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).
The 20th century initially brought little peace; colonisation of Western Sahara, Spanish Morocco and Equatorial Guinea was attempted as a substitute for the loss of the Americas. A period of dictatorial rule (1923-1931) ended with the establishment of the Second Spanish Republic. The Republic offered political autonomy to the Basque Country and Catalonia and gave voting rights to women. However, with increasing political polarisation and pressure from all sides, coupled with growing and unchecked political violence, the Republic ended with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936. Following the victory of the nationalist forces in 1939, General Francisco Franco ruled a nation exhausted politically and economically until his death in 1975.
Spain remained officially neutral in World Wars I and II, but suffered through a devastating Civil War (1936-39). During Franco's rule, Spain remained largely economically and culturally isolated from the outside world, but slowly began to catch up economically with its European neighbors. Under Franco, Spain actively sought the return of Gibraltar by the UK, and gained some support for its cause at the United Nations. During the 1960s, Spain began imposing restrictions on Gibraltar, culminating in the closure of the border in 1969. It was not fully reopened until 1985.
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.
Madrid is also noted for its nightlife and discotheques. Younger madrileños sometimes dance all night, stop off for chocolate y churros at dawn, go home, shower, shave, and go to work. This nightlife, called la movida or la marcha and initially focussed on the Plaza del Dos de Mayo, flourished after the death of Franco, especially during the 80's while Madrid's most cherished mayor Enrique Tierno Galván was in office. A particular hub for this night activity is nowadays the nearby gay village of Chueca. However, as prices continue to rise and more jobs become available, nightlife in Madrid is becoming more and more like that of other European cities such as Stockholm or Munich.
In 711, Arabs and Berbers had converted to Islam, a religion founded in the 7th century by prophet Muhammad and which by the 8th dominated all the north of Africa. A raiding party led by Tariq ibn-Ziyad was sent to intervene in a civil war in the Visigothic kingdoms in Iberia. Crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, it won a decisive victory in the summer of 711 when the Visigoth king Roderic was defeated and killed on July 19th at the Battle of Guadalete. Tariq's commander, Musa bin Nusair quickly crossed with substantial reinforcements, and by 718 the Muslims dominated most of the peninsula. The advance into Europe was stopped by the Franks under Charles Martel at the battle of Poitiers (France) in 732.
As the Roman empire declined, the Suebi, Vandals and Alans each took control of part of Hispania. In the 5th century AD the Visigoths, a romanized germanic tribe, conquered all of Hispania and established a relatively stable kingdom lasting until 711, when it fell to an invasion by Islamic North African Moors and became part of the expanding Umayyad empire, under the name of Al-Andalus. When the Umayyad empire gave way to the Abbaside empire, an Umayyad exile established the Caliphate of Cordoba, effectively making Al-Andalus independent from the empire.
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.
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.
Spain is a constitutional monarchy, with a hereditary monarch and a bicameral parliament, the Cortes Generales or National Assembly. The executive branch consists of a Council of Ministers presided over by the President of Government (comparable to a prime minister), proposed by the monarch and elected by the National Assembly following legislative elections.
Madrid is home to Real Madrid, the world's most successful football club (according to FIFA). There are three other major teams, the Primera Division club Atlético de Madrid, Getafe Club de Futbol and Rayo Vallecano.
Roman Catholicism is, by far, the most popular religion in the country, with four in five Spaniards (80%) self-identifying as Catholics. The next group (one in eight, or 12%) is represented by atheists or agnostics. Minority religions account for one in seventy (1.4%) of all Spaniards.
The dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera collapsed in 1930. Disgusted with the king's involvement in it, urban population voted for republican parties in the municipal elections of April 1931. The king was forced to resign and a republic was established.
In the 1960s, more than a decade later than other western European countries, Spain began to enjoy economic growth and gradually transformed into a modern industrial economy with a thriving tourism sector. Growth continued well into the 1970s, with Franco's government going to great lengths to shield the Spanish people from the effects of the oil crisis.
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