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At its greatest extent in the late 1700s and early 1800s, the Spanish Empire covered 13.7 million square kilometres (5.3 million square miles), making it one of the largest empires in history. [ 3 ]
The Spanish achievement of the sixteenth century was essentially the work of Castile, but so also was the Spanish disaster of the seventeenth; and it was Ortega y Gasset who expressed the paradox most clearly when he wrote what may serve as an epitaph on the Spain of the House of Austria: ‘Castile has made Spain, and Castile has destroyed it.’
The precise extent of either empire at its greatest territorial expansion is a matter of debate among scholars. Several empires in human history have been contenders for the largest of all time, depending on definition and mode of measurement. Possible ways of measuring size include area, population, economy, and power.
Following the Muslim conquest of Spain, al-Andalus, then at its greatest extent, was divided into five administrative units, corresponding very roughly to: modern Andalusia; Castile and León; Navarre, Aragon, and Catalonia; Portugal and Galicia; and the Languedoc-Roussillon area of Occitania. [17]
With the conquest and settlement of the Philippines, the Spanish Empire reached its greatest extent. [18] In 1564, Miguel López de Legazpi was commissioned by the viceroy of New Spain (Mexico), Don Luís de Velasco , to lead an expedition in the Pacific Ocean to find the Spice Islands , where earlier explorers Ferdinand Magellan and Ruy López ...
At its greatest extent the Kingdom of Navarre included all the modern Spanish province; the northern slope of the western Pyrenees the Spaniards called the ultra puertos ("country beyond the mountain passes") or French Navarre; the Basque provinces of Spain and France; the Bureba, the valley between the Basque mountains and the Montes de Oca to ...
The Byzantines occupied many coastal cities in Baetica and this region was to remain a Byzantine province until its reconquest by the Visigoths barely seventy years later. The Byzantine Empire at its greatest extent under Justinian I. Justinian's inherited empire in red with his conquests, including Spania, in orange. It is the westernmost ...
Its capital, Andorra la Vella, is the highest capital city in Europe, at an elevation of 1,023 metres (3,356 feet) above sea level. [19] The official language is Catalan, but Spanish, Portuguese, and French are also commonly spoken. [3] [20] Tourism in Andorra brings approximately 8 million visitors to the country annually. [21]