered England in 1588.

Following the invasion and conquest of England, Philip's daughter Isabella replaced Elizabeth Tudor as Queen of England. Throughout her ten-year reign, a large Anglo-Hiberno-Spanish military presence was maintained in England to support Isabella's rule. These forces, along with Isabella and her husband, King Albert, were expelled by an English uprising led by Sir Robert Cecil in 1598, a few weeks after the death of Philip II and the accession of his far less capable son Philip III.

Spain in "Running of the Bulls"
See Astilia.

Spain in Southern Victory
Spain had once been a mighty world power and global empire, but by the 19th century, it had declined. In the late 1870s, Spain was so weak that it was bullied into selling the island of Cuba to the Confederate States. Around 1900, Spain's empire came to an official end, when it was easily defeated by Japan in a war in the Pacific. It was forced to concede its colonies in Guam and the Philippines to the Japanese - and became the first European nation to be defeated by an Asian nation in the age of Imperialism.

When the Great War began in 1914, Spain was a neutral nation; the Spanish Red Cross handled some prisoner exchanges between belligerents, for example, returning George Enos to the United States aboard one of their ships from his imprisonment in North Carolina.

In the interwar years, civil war erupted in Spain between the Monarchists, who were supported by Germany, and the Nationalists, who were supported by Britain and France. Though Germany had defeated the other two nations in the Great War and was assumed to be the most powerful nation in Europe militarily, the Nationalists won and Spain became a de facto Entente nation. Spain nonetheless remained neutral during the Second Great War.

Spain in The Two Georges
Spain and France were partners in the Holy Alliance. As such, Spain controlled a large amount of land in the Americas, although she lost Lower California and all territories north of the Rio Grande to the British-backed North American Union in the 19th century. Spain was the junior partner of the Alliance, which was ruled from Paris and Versailles by the French Bourbons.

Spain retained into the 20th Century the institution of the Inquisition, both at home and in its colonies, which added to its bad image in the British Empire.

Spain in "Vilcabamba"
Spain was left nearly uninhabitable when the Krolp discovered mercury beneath the country. The Krolp effectively strip-mined the whole of the country to get at the mercury.

As the United States prepared to fight the Krolp rather than allow them to strip-mine for silver and a small amount of gold deep below the surface of northeastern Utah, the Secretary of Alien Affairs shared some history with President Harris Moffatt III. He likened the U.S. situation to the Spaniards' conquest of the Inca, and described how the Inca had created a settlement called Vilcabamba in order to escape the Spaniards. After about 40 years, the Spaniards destroyed Vilcabamba.

Spain in The War That Came Early
Spain was an early front of what became a second world war. In 1936, General José Sanjurjo launched a coup against the Republic of Spain. He then led the so-called Nationalists in a civil war that raged on for the next eight years, eventually being folded into the Second World War.

Early in the Civil War, the Spanish Nationalists under Marshal José Sanjurjo were able to make tremendous gains. By 1938, Sanjurjo's forces held roughly half the country. This did not include Madrid, and so the Republic and the Nationalists were in a stalemate. And while Sanjurjo received support from Germany and Italy, the Republic received solid support from the Soviet Union, and less fervent support from Britain and France. When the Second World War broke out in October, 1938, Sanjurjo declared war on Britain and France. who, in response, began supplying the Republic more aggressively, gaining them a short-term advantage and eventual victory on the Battle of the Ebro, after which the coastal town of Vinaroz was reconquered and the previously divided Republican-held territory was unified again. However, the Nationalists exacted a price from the Allies, when Sanjurjo personally led the siege of Gibraltar, with the aid of German and Italian forces, and oversaw its fall in early 1939.

After this, however, foreign aid to both sides dried up, as Germany and the Allies were concentrating all their efforts on the fighting in France. Nonetheless, in March, 1939, Sanjurjo decided to concentrate on taking Madrid.

Initially, the Nationalists gained some momentum, taking the University City District within a few weeks. However, they could not get into Madrid proper. The Republicans succeeded in pushing the Nationalists out of University City by the middle of the summer.

The Nationalists maintained the offensive on Madrid for the remainder of the year, and into the next, but the line outside Madrid continued to hold on into 1940. Things looked particularly bleak for the Republic after the "big switch" of Summer of 1940 saw Britain and France align with Germany and cease supplying the Spanish Republic; however Germany was not in a position to help the Nationalists much more than they had been. The Republic also gained one unexpected advantage: the arrival of a regiment of Czechoslovak troops who had been fighting in France, and refused to join the war against the Soviet Union.

As fighting dragged on into 1941, the Spanish Civil War was once again a stalemate. Gradually, things began to turn in favor the Republic 1941. The British military launched a coup that deposed the appeasement-minded government of Horace Wilson in the spring. Britain promptly withdrew from the Soviet Union, and began bombing German territory while fighting Italy in North Africa. While France continued its alliance with Germany for the time being, the French government also began supplying weapons to the Republic. And in December, Czech sniper Vaclav Jezek killed Francisco Franco, one of Sanjurjo's most talented generals.

The Nationalists managed to hold their positions throughout 1942 and into early 1943. Vaclav Jezek actively pursued Sanjurjo, but for the longest time, Sanjurjo didn't oblige him. Finally, on a rainy day in the Fall of 1943, Sanjurjo visited the front, and Jezek shot him in the face.

Republican President Manuel Azaña had Jezek brought to Barcelona where he publicly thanked Jezek for not "despairing of the Republic". He also made Jezek a Spanish citizen, captain in the Army of the Republic, and paid Jezek the bounty that had been placed on Sanjurjo's head.

The Nationalists fell to infighting almost immediately, allowing the Republicans to rapidly retake the country. Several Nationalist officers fled to Portugal. Others were caught by the Republicans and summarily tried and executed. Finally, in early 1944, José Millán Astray became the last overall commander of the Nationalists just long enough to formally surrender and end the war.

The remainder of 1944 saw the Republic reasserting itself throughout Spain. This led to reprisals against Nationalist soldiers, who were sent to re-education camps. Civilians who'd been too friendly with the Nationalists were also subject to acts of vengeance. Various foreign fighters left Spain. Some continued the war against Germany until that ended in April, 1944. Others, such as the Czechoslovaks, no longer had a country, and found themselves uncertain as to their futures.

Spain in Worldwar
Spain had been a neutral nation as World War II raged all around the globe. When the Race invaded in June 1942, Spain was one of the many landing zones of the Conquest Fleet. Race forces quickly spread out and conquered Spain, before moving north and invading Vichy France. In 1944 at the Peace of Cairo, Spain was recognised as a Race colony, and the Pyrenees Mountains became the recognised northern border of the Race's dominions on Tosev 3. Spain was one of only three Race colonies on the European continent; the others were Portugal and Poland.

During the Race-German War of 1965, the Race invaded German-occupied France across the Pyrenees, using Spain as a launching point. The invasion was easily defeated by German forces, the only front of the war on which they decisively won. In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in the overall war, the Pyrenees became the border between the Race and newly-independent France, a situation which remained unchanged into the 21st Century.