Cantabria (, ; ) is an autonomous community and province in northern Spain with Santander as its capital city. It is called a , a historic community, in its current Statute of Autonomy. "La Ley Orgánica 11/1998, de 30 de diciembre, de reforma de la LO 8/1981, del Estatuto de Autonomía para Cantabria (BOE 31 diciembre 1998) . El Estatuto deja de referirse a Cantabria como "entidad regional histórica", expresión empleada por la propia Constitución (art. 143) para permitir la existencia de comunidades uniprovinciales, para ser sustituida por la expresión "comunidad histórica" (art. 1). Sinopsis del Estatuto de Cantabria Ignacio Carbajal Iranzo, Letrado de las Cortes Generales. Updated by Portal de la Constitución. 2005. Updated 2007; retrieved 9 June 2007. It is bordered on the east by the Basque Country (province of Biscay), on the south by Castile and León (provinces of León, Palencia and Burgos), on the west by Asturias, and on the north by the Cantabrian Sea, which forms part of the Bay of Biscay. With a population of 593,623, it is the 4th least populous autonomous community of Spain.
Cantabria belongs to Green Spain, the name given to the strip of land between the Bay of Biscay and the Cantabrian Mountains, so called because of its particularly lush vegetation, due to the wet and temperate oceanic climate. The climate is strongly influenced by Atlantic Ocean winds trapped by the mountains; the average annual precipitation is about .
Cantabria has archaeological sites from the Upper Paleolithic period, although the first signs of human occupation date from the Lower Paleolithic. The most significant site for cave paintings is in the cave of Altamira, dating from about 37,000 BC and declared, along with nine other Cantabrian caves, as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. It corresponds geographically to the area called Cantabria in the ancient period, but from the late Middle Ages to the early 19th century, the name Cantabria also referred to the territory of the Basques, especially the lordship of Biscay.
The modern province of Cantabria was constituted on 28 July 1778 at Puente San Miguel, Reocín. This event is celebrated yearly on July 28, known as the Day of the Institutions. The Organic Law of the Autonomy Statute of Cantabria, approved on 30 December 1981, gave the region its own institutions of self-government.
Etymology and usage
Numerous authors, including Isidore of Seville, Julio Caro Baroja, Aureliano Fernández-Guerra and Adolf Schulten, have explored the etymology of the name Cantabria, yet its origins remain uncertain. The Online Etymology Dictionary states the root cant- is said to come from the Celtic for 'rock' or 'rocky', while -abr was a common suffix used in Celtic regions. Thus, Cantabrian could mean 'people who live in the rocks' or 'highlanders', a reference to the steep and mountainous territory of Cantabria.
The name Cantabria could also be related to the Celtic root kant or cant meaning 'edge' or 'rim' and thus 'coastal district' or 'corner-land', 'land on the edge', thus having the same probable derivation as the name of the English county of Kent and Canterbury, one of its major cities.
During the Spanish liberal regimes of the 19th century, the term came to be increasingly associated to the province of Santander. However, in late medieval and modern literature, Cantabria and Cantabrians refer to the Basque Country, especially the lordship of Biscay, and the Basques.
History Roman Empire
The first written reference to the name Cantabria emerges around 195 BC, in which the historian Cato the Elder speaks in his book Origines about the source of the Ebro River in the country of the Cantabri:
There are about 150 references to Cantabria or the Cantabri in surviving Greek and Latin texts. The Cantabri were used as mercenaries in various conflicts, both within the Iberian Peninsula and elsewhere. It is certain that they participated in the Second Punic War, from references by Silius Italicus and Horace. When C. Hostilius Mancinus was besieging Numantia, he withdrew upon learning that Cantabri and Vaccaei were present among his auxiliaries. The Cantabrian Wars began in They were defeated by Agrippa with great slaughter in , but they revolted again under Tiberius and were never entirely subdued.
In older geographers, the term Cantabria referred to an expansive country bounded by the Cantabrian Sea (the Bay of Biscay), the western side of the Sella valley in Asturias, the hillfort of Peña Amaya in Burgos, and along the Aguera River almost as far as Castro Urdiales. It thus included areas of Asturias, Santander, Biscay, and Guipuzcoa. Following the Roman conquest of Spain, however, it was restricted to the area of Santander and eastern Asturias, forming a part of Hispania Tarraconensis ("Tarragonan Spain"). The principal tribes of the area were the Pleutauri, the Varduli, the Autrigones, the Tuisi, and the Conisci or Concaui, who were known for feeding on their horses' blood. The area was well settled, with the largest city being Juliobriga, and the local mountains exploited for lead mines.
Middle Ages
Following the collapse of the Roman Empire, Cantabria regained its independence from the rule of the Visigoths. In 574, King Liuvigild attacked Cantabria and managed to capture the south of the country, including the city of Amaya, where he established a Visigothic province called the Duchy of Cantabria (see picture), which would serve as a limes or frontier zone to contain the Cantabri as well as their neighbors the Vascones. To the north of this cordon, however, the Cantabri continued to live independently until the Arab invasion. In 714, a mixed Arab/Berber army of Muslim Moors invaded the upper valleys of the Ebro and succeeded in capturing Amaya, the Cantabrian capital, forcing the Cantabrians back to their traditional frontiers, where they joined forces with the Kingdom of Asturias. In the first chronicles of the Reconquista, Cantabria still appears to be acknowledged as a region. In the Albendense Chronicle, when speaking of Alfonso I, it says, "This was the son of Peter, the duke of Cantabria".
During the 9th century, on mentioning the monastery of Saint Zacharias, in a letter sent to Wiliesind, bishop of Pamplona, Eulogius of Córdoba pinpoints it in Seburim (maybe Zubiri) on the river Arga, "waters all of Cantabria", suggesting a region stretching out far into the east. From this period on, source documents barely reference Cantabria by name, with Asturias featuring in names of the comarcas called Asturias de Santillana, Asturias de Trasmiera and Asturias de Laredo.
From a central core formed by the Hermandad de las Cuatro Villas (Brotherhood of the Four Cities) (Santander, Laredo, Castro Urdiales and San Vicente de la Barquera), the Hermandad de las Marismas (Brotherhood of the Marshes) was created, thereby uniting all the important seaports to the East of Asturias. During the period of the Reconquista, the Four Cities actively participated in the re-settling of Andalusia, dispatching men and ships. The coastal port cities of Cádiz and El Puerto de Santa María were settled by families from the Cantabrian Sea ports. Ships from the Four Cities took part in the taking of Seville, destroying the ship bridge linking Triana and Sevilla, a victory that is represented by the Carrack and the Torre del Oro of Sevilla in the coat of arms of Santander, Coat of arms of Cantabria and Avilés (Asturias).
16th to 18th centuries
In the 16th century, the name La Montaña (The Mountain) was widespread in popular usage and in literature, as a designation of the Ancient Cantabria, as opposed to Castile, which referred solely to the Central Plateau. This distinction has survived into modern times.
With the rise of the Catholic Monarchs, the Brethren of the Marshes disappeared, leaving the Coregiment of the Four Villas, which included the whole area of influence of the old Brethren of the Four Villas (almost all of Cantabria). During the ancien régime, the greatest jurisdictional lordships of Cantabria were mainly under the control of three of the Grandee families of Spain: that of Mendoza (Dukes of Infantado, Marquises of Santillana), of Manrique de Lara (Marquises of Aguilar de Campoo, Counts of Castañeda), and to a lesser extent that of Velasco (Dukes of Frías, Constables of Castile).Antonio Bar Cendón, De la montaña a Cantabria: la construcción de una comunidad autónoma (Santander: University of Cantabria Press, 1995), 201-3. , 9788481021127
From the 16th century on, there was renewed interest in studying Cantabria and the Cantabri, particularly concerning the precise location of the territory that this people had occupied. It was not until the 18th century that the debate about the location and size of Ancient Cantabria was settled in a series of works which described the history of the region such as La CantabriaEnrique Flórez. La Cantabria. Disertación sobre el sitio y extensión que tuvo en tiempos de los romanos la región de los cántabros, con noticia de las regiones cofinantes y de varias poblaciones Antiguas (The Cantabria. Dissertation of the place and extension that the land of the Cantabri had in times of the Romans, with notice of the adjacent regions and of several Ancient villages. Madrid. 1768 by the Augustinian father and historian Enrique Flórez de Setién. Concurrent with the resurgence of this interest in the Cantabrians and the clarification of the aforementioned polemic, many institutions, organizations and jurisdictions in the mountainous territory received the name of "Cantabrian" or "of Cantabria".
In 1727, the first attempt to unify what would later become the province of Cantabria occurred. Despite this, the high level of autonomy that the small entities of the fractured estate of Cantabria enjoyed, combined with a lack of resources, continued to be the main reason for Cantabria's weakness, aggravated by the progressive advance of the Bourbonic centralism and its administrative efficiency. The latter continually emphasised the impossibility of the smaller territories facing a multitude of problems on their own: from communications to the exercise of justice, from putting aside adequate reserves for hard times to the indiscriminate levees for soldiers, and above all the progression of fiscal impositions. All of this led to an acceleration of contact between villas, valleys and jurisdictions, which tended to focus on the Assemblies of the provinces of the Nine Valleys, led by the deputies elected by the traditional entities of self-government.
There were two events that triggered the culmination of the integration process in this second attempt: On the one hand, the collective interest in avoiding making contributions to the reconstruction of the bridge of Miranda de Ebro, imposed by order of the Intendant of Burgos on 11 July 1775, the same year that Cantabria suffered two tremendous floods, on 20 June and on 3 November. There was a need to face as the banditry that operated with impunity in Cantabria as a result of a lack of local juridical resources. After the General Deputy of Nine Valleys gathered the affected jurisdictions to the assembly that was to take place in Puente San Miguel on 21 March 1777, they sent their respective deputies with sufficient authority to join with the Nine Valleys.