The Spain Portal (Bienvenido al portal español)

Spain, officially the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Europe and the fourth-most populous European Union (EU) member state. Spanning the majority of the Iberian Peninsula, its territory also includes the Canary Islands, in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean; the Balearic Islands, in the Western Mediterranean Sea; and the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, in mainland Africa. Peninsular Spain is bordered to the north by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; to the east and south by the Mediterranean Sea and Gibraltar; and to the west by Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean. Spain's capital and largest city is Madrid; other major urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Zaragoza, Málaga, Murcia, and Palma de Mallorca.
In early antiquity, the Iberian Peninsula was inhabited by Celts, Iberians, and other pre-Roman peoples. The Roman conquest of the Iberian peninsula created the province of Hispania, which became deeply Romanised and later Christianised. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the peninsula was conquered by tribes from Central Europe, among them the Visigoths, who established the Visigothic Kingdom centred on Toledo. In the early 8th century, most of the peninsula was conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate, with Al-Andalus centred on Córdoba. The northern Christian kingdoms of Iberia launched the so-called Reconquista, gradually repelling and ultimately expelling Islamic rule from the peninsula, culminating with the fall of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada. The dynastic union of the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon in 1479 under the Catholic Monarchs is often seen as the de facto unification of Spain as a nation state. (Full article...)
Selected biography

Pedro Almodóvar Caballero (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈpeð̞ɾo almoˈð̞oβ̞aɾ kaβ̞aˈʝeɾo]) (born September 24, 1949 in Calzada de Calatrava, Spain) is a Spanish film director, screenwriter and producer. Almodóvar is the most successful and internationally known Spanish filmmaker of his generation. His films, marked by complex narratives, employ the codes of melodrama and use elements of pop culture, popular songs, irreverent humor, strong colors and glossy décor. He never judges his character's actions, whatever they do, but he presents them as they are in all their complexity. Desire, passion, family and identity are the director's favorite themes. Almodóvar’s films enjoy a worldwide following and he has become a major figure on the stage of world cinema.
Pedro Almodóvar Caballero was born on September 24, 1949 in Calzada de Calatrava, a rural small town of Ciudad Real, a province of Castilla–La Mancha in the administrative district of Almagro. La Mancha is the windswept region of flat lands made famous by Don Quixote. He was born as one of four children (two boys, two girls) in a large and impoverished family of peasant stock. His father, Antonio Almodóvar, who could barely read or write worked most of his life hauling barrels of wine by mule. Almodóvar's mother, Francisca Caballero, turned her son into a part time teacher of literacy in the village and also a letter reader and transcriber for the neighbors. When Pedro was eight years old, the family sent him to study at a religious boarding school in the city of Cáceres, Extremadura, in the west of the country, with the hope that he might someday become a priest.
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Did you know...
- ... that the surname Baena was popular among Spanish Jews forced to convert to Catholicism during the Reconquista, even though few Jews in Baena had Jewish surnames in the first place?
- ... that painter Nicolino Calyo left Naples after participating in a failed uprising against King Ferdinand IV, then fled Spain following the outbreak of the First Carlist War?
- ... that the May 1995 Pale air strikes during the Bosnian War were the first offensive operations carried out by the Spanish Air Force since 1957?
- ... that Juan Astorquia was the captain of the Athletic Bilbao team that won the first Spanish Cup in 1903?
- ... that Pedro Durruti was executed by firing squad, but the Spanish State officially recorded his cause of death as cardiac arrest?
- ... that the Spanish anarchist Agustín Remiro worked as a foreign agent for MI6?
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In the news
- 1 December 2025 –
- Spain deploys 400 Mossos d'Esquadra and 117 Military Emergencies Unit members to contain the spread of the African swine fever virus in Catalonia after two dead wild boars tested positive for the virus. (Reuters)
- 1 December 2025 – China–Spain relations
- China permits Spain to resume pork exports from regions unaffected by African swine fever following a trade prohibition imposed on November 28. (Reuters)
- 30 November 2025 –
- Thousands of supporters of Spain's conservative and Christian democratic opposition People's Party gather in Madrid and calls for prime minister Pedro Sanchez to resign amid a corruption scandal involving ruling PSOE. (AP)
- 27 November 2025 – Koldo Case
- The Spanish Supreme Court orders former transport minister and former deputy leader of the ruling PSOE José Luis Ábalos and ex-adviser Koldo García into pre-trial detention without bail on charges linked to alleged kickbacks in public procurement, while also naming former lawmaker Santos Cerdán as a suspect. (AFP via Gulf Times)
- 1 December 2025 –
- Spain deploys 400 Mossos d'Esquadra and 117 Military Emergencies Unit members to contain the spread of the African swine fever virus in Catalonia after two dead wild boars tested positive for the virus. (Reuters)
- 30 November 2025 –
- Thousands of supporters of Spain's conservative and Christian democratic opposition People's Party gather in Madrid and calls for prime minister Pedro Sanchez to resign amid a corruption scandal involving ruling PSOE. (AP)
- 20 November 2025 –
- Spain's Supreme Court sentences Attorney General Álvaro García Ortiz to two years of disqualification and a fine for revealing secrets about a tax fraud case involving Madrid president Isabel Díaz Ayuso's partner. (RTVE)
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- ^ "Atlantic hurricane best track (HURDAT version 2)" (Database). United States National Hurricane Center. April 4, 2025.
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
- Landsea, Chris (April 2022). "The revised Atlantic hurricane database (HURDAT2) - Chris Landsea – April 2022" (PDF). Hurricane Research Division – NOAA/AOML. Miami: Hurricane Research Division – via Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.

























































