Economic history of Spain

This article covers the development of Spain's economy over the course of its history.

Iberians, roughly located in the South and East, and Celts in the North and West of the Iberian Peninsula were the major earliest groups in what is now Spain (a third, so-called Celtiberian culture seems to have developed in the inner part of the Peninsula, where both groups were in contact).

Carthaginians and Greeks also traded with Spain and established their own colonies on the coast. Spain's mineral wealth and access to metals made it an important source of raw material during the early metal ages. Carthage conquered parts of Iberia after the First Punic War. After defeating Carthage in the Second Punic War, the Romans governed all of the Iberian Peninsula for centuries, expanding and diversifying the economy and extending Hispanic trade with the greater Republic and Empire.

While most of western Europe fell into a Dark Age after the decline of the Roman Empire, those kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula that today are known as Spain maintained their economy. First, the Visigoths took over in the absence of Roman administrators and established themselves as nobility with some degree of centralized power at their capital, which was eventually moved to Toledo. Though it suffered some decline, most Roman law and much physical infrastructure such as roads, bridges, aqueducts and irrigation systems, was maintained to varying degrees unlike the complete disintegration that occurred in most other former parts of the western empire. Later, when the Moors occupied large parts of the Iberian Peninsula alongside the Catholic kingdoms, they also maintained much of this Roman legacy; in fact as time went on they had Roman infrastructure repaired and extended. Meanwhile, in the countryside, where most people had always lived, life went on much as it had in Roman times, but with improvements due to the repair and extension of irrigation systems, and the introduction of novel crops and agricultural practices from the Islamic world. While trade dwindled in most of the former Roman lands in Europe, trade survived to some degree in Visigothic Spain, and flourished under the Moors through the integration of Al-Andalus (Moorish Spain) with the Mediterranean trade of the Islamic world. After 800 years of intermittent warring, the Catholic kingdoms had gradually became more powerful and sophisticated and eventually expelled all the Moors from the Peninsula.

...
Wikipedia