Spain

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

The country was politically unified under King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella in 1479. Before that, the region was under the domination of the Roman Empire, Germanic tribes, and the Moors in that order. 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. Spains defeat at the hands of the U.S. in 1898 confirmed that Spain's glory days were done.

The 20th century saw the Spanish Civil War, and the rise of Francisco Franco as its fascist leader. It pursued an isolationist policy until Franco's death, when a new democratic constitution was adopted.

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 the settlers.

Spanish explorers brought sims back to Europe for study and slavery. 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 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. Spain itself was still divided between two kingdoms, and the Basques 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.

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 two years. Germany and Italy directly supported Sanjurjo's Nationalists. The Republicans received aid from the Soviet Union, foreign volunteers, and tepid support from Britain and France,.

By 1938, the Spanish Republic was in an increasingly precarous situation, with the better-equipped Nationalists cutting its territroy in half. At the time when Adolf Hitler's demands for annexation of the Sudetenland to Germany led to a wider war, the Republic was in the middle of the Battle of the Ebro, a desperate last effort to survive which many in the Republican ranks considered as foredoomed. However, the situation changed drastically with the outbreak of general conflict, into which Spain became more fully integrated. France suddenly started to provide great amounts of aid to the Republicans, giving them the chance to win the battle and regain their territorial integrity, although not enough to win the war altogether.

With war against the Republicans a stalemate, Sanjurjo and the Nationalists, with the help of German and Italian troops, successfully took Gibraltar from Britain.

Towards mid-1939, Republicans and Nationalists prepared to reopen the battle for Madrid.

Spain in In High Places
Conquest by the Islamic armies during the first big wave of Islamic expansion turned out to have permanently determined the character of Al-Andalus as a Muslim, Arabic-speaking country - though there were several centuries when its fate hung in the balance in a prolonged struggle with the Chrisitians.

In the flush of their original victory, the Al-Andalus Muslims mostly disregarded the remaining Christian kingdoms, small and marginal in mountain areas at the peninsula's north. However, the Christians, speaking a variety of Latin-derived languagues, made good use of a period of divisions and weakness among the Muslims to launch wars of "reconqest", in the course two centuries conquering most of the peninsula and driving the Muslims to a narrow strip on its southern edge. However, the Great Black Deaths came to the Muslims' rescue, sweeping through the Christian areas, spectacularly decimating their population and leaving the country ripe for the Muslims' own reconquest.

This time, the Muslims made sure of their control of the peninsula, leaving no Christian pricipality in however distant a mountain region and also pushing far beyond the Pyrenees, deep into France. Thereon Al-Andalus' solidly Muslim character was no longer in doubt, persisting into the 21st century. While in the countryside there remained a substantial number of Christian peasants speaking Spanish or Catalan, these were reduced to peasant dialects, with the high classes and urban population being solidly Arabic in languague and culture.

Secret visitors to from the Crosstime Traffic, noted that in this alternate - like in the Home timeline, where the Christinas did manage to completely expell the Muslims and create a Christian kingdom called Spain - Madrid became one of Europe's most cosmopolitan cities, eclipsing older urban centers of the peninsula. Al-Andalus' Madrid had a population numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

In the Twentieth Cnetury ships from Al-Andalus - 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 Twenty-First Century, Al-Andalus was on the verge of embarking on large-scale conquest and colonization.

A group of illegal Crosstimers set up a slavery ring in Al-Andalus' Madrid to another alternate's Spain. In this one, 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 decimated.

Annette Klein manged to escape from slavery and alert Crosstime Traffic to what was going on. Spain in Home timeline 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 recognize Henri.

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. As of 2010, its head of state was still the Caudillo.

The fact that the Spanish Inquisition had once tried to eliminate the Jews from Spain's borders loomed large in the minds of those Jews hiding in plain sight within Germany's borders.

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 1492 had an extensive bureaucracy led by King Ferdinand II 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 Christopher Columbus'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 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. Several weeks earlier, Philip II had died and been succeeded by his son, the far less capable Philip III.

Spain in The Two Georges
Spain and France were partners in the Holy Alliance. As such, Spain controlled Central and South America and the Philippines, although she lost Louisiana, Baja California (renamed Lower California) and the territories north of the Rio Grande to Britain. Spain was the junior partner of the alliance, which was ruled from Paris 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 Southern Victory
Spain sold the island of Cuba to the Confederate States in the 1870s. In the 1900s, it was defeated by Japan in a war in the Pacific and 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.

Spain was neutral in the Great War; the Spanish Red Cross handled some prisoner exchanges between belligerents and returned 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 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, 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 forty years, the Spaniards destroyed Vilcabamba.

Spain in Worldwar
Spain was easily conquered by the Race, providing the Race with one of only two colonies on the European continent; the other was Poland. At the time of the Race's invasion, Spain was in the aftermath of a long and cruel Civil War, with the victorious Nationalists holding many of the defeated Republicans under appalling conditions in prison camps. Thus, for many Spanish citizens being ruled by the Race could actually be seen as an improvement.

With the Peace of Cairo the Pyrenees Mountains became the recognised northern border of the Race's dominions on Tosev. 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.