The history of the territorial organization of Spain, in the modern sense, is a process that began in the 16th century with the dynastic union of the Crown of Aragon and the Crown of Castile, the conquest of the Kingdom of Granada and later the Kingdom of Navarre. However, it is important to clarify the origin of the toponym Spain, as well as the territorial divisions that existed previously in the current Spanish territory.
Definition of Spain The name Spain derives from Hispania, the name by which the Romans geographically designated the Iberian Peninsula as a whole, an alternative term to the name Iberia, preferred by Greek authors to refer to the same space. This name was kept after the fall of the Roman Empire as a designation of the peninsula under the Goths and among the Greco-Latin Christian world. After the Arab conquest, the part of the peninsula controlled by the Moors was called, for centuries, Al Ándalus or alternatively Spania, although the process of Reconquest ended up eliminating these names.
The unification of the various kingdoms of that geographical region led to a correspondence between that region and a single state during the brief period of union of Spain and Portugal, which ended in 1640. Since then, Spain has been explicitly used to refer to the current country of that name, while Iberia is preferred to encompass Spain and Portugal.
This article will discuss the territorial organization of Spain throughout history, although the organization of other peninsular or bordering areas will be included when imposing the current borders is anachronistic.
Pre-Roman period The Iberian Peninsula was originally occupied by peoples of different origins (Indo-European, Iberian or of unknown ethnogeny such as Cantabri, Varduli and Vascones). These peoples did not carry out any administrative division, organizing themselves as cities or tribes independent of each other.
Later, some historians have tried to create families of tribes that share the same cultural characteristics, particularly distinguishing between Iberians in the Levant and south of the peninsula, Celts in the plateau and Vascones and Cantabri in the north. The limits between one area and another are a matter of discussion, with no agreement as to whether or not to include peoples such as the Lusitanians among the Celts or as peoples per se. These classifications do not imply that there was a common administrative organization among these tribes. Pre-Roman peoples and their linguistic affiliation prior to the conquest C1: Gallaeci / C2b: Bracari C3: Cantabri / C4: Astures / C5: Vaccei / C6: Turmodigi / C7: Autrigones-Caristii / C8: Varduli / C9: Berones C10: Pellendones / C11: Belli / C12: Lusones / C13: Titii / C14: Olcades / C15: Arevaci C16: Carpetani / C17: Vettones / C18-C19: Celtici / C20: Cynetes / L1: Lusitanians A1: Aquitani / A2: Vascones I1: Ceretani / I2: Ilergetes / I3: Lacetani / I4: Indigetes / I5: Laietani / I6: Ilercavones / I7: Sedetani / I8: Edetani / I9: Contestani / I10: Oretani / I11: Bastetani / I12: Turdetani G1: Greeks / P1: Phoenicians / Carthaginians / B1: Berbers
Roman division
The Romans carried out various divisions of the peninsula throughout the history of their Empire:
Division of 197 B.C. (its limits were not precise, since only the coastline was dominated): Hispania Citerior: Ebro Valley and Mediterranean coast. Hispania Ulterior: Guadalquivir Valley. Division in the High Roman Empire in three provinces divided in juridical convents: Hispania Ulterior Baetica Hispania Ulterior Lusitania Hispania Citerior Tarraconensis Diocese Hispaniarum (3rd century) divided into six (later seven) provinces (one of them in North Africa): Tarraconensis Carthaginensis Baetica Lusitania Gallaecia Balearica: this division appeared in the middle of the 4th century, under the reign of Constantius I and Constantine II. Mauretania Tingitana.
Early Middle Ages
Barbarian kingdoms
With the fall of the Roman Empire, the Suebi, Visigoths and other peoples occupied most of the peninsula. Finally, the Visigoths gained control of the entire peninsula in the 6th century after conquering the Suebi kingdom.
They maintained the Roman provincial administrative division (under the name of "duchies") and even created new duchies, such as Asturias and Cantabria, and the province of Celtiberia and Carpetani.
Middle Ages, "Al-Andalus" and early modern period After the Muslim conquest initiated in 711, most of the peninsula became incorporated into the Umayyad Caliphate (with Damascus as its capital; later on Baghdad) as the province of al-Andalus. The territory was administered through provinces known as coras or kūras, generally organized around an important urban center such as Córdoba, Toledo, Zaragoza, Mérida, or Seville. In frontier regions, larger military districts known as thughūr (marches) were established, especially along the borders with the Christian territories to the north.
Following the Abbasid revolution and the fall of the Umayyads in the East, Abd al-Rahman I established the independent Emirate of Córdoba in 756, politically autonomous from Baghdad. During this period, the territorial organization of "al-Andalus" became more centralized around Córdoba, while maintaining the division into kūras and frontier marches. The administration combined provincial governors, military authorities and fiscal districts inherited in part from earlier Roman and Visigothic structures.
Simultaneously in the north of the peninsula, other political entities were consolidating (a period ofter referred to historiographically as "Reconquest," reconquista). Several kingdoms were created, including the Kingdom of Asturias (718), which claimed Visigothic legitimacy and became known as the Kingdom of León after 925. In 1065, the Kingdom of Castile became independent from León, followed in 1139 by the Kingdom of Portugal. The Kingdom of Galicia was also created in 910, intermittently independent of the Kingdom of León but subordinate to it (910–914, 926–929, 981–984, 1065–1073).
In 929, Abd al-Rahman III proclaimed the Caliphate of Córdoba. Under the caliphate, al-Andalus reached its greatest political centralization and administrative development. The territory remained divided into coras, although the frontier regions acquired greater military importance through the Upper, Middle and Lower Marches (al-Tagr al-A'la, al-Tagr al-Awsat and al-Tagr al-Adna). Córdoba functioned as the political and administrative capital of the peninsula's largest state.
After the collapse of the caliphate during the civil wars of the early 11th century (the fitna of al-Andalus), political authority fragmented into numerous independent Taifa kingdoms. These taifa states were centered on cities such as Seville, Zaragoza, Toledo, Badajoz, Valencia, and Granada, and developed their own territorial administrations and dynastic structures.
From the late 11th century onwards, several Berber North African dynasties intervened in the peninsula and reunified much of Muslim territory under larger political entities. First the Almoravids and later the Almohads incorporated "al-Andalus" into empires extending across both sides of the strait of Gibraltar, reorganizing the territory under governors dependent on Marrakesh or Seville.
Following the Christian "reconquest" advances of the 12th and 13th centuries, Muslim territory in the peninsula was progressively reduced to the Nasrid Emirate of Granada, founded in 1238. The emirate was organized into administrative districts dependent on Granada and survived until 1492, when the city was conquered by the Crown of Castile. With the Catholic Monarchs, who united the crowns of Aragon and Castille into a single dynastic union, and incorporated all formerly-Nasrid territories after the "Granada war," each of the Catholic kingdoms maintained its own administrative divisions: in Castile, the provinces, and in the Crown of Aragon: districts in Aragon, vegueries in Catalonia and Mallorca, and in Valencia there were four governorates and eleven districts.
Modern period
16th century onwards
Crown of Castile
The territory of the kingdom of Castile was distributed among the 18 cities with the right to vote in Cortes and in turn subdivided into partidos, which in the census of 1591-1594 are sometimes called provinces
These districts created at the end of the 16th century, which were sometimes called provinces, lacked any legal or administrative value and were merely fiscal in nature, and so were completely unrelated to modern Spanish provinces. The only real administrative division existing at that time was the town and the municipality. There were also other structures, such as corregimientos, dioceses or lordships:
Burgos, with Trasmiera, capital: Laredo and Tierras del Condestable, capital: Villalpando. Soria. Valladolid, with Tierras del Conde de Benavente, capital: Benavente. León, with Principality of Asturias of Oviedo, capital: Oviedo and Ponferrada. Zamora, with the Bishopric of Lugo, La Coruña and Betanzos, Orense, Mondoñedo, Santiago de Compostela and Tuy. Toro, with the District of Carrión and the District of Reinosa. Salamanca, with Trujillo and the province of León of the Order of Santiago, capital: Llerena. Avila. Segovia. Guadalajara. Madrid. Kingdom of Toledo, with Campo de Calatrava, capital: Almagro; Archbishop's Table of Toledo, capital: Talavera, Castile of the Order of Santiago, capital: Ocaña; Alfoz de Alcaraz, capital: Alcaraz; Castile of Campo de Montiel, capital: Infantes and Ciudad Real. Cuenca, with Huete. Kingdom of Murcia; Kingdom of Seville; Kingdom of Cordoba; Kingdom of Jaén, with Calatrava del Andalucía, capital: Martos; Kingdom of Granada.
Crown of Aragon
Kingdom of Aragon; Kingdom of Valencia, with two governorates with capitals in Valencia and Orihuela, and two sub-governments with capitals in Castellón and Xàtiva. Kingdom of Majorca. Principality of Catalonia, with twelve vegueries with capitals in Tortosa, Tarragona, Montblanc, Barcelona, Vic, Manresa, Vilafranca del Penedès, Girona, Camprodon, Lleida, Tàrrega and Cervera.
Kingdom of Navarre
Intendencies of 1720
Philip V created, taking as a base the pre-existing provinces created by the Austrias, the institution of the intendancies. These did not always coincide with the limits of the provinces, so there was some opposition to this division.
He created 20 intendancies: La Coruña, León, Valladolid, Burgos, Pamplona, Zaragoza, Barcelona, Salamanca, Ávila, Guadalajara, Toledo, Madrid, Ciudad Real, Valencia, Mérida, Seville, Córdoba, Granada, Palma and Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
Ferdinand VI rearranged the limits of the intendancies, making them coincide with the provinces of the Austrias and the former kingdoms of Spain.
Tomás González Hernández, headmaster of the Cathedral Church of Plasencia, reorganizes the Royal Archive of Simancas, after the despoilment suffered after the Napoleonic invasion. His work Census of the population of the Provinces and Districts of the Crown of Castile in the 16th century has constituted the only published source to know the Spanish population in the time of the Austrias. The archivist completes the so-called Book of the Millions with data from other regions: Catalonia, Basque Country, Navarre, Valencia and Aragon.