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The Napoleonic invasion gave the opportunity to the American colonies, led by Libertadores, to claim their independence. Between 1810 and 1824, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and the other colonies declared and won their independence. The only New World colonies Spain was left with were the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico. The Allies fought Napoleon's forces in the Peninsular War, with Joseph Bonaparte ruling as king at Madrid. In 1812 the Cortes took refuge at Cádiz and created the first modern Spanish constitution, the Constitution of 1812 (informally named La Pepa).

The Castilian-derived Spanish (called both Español and Castellano in the language itself) is the official language throughout Spain, but other regional languages are also spoken. Without mentioning them by name, the Spanish Constitution recognizes the possibility of regional languages being coofficial in their respective autonomous communities.

The crown jewel of Spain's next decade of infrastructure construction is the Spanish high speed rail network, Alta Velocidad Española AVE. Currently, an ambitious plan includes the construction of a 7000 km network, centered naturally on Madrid. The overall goal is to have all important provincial cities be no more than 4 hours away from Madrid, and no more than 6 hours away from Barcelona. Currently, AVE high-speed trains link Atocha station to Seville in the south and Lleida in the east (to be extended to Barcelona).

With the approval of the Spanish Constitution of 1978 and the arrival of democracy, the old historic nationalities — Basque Country, Catalonia, Galicia and Andalusia— were given far-reaching autonomy, which was then soon extended to all Spanish regions, resulting in one of the most decentralized territorial organizations in Western Europe.

In 1499, about 50,000 Moors in Granada were coerced by Cardinal Cisneros into mass baptisms and conversion. During the uprising that followed (known as the First Rebellion of the Alpujarras), people who refused the choices of baptism or deportation to Africa, were systematically eliminated. What followed was a mass flee of Moors, Jews and Gitanos from Granada city and the villages to the mountain regions (and their hills) and the rural country, however by 1500 Cisneros reported that "There is now no one in the city who is not a Christian, and all the mosques are churches".

Spain was part of the Roman Empire and many areas of Spain retain significant Roman architectural remnants. The Roman aqueduct at Segovia is still in use as of 2004; Mérida, now the Extermaduran capital but once the capital of the Roman province of Lusitania, retains over 5 miles of its Roman aqueduct, Roman bridge over the River Guadiana, an arch of Trajan, and significant remnants of a Roman forum, amphitheatre, and a temple popularly accounted to have been dedicated to Diana (goddess). Another Roman bridge crosses the Tagus River at Alcántara. Lesser Roman ruins can be found in the heart of Barcelona.

The Romans arrived in the Iberian peninsula during the Second Punic war in the 2nd century B.C., and annexed it under Augustus after two centuries of war with the Celtic and Iberian tribes and the Phoenician, Greek and Carthaginian colonies becoming the province of Hispania. Some of Spain's present languages, religion, and laws originate from this Roman period.

Spanish rule in Morocco ended in 1956. Though militarily victorious in the 1957-1958 Moroccan invasion of Spanish West Africa, Spain gradually relinquished its remaining African colonies. Spanish Guinea was granted independence as Equatorial Guinea in 1968, while the Moroccan enclave of Ifni had been ceded to Morocco in 1969.

As recently as the mid-20th-century, much of Spain (especially outside of the major cities) remained quite distinct from the rest of Europe. In 1954, V.S. Pritchett could still write of small Spanish towns, "The inn, if there is one, will not be a hotel, nor even a fonda — the Arab word — but perhaps a posada: a place one can ride into with a mule or a donkey, where one can stable an animal and lie down oneself on a sack of straw, the other side of the stall." [Pritchett, 1954 p. 46-47] However, especially since the 1975 death of Francisco Franco, Spain has become increasingly European; Pritchett's rustic posada would be unimaginable today.

Mainland Spain is dominated by high plateaus and mountain ranges such as the Pyrenees or the Sierra Nevada. Running from these heights are several major rivers such as the Tajo, the Ebro, the Duero, the Guadiana and the Guadalquivir. Alluvial plains are found along the coast, the largest of which is that of the Guadalquivir in Andalusia, in the east there are alluvial plains with medium rivers like Segura, Júcar and Turia. Spain is bound to the east by Mediterranean Sea (containing the Balearic Islands), to the north by the Bay of Biscay and to its west by the Atlantic Ocean, where the Canary Islands off the African coast are found.

A revived movement for the Christian unification of Spain was capitalized on by the "Catholic monarchs" (Reyes Católicos in Spanish) Isabel I of Castilla and Fernando II of Aragón in order to justify their invasion of Granada, the expulsion of the Jews and the forceful conversion of the Moors. In the 15th century, the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon were united under Isabel and Fernando. These two able rulers ruled jointly and worked to consolidate the power of the monarchy at the expense of the nobility. During their reign, the castles of many nobles (symbols of aristocratic independence from the monarchy) were demolished, and a system of regular taxation was established. Fernando and Isabel established the basis for the unification of Spain religiously as well as politically and economically.

Philip V, the first Bourbon king, of French origin, signed the Decreto de Nueva Planta in 1715, a new law that revoked most of the historical rights and privileges of the different kingdoms that conformed the Spanish Crown, unifying them under the laws of Castile, where the Cortes had been more receptive to the royal wish. Spain became culturally and politically a follower of France. The rule of the Spanish Bourbons continued under Ferdinand VI and Charles III. His son Carlos IV was truly incompetent (some say mentally handicapped), and under his reign Spain fell to the armies of Napoleon.