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Spain: Spanish Peninsula
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The Government of Spain is involved in a long-running campaign against Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA), a terrorist organization founded in 1959 and dedicated to promoting Basque independence. ETA targets Spanish security forces, military personnel, Spanish Government officials, and politicians of the Popular Party and the Socialist Party (PSOE.) The group has carried out numerous bombings against Spanish Government facilities and economic targets, including a car bomb assassination attempt on then-opposition leader Aznar in 1995, in which his armored car was destroyed but he was unhurt. The Spanish Government attributes over 800 deaths to ETA terrorism since its campaign of violence began. In recent years, the government has had more success in controlling ETA, due in part to increased security cooperation with French authorities.
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The C.V.Starr-Middlebury College School in Spain was founded in 1951 as a Graduate Program where Middlebury College Spanish School students could continue and finish their MA degree. As Middlebury College undergraduate students began to show interest in going abroad, the program was expanded to fulfill their needs. Today the School in Spain offers academic experiences at institutions in four different locations: Córdoba, Getafe (Madrid), Logroño, and Madrid.
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Spain literally started another military front against the British as soon as war was declared in 1779. Governor of Louisiana, Count Bernardo de Galvez, received orders to take back forts the Spanish had lost to the British in 1763. September 6, 1779, Galvez took Ft. Bute at Manchas in the Mississippi River Valley with no losses to Spain. Taking the fort at Baton Rouge was a more formidable task, but the Spanish captured it September 20. Galvez next secured the peaceful surrender of Natchez October 5. The next year, Galvez led his forces to capture Mobile, West Florida.
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The surface of Spain presents the most varied geological features. In the seas of the Cambrian epoch the first elements of the Peninsula appeared as a multitude of islands. The most important of these islands formed what is now Galicia and the North of Portugal, with parts of the Provinces of Cáceres, Salamanca, and Zamora. To the south-east of this was another island, where is now Bejar and Sierra de Gredos, comprising part of the Provinces of Avila, Segovia, and Toledo. To the north-east, the Pyrenees and the Catalonian coast took the form of islets, while in other directions other islets occupied the sites of Lisbon, Evora, Cáceres, Badajoz, Seville, Cordova, and Jaén. The upheaval of the land went on during the Devonian and Silurian epochs until it formed what is now the whole of Galicia, part of the Asturias, León, and Zamora, and as far down as Toledo, Ciudad Real, Cordova, Huelvas, and the Algarves, while, to the east and north, were formed the Catalonian coast and a great part of the Pyrenees.
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Spain produced its share of wonder tales, some of which reflect the 800â€year Arab presence in the Iberian peninsula. An important collection of tales of Arabic origin is Disciplina Clericalis, translated into Latin by Moisés Sefardà (born in Huesca in 1056, converted, christened Petrus Alphonsi in 1106). In ‘The Rustic and the Bird’ a man captures a bird. To gain her freedom she gives him some words of advice: ‘Do not believe everything that is said’ (a precious stone in her body), ‘what is yours you will always possess’ (she is in the sky; he cannot possess her), ‘do not sorrow over lost possessions’ (he must not lament loss of the stone). This tale was disseminated widely with variants and was interpolated in a chivalric text, in a translation of the life of Buddha, and in a compilation of sermonic exempla. Also from Disciplina is the tale of ‘Dream Bread’ (whose literary trajectory led it to the Golden Age dramatist Lope de Vega's San Isidro labrador de Madrid, 1599), in which a clever rustic tricks his urban travelling companions by pretending to have had a miraculous dream.
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The 20th century initially brought little peace; Spain played a minor part in the scramble for Africa, with the colonization of Western Sahara, Spanish Morocco and Equatorial Guinea. A military disaster in Moocco in 1921 contributed to discrediting the monarch and worsened political instability. 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, Catalonia and Galicia (where the autonomy did not have any effect due to the civil war) and gave voting rights to women.
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