2000 Years of Spanish History in 16 Minutes

🔔 Which country should we map next? Tell us in the comments, and subscribe so you don't miss it. In 1492, Spain took Granada and sent Columbus west in the very same year, and within a century it ruled the first empire people called "the empire on which the sun never set." Spain gave Rome the emperor Trajan, its silver coins became the world's first global currency, its greatest writer lost the use of a hand in a sea battle, the "Spanish flu" almost certainly didn't start in Spain, and in 1981 a TV camera kept rolling while armed men stormed its parliament. This is the history of Spain on one animated map, from Phoenician traders and Hannibal's elephants to Spain in 2026, in 16 minutes. Chapters: 0:00 Intro 0:42 218 BC Everyone Wanted Spain 2:19 711 The Mountain of Tariq 3:32 1212 The Long Reconquest 4:43 1492 Three Events, One Year 6:37 1521 The Sun Never Sets 9:22 1571 The Paper King 12:15 1808 The Empire Breaks 13:33 1936 From Dictatorship to Democracy 15:52 The Sun Set, the Language Stayed 16:13 Outro Sources: Encyclopedias: Britannica (Carthage, Hannibal, Trajan, Tariq ibn Ziyad, al-Andalus, Córdoba, Las Navas de Tolosa, Ferdinand and Isabella, Christopher Columbus, Charles V, Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro, Potosí, Philip II, Battle of Lepanto, Spanish Armada, Miguel de Cervantes, War of the Spanish Succession, Peninsular War, Spanish-American War, Spanish Civil War, Francisco Franco, Juan Carlos I) Classical sources: Polybius, Histories 11 (Ilipa) · Livy, History of Rome 21 and 28 Books: Mauricio Drelichman and Hans-Joachim Voth, Lending to the Borrower from Hell (Princeton University Press, 2014) · Paul Preston, The Spanish Holocaust (2012) · Geoffrey Parker (Philip II, "the paper king") · Henry Kamen (the 1492 estimates) Institutions: UNESCO (World Book and Copyright Day) · U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian (1819, 1898) · CDC, Emerging Infectious Diseases (the 1918 flu) · Museo Reina Sofía (Guernica) · Instituto Cervantes, El español: una lengua viva (2025) Today's facts (as of October 2026): INE, Spain's National Statistics Institute (population, Frontur tourism) · BOE (the decree calling the 29 November election) · AP (the 2026 World Cup final) Maps: borders drawn by MapTale History on Natural Earth data (public domain). Relief imagery: NASA Earth Observatory, Blue Marble (Reto Stöckli), public domain. Ancient and medieval borders are approximate. Where historians disagree, the video says so. 🗺️ MapTale History: the full story of a country or an empire on one animated map. On MapTale History, every country and empire gets its whole story on one living map: borders that grow and shrink, the battles that moved them, and the people behind them, told by our little cartographer. Big history, short stories. This video is created for educational and entertainment purposes. Historical events often have multiple interpretations; our goal is to explain history fairly, not to promote any political or ideological viewpoint. The Alhambra Decree of 1492, the conquest of the Americas, the Civil War and the dictatorship, Gibraltar, Catalonia and today's politics are presented neutrally, with respect for everyone affected. #history #spain #spanishhistory