Talk:Spain

POV edit by User:James Bond 000

I reverted[1] a recent edit by the above user as they did not adhere to a neutral point of view and also introduced grammatical errors. Jezhotwells (talk)

Edit request on 3 November 2012

This part: The 2008/2009 credit crunch and world recession manifested itself in Spain through a massive downturn in the property sector. Fortunately, Spain's banks and financial services avoided the more severe problems of their counterparts in the USA and UK, due mainly to a stringently enforced conservative financial regulatory regime. The Spanish financial authorities had not forgotten the country's own banking crisis of 1979 and an earlier real-estate-precipitated banking crisis of 1993. Indeed, Spain's largest bank, Banco Santander, participated in the UK government's bail-out of part of the UK banking sector.

Seriously? Ever heard of the Bankia bailout? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankia)

This has been updated. By the way, some of Europe's most successful banks are Spanish. See Santander and BBVA. It's the regional, internally oriented banks that are in big trouble, crushed by the collapsing prices of the housing market.

Why The Second of May 1808 painting is relevant and the Black Legend is not

The Second of May 1808 painting was here for a long time before you replaced it LTblb. There is a good reason why it is on this page, quite apart from the fact that it is a great painting by one of history's great masters of painting, Goya - the event depicted marks the start of the Spanish people's revolt against Napoleon's imperial rule and marks the beginning of the resistance that expanded into Spain's nationalistic War of Independence or Peninsular War. It marks a decisive break in the history of Spain and is often seen as the beginning of modern Spanish history proper (as opposed to "early modern"). It is a date of great importance to Spain to this day. The Battle of Bailen follows from this and is therefore of secondary importance. And though a victory, the gains made against the French army were totally reversed when Napoleon personally took charge of the French imperial forces.

Secondly, the "Black Legend" was first described in 1914 by Julián Juderías. It is about a set of historical myths that had grown up centuries earlier, it is not a historic event; until Juderias' book was published in 1914 nobody had ever heard of the "Black Legend". It is label used by a historian to describe a disperate collection of historical myths and narratives that had in common a completely negative view of Spanish history. That is not a "historic event", it is a historian's "interpretation" - whether Juderias' Black Legend thesis is right or wrong is not the issue, it simply is not a historic event like say the revolt on the 2nd of May 1808 or Columbus' discovery of America.

Since you are making these changes to this article and I am reverting the article to its long standing former status, it is you, LTblb, who has to justify these changes, not me. Provocateur (talk) 00:31, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

But, what are you talking about? You have removed the information about The Black Legend arbitrarily June 29, 2013 (here) Will you make a particular interpretation of history for the World??? Historians of prestigious universities have written hundreds of books about The Black Legend, and you come here to say that it is an invention, a historian's "interpretation", can you imagine how ridiculous that is? ...

And Bailen was an absolutely relevant battle, like battle of Stalingrad (IIWW), was the first major defeat of the Grande Armee, setting in motion the rise of the Fifth Coalition against France. --LTblb (talk) 01:33, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

As a battle Bailen cannot be compared to Stalingrad. It is true that at Bailen the Spanish army inflicted an unexpected and widely celebrated defeat on the Napoleonic army and soon after the French armies were nearly completely driven out of Spain but then Napoleon took personal charge of the French imperial army, swept aside the Spanish and British armies and and retook Spain! So Bailen was a dead end, it was not a decisive victory for the Spanish like Stalingrad was for the Soviet Union. Bailen is of secondary historical importance but the popular May 1808 revolts in Spain are of the first order of historical importance because those revolts precipitated the war of independence against the Napoleonic regime. Without those popular revolts there would have been no War against Napoleon in Spain and no Battle of Bailen.

The Black Legend is not a historic event like the May revolts of 1808, the discovery of America or the first landing on the moon. To confuse a historical thesis like the Black Legend with actual historic events like the crowning of Charlemagne or the first flight of an airplane is to fundamentally confuse categories of things. The Black Legend is an interpretative historical theory proposed by one historian, and supported and opposed by other historians, to explain why there are so many negative historical narratives relating to Spanish history. It does not matter whether you agree or disagree with Julian's Black Legend thesis - it is not an event, it is a historian's theory to explain historic facts. If you don't understand the fundamental difference between a historic event like the first landing on the moon, and a historian's interpretative thesis, then you really have no business editing history. The short historical section in this article is to provide the reader a very brief introduction to the major historic events of Spanish history, like Columbus's first voyage, the conquest of Granada, the 2nd of May revolt, etc. It is not about a historian's interpretative historical theory like the Black Legend thesis or analysis. Provocateur (talk) 05:28, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

The battle of Bailen was a determinant factor during the Napoleonic Wars, not military, but strategic victory, because it was the seed of the Fifth Coalition.

The Black Legend was an event of such great importance that had far-reaching implications for the following centuries.... Your claim about it is not a historical event deserve no mention at all, and the editions removing parts of the article, neither. Remember: Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point --LTblb (talk) 11:25, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

What is the basis of the accuracy dispute regarding metropolitan areas?

I see the tag on the metropolitan area table but it's not clear why it's there. Someone disputes a population number, perhaps? EllenCT (talk) 03:35, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

One interesting aspect about spain

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/05/spanish-highest-life-expectancy-europe — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.203.97.65 (talk) 01:59, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Spanish Empire (1580-1640)

Firstly, Iberian Union is not a period of the history of Spain, but of Portugal. With this I want to say, that it does not exist a chapter in a book of History of Spain dedicated to this matter, but the issues about the kingdom of Spanish Portugal turn out to be dispersed in a chapter of the Spain of the Austrias, or also among the chapters of major and minor Austrias, or among the different kings Philip II, Philip III, Philip IV; in the same way, there is no chapter of the History of Spain dedicated to the kingdom of Spanish Naples from 1504 to 1707.

In the kingdom of Portugal the capital and seat of the viceroy was Lisbon -Phillips II of Spain send Fernando Álvarez de Toledo as Viceroy of Portugal in 1580- whereas Madrid was the permanent seat of the Royal Court and the center of power of the whole monarchy and of its constituent kingdoms.

If it was just a Iberian Union, the Portuguese would not have had to fight for independent from Spain. In the Luis Camoes article in Wikipedia (english) , they say "Spanish troops were approaching Lisbon...". So it was clearly an annexation.--LTblb (talk) 12:16, 4 November 2013 (UTC)