SPAIN (Espana), a former kingdom in the south-west of Europe, comprising about eleven-thirteenths of the Iberian penin sula, in addition to the Balearic islands, the Canary islands, and Ceuta, on the Moroccan coast opposite to Gibraltar. In 1920 the kingdom, apart from colonies, had a population of 21,338,381, and a total area of 194,800 sq. miles. It is thus rather more than twice the size of Great Britain. The rock of Gibraltar, in the south, is considered to be one of the strongest fortresses in the world, and belongs to the British.
Colonial Spanish colonies are limited to the continent of Africa and islands off its coasts. Spain exercises a protectorate over part of north-west Morocco, excluding the Tan gier zone, and, besides Ceuta, possesses Melilla, Ahucemas, Pefion de Velez de la Gomera and the Chafarinas islands off the Moroccan coast. On the Atlantic coast she holds Ifni and the Cape Juby territory, which merges southwards into the Rio de Oro colony. In the Gulf of Guinea Spain possesses the Fernando Po, Anno bon, great and little Elobey, and Corisco islands, and, on the main land, the Rio Muni district of Spanish Guinea, between the French Congo and the (French) mandated territory of the Cameroons in Africa.
The Iberian peninsula covers the major portion of that section of the earth's surface which is included between latitudes 47' N. (Estaca de Vares) and 36° o' N. (Isleta de Tarifa) and be tween the meridians of 3° 19' E. (Cabo de Creus) and 9° 3o' W. (Cape Roca). Of its area of some 223,00o sq.m., 85% is Spanish. It has been thought proper, therefore, to treat here of the physical geography and geology of the peninsula as a whole rather than to confine the treatment to Spain.
The peninsula is the least European in appearance of the three great Mediterranean peninsulas. Its massif character, the great. central Meseta, the narrow Strait of Gibraltar by which it is sepa rated from Africa, and the high barrier of the Pyrenees by which it is separated from the rest of Europe, all give it the physical appearance of a disconnected outlier of the Moroccan Meseta rather than that of a part of Europe. It is in very fact a world
apart. Not only is it separated from the rest of Europe by a range of mountains difficult to cross except at its extremities; it is also separated from the Mediterranean by coastal ranges which leave between themselves and the sea only narrow and discontinuous strips of coastal plain that alone, of all the peninsula, have a Mediterranean history.
At first glance it would seem that the peninsula would serve to unite Africa and Europe, but, instead, its ranges of east-and-west mountains serve rather to separate them. Moreover, the penin sula furnishes no natural traffic routes between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic or between the Mediterranean and northwest ern Europe. The closer physical connection with Africa than with the rest of Europe has had the disastrous consequence of the Islamic invasion and the five-hundred-year struggle with Islam which is accountable in large part for the slow development of Spain along European lines. To the physical character of the peninsula is due likewise the separation of Portugal from Spain and the 700-year separation of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. So sharply defined are the natural regions occupied by these two states that even now, though they have been united since the fifteenth century, their peoples differ sharply in physical type, customs, and social organization.
The of the border of the peninsula are washed by the sea; yet the peninsula as a whole has relatively little access to the sea and comparatively few good harbours. Portugal alone of the whole peninsula has had an important mari time history and this has been due to the fact that the same Douro and Tagus rivers which by their deep canyons separate Portugal from the rest of the peninsula and explain her existence as a separate State afford good harbours in their estuaries.