#FullMooNTvExplorer

Spain officially the Kingdom of Spain is a sovereign state located on the Iberian Peninsula in southwestern Europe, with two large archipelagoes, the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea and the Canary Islands off the North African Atlantic coast, two cities, Ceuta and Melilla, in the North African mainland and several small islands in the Alboran Sea near the Moroccan coast. The country’s mainland is bordered to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea except for a small land boundary with Gibraltar; to the north and northeast by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; and to the west and northwest by Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean. It is the only European country to have a border with an African country (Morocco)[h] and its African territory accounts for nearly 5% of its population, mostly in the Canary Islands but also in Ceuta and Melilla. With an area of 505,990 km2 (195,360 sq mi), Spain is the largest country in Southern Europe, the second largest country in Western Europe and the European Union, and the fourth largest country in the European continent. By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union. Spain’s capital and largest city is Madrid; other major urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao and Málaga. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago. Iberian cultures along with ancient Phoenician, Greek and Carthaginian settlements developed on the peninsula until it came under Roman rule around 200 BCE, after which the region was named Hispania, based on the earlier Phoenician name Sp(a)n or Spania.[10] At the end of the Western Roman Empire the Germanic tribal confederations in migration from Central Europe invaded the Iberian peninsula and established themselves in relatively independent realms in its western provinces. The Visigoths migrating from Eastern Europe were allowed to settle in federated status in the neighbor province of Aquitania in 511, with the treaty obligations among others to assist the Empire with military allied support to expeditions defending its provinces in the West. And so they did in Gaul against Franks, Burgundians and the Sueves, Alans and Vandals depredations in the Iberian peninsula. The military campaigns success against the Vandals and Alans was so sounded that their dominion over the provinces of Betica and Carthaginensis were ended and they restored to the Empire. Both would unite and eventually leave the peninsula for Africa to form the Vandal kingdom. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Goths established the independent Kingdom of Toulouse expanding their domination over the extant Roman provinces in Gaul and Hispania. They took immediate military control of the Narbonensis, Auvergne and Provence and in the peninsula, the Tarraconensis and Carthaginensis from local provincial authorities, and wrestled control of Baetica and Lusitania from the Suebian Kingdom, placing a match to their expansion and passing to be the dominant power in the peninsula regardless of Byzantines and Frankish and Burgundians later incursions or dominion in parts the peninsula. The Suebian kingdom, some independent Hispano-Roman local regions and the Byzantines provincial realm in the peninsula, would be integrated by force into the successor Kingdom of Toledo that more or less unified politically, ecclesiastically and legally all the former Roman provinces or successor kingdoms of what was then known in documents as Hispania.

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