Early Modern States of Iberia: Map & History

The Battle of Alcácer Quibir in 1578 saw the death of the young king Sebastian. Sebastian's granduncle and successor, Cardinal Henry, was 66 years old at the time. Henry's death was followed by a succession crisis, with three grandchildren of Manuel I claiming the throne: Infanta Catarina, Duchess of Braganza (married to John, 6th Duke of Braganza), António, Prior of Crato, and King Philip II of Spain. António had been acclaimed king of Portugal by the people of Santarém on 24 July 1580, and then in many cities and towns throughout the country. Some members of the Council of Governors of Portugal who had supported Philip escaped to Spain and declared him to be the legal successor of Henry. Philip marched into Portugal and defeated the troops loyal to the Prior of Crato in the Battle of Alcântara.

From Wikipedia: Iberian Union · Establishment (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The subsequent Portuguese Restoration War against Philip III (Portuguese: Guerra da Restauração) consisted mainly of small skirmishes near the border. The most significant battles were the Battle of the Lines of Elvas (1659), the Battle of Ameixial (1663), the Battle of Castelo Rodrigo (1664), and the Battle of Montes Claros (1665); the Portuguese were victorious in all of these battles. However, the Spaniards won the Battle of Vilanova (1658) and the Battle of the Berlengas (1666). The Battle of Montijo (1644) was indecisive, starting out with great Spanish success and ending with Portuguese success; the numbers of casualties were nearly equal.

From Wikipedia: Iberian Union · Restoration War and the end of the Union (CC BY-SA 4.0)

In the Basque Autonomous Community of Spain, the Valdegovía adopted the royal coat of arms during the Iberian Union period with the Navarre arms and the Portuguese arms added on the honor point.

From Wikipedia: Iberian Union · Legacy (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The availability of the Bible in vernacular languages was important to the spread of the Protestant movement and development of the Reformed Church in France. The country had a long history of struggles with the papacy (see the Avignon Papacy, for example) by the time the Protestant Reformation finally arrived. Around 1294, a French version of the scriptures was prepared by the Roman Catholic priest, Guyard des Moulins. A two-volume illustrated folio paraphrase version based on his manuscript, by Jean de Rély, was printed in Paris in 1487.

From Wikipedia: Huguenots · History: Origins (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The new teaching of John Calvin attracted sizeable portions of the nobility and urban bourgeoisie. After John Calvin introduced the Reformation in France, the number of French Protestants steadily swelled to ten percent of the population, or roughly 1.8 million people, in the decade between 1560 and 1570. During the same period, there were some 1,400 Reformed churches operating in France. Hans J. Hillerbrand, an expert on the subject, in his Encyclopedia of Protestantism: 4-volume Set claims the Huguenot community reached as much as 10% of the French population on the eve of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572, declining to 7–8% by around 1600, and further after heavy persecution began once again with the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685. Among the nobles, Calvinism peaked on the eve of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre.

From Wikipedia: Huguenots · Demographics: Links to nobility (CC BY-SA 4.0)

These tensions spurred eight civil wars, interrupted by periods of relative calm, between 1562 and 1598. With each break in peace, the Huguenots' trust in the Catholic throne diminished, and the violence became more severe, and Protestant demands became grander, until a lasting cessation of open hostility finally occurred in 1598. The wars gradually took on a dynastic character, developing into an extended feud between the Houses of Bourbon and Guise, both of which — in addition to holding rival religious views — staked a claim to the French throne. The crown, occupied by the House of Valois, generally supported the Catholic side, but on occasion switched over to the Protestant cause when politically expedient.

From Wikipedia: Huguenots · History: Civil wars (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Four-term Republican United States Representative Howard Homan Buffett was of Huguenot descent.

From Wikipedia: Huguenots · Legacy: United States (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The first known human settlements in what is now Catalonia were at the beginning of the Middle Paleolithic. The oldest known trace of human occupation is a mandible found in Banyoles, described as pre-Neanderthal, that is, some 200,000 years old; other sources suggest it to be only about one third that old. There are important remains from the Epipalaeolithic or Mesolithic, dated between 8000 and 5000 BC. The most important sites from these eras, all excavated in the region of Moianès, are the Balma del Gai (Epipaleolithic) and the Balma de l'Espluga. The Neolithic era began in Catalonia around 5000 BC, although the population was slower to develop fixed settlements thanks to the abundance of woods, which allowed the continuation of a fundamentally hunter-gatherer culture, for example, La Draga at Banyoles, an "early Neolithic village which dates from the end of the 6th millennium BC".

From Wikipedia: Catalonia · History: Prehistory (CC BY-SA 4.0)

After Franco's death in 1975 and the adoption of a democratic constitution in Spain in 1978, Catalonia recovered and extended the powers that it had gained in the Statute of Autonomy of 1932 but lost with the fall of the Second Spanish Republic at the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939.

From Wikipedia: Catalonia · Politics (CC BY-SA 4.0)

With a highly industrialised and populated region, the nominal GDP of Catalonia in 2024 was €302 billion, ranking second after Madrid (€316 billion) and with a per capita GDP of €37,477. The median income was €27,132 in 2024, ranking 4th among the rest of autonomous communities.

From Wikipedia: Catalonia · Economy (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The defeat of the military rebellion against the Republican government in Barcelona placed Catalonia firmly in the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War. During the war, there were two rival powers in Catalonia: the de jure power of the Generalitat and the de facto power of the armed popular militias. Violent confrontations between the workers' parties (CNT-FAI and POUM against the PSUC) culminated in the defeat of the former in 1937. The situation resolved itself progressively in favor of the Generalitat, but at the same time the Generalitat lost most of its autonomous powers within Republican Spain. In 1938 Franco's troops broke the Republican territory in two, isolating Catalonia from the rest of the Republican territory. The defeat of the Republican army in the Battle of the Ebro led in 1938 and 1939 to the occupation of Catalonia by Franco's forces.

From Wikipedia: Catalonia · History: Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and Franco's rule (1939–1975) (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Originating in the historic territory of Catalonia, Catalan is the official language of the Autonomous Community and has enjoyed special status since the approval of the Statute of Autonomy of 1979 which declares it to be "Catalonia's own language", a term which signifies a language given special legal status within a Spanish territory, or which is historically spoken within a given region. The other languages considered official in Catalonia are Spanish, which has official status throughout Spain, and Aranese Occitan, considered the "own language" of the Val d'Aran territory. Given this, the sole official language for toponymy throughout Catalonia is Catalan, except in the Val d'Aran where Occitan fulfils this role.

From Wikipedia: Catalonia · Culture: Languages (CC BY-SA 4.0)