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The darker side of Spanish imperialism is evident in the mural "Colonial Domination," by Diego Rivera (detail). (Granger Collection, N.Y.)

Myth No. 1. The United States is "the great melting pot." Wrong. It's a mosaic. Spain is the great melting pot. More about this later.

Myth No. 2. "The sun never sets on the British Empire." Well, we know that's now wrong because last year the British turned over the crown colony of Hong Kong to China, so the sun sets nightly now. But the implication of this old saying was that this situation was somehow unique.

What was the big deal? Until its dismantling in the Spanish-American war 100 years ago, Spain had had a comparably huge round-the-globe empire centuries earlier and centuries longer than the British did.

Myth No. 3. China is "the Middle Kingdom." Nope. Take a look at the map. The Iberian Peninsula is smack in the middle of the East-West divide. The Greenwich Meridian runs through it. And if you factor for density of world population, it's also close to the middle of the North-South divide. This helps to explain why they speak Spanish -- not Mandarin or Cantonese -- in Chile, which like China is on the Pacific Ocean. Location, location, location!

Christopher Columbus takes possession of Hispaniola. (The Granger Collection, N.Y.)

The Melting Pot

We know that prehistoric people lived in Spain because of cave paintings that have been found in the north of the peninsula and date to the Paleolithic period -- 10,000 years ago and earlier. Later, other people arrived from outside the peninsula, among them Iberians from North Africa, after whom the peninsula that comprises Spain and Portugal is named.

By about 1000 B.C., Iberians were predominant, until Celts coming southward crossed the Pyrenees Mountains and intermingled with them.

Viewed in modern terms, the result was a people part French and part African, already a pretty good melting pot. But it was just the beginning. The resulting "Celtiberians" formed the basic ethnic stock of Spain on which wave after wave of invaders imprinted other cultures and bloodlines.

The first colonists in recorded history to land on the Iberian peninsula were the Phoenicians, who by the 11th century B.C. had begun to dominate the Mediterranean as the preeminent maritime power. Phoenician traders founded Spain's city of Cadiz on the western side of the Strait of Gibraltar, whose two headlands were known to the ancient Greeks as the "the Pillars of Hercules."

Over the next few centuries, Iberia's wealth in gold, silver, lead, copper and iron drew the interest of other people from the East, first Greeks and then Carthaginians. The Greeks appeared about the 7th century B.C., primarily seeking trade, and evidence remains of only a few settlements they established in Spain.

Carthaginians came to colonize from what now is Tunis in North Africa. They founded Barcelona and New Carthage, or Cartagena, as it is better known today. Both are still important cities in Spain.

Carthage's growing influence on the Iberian Peninsula in the 3rd century B.C. exacerbated its rivalry with Rome and, in 218 B.C., helped to spark the second of the three Punic Wars between the two Mediterranean powers. It was from Spain that the famous Carthaginian general Hannibal launched his campaign against the Romans, completing one of the great feats of military history by crossing the Alps to invade Italy with an army of 50,000 foot soldiers, 9,000 cavalry and a herd of battle elephants.

By 146 B.C., Rome prevailed. Carthage was forced to relinquish its possessions in Spain, which brought Rome enormous wealth, enough to support its conquest of Greece and put Rome on the road to empire.

It took the Romans the better part of two centuries to subjugate all of Iberia -- which they called Hispania -- but the relationship was to prove symbiotic. The Romans gave to Spain law; roads; architecture in the form of temples, aqueducts and bridges; and most of all, the Latin language, closely related to modern Spanish.

From Spain, Rome took vast amounts of wealth -- metals, grains, olives, the finest wines -- and some of the Roman Empire's finest minds. The emperors Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius -- among Rome's best and wisest rulers -- and the poet Seneca all were of Spanish origin.

When Rome fell to Germanic invaders in the 5th century A.D., Spain fell with it. Vandal, Suevi and Alan tribes invaded, shattering Roman rule, carving the peninsula among themselves and bringing chaos. Unity was restored by a subsequent invasion of another Germanic people, the Visigoths.

The Goths, originally from Scandinavia, were the first Teutonic people to become Christian. Their migrations took them from what now is Sweden east across the Baltic Sea, south to the shores of the Black Sea, back west to the Balkans and eventually into a fork in the road that divided them into the Ostrogoths (East Goths) and Visigoths (West Goths).

Before their division, the Goths, who had been given permission in the waning days of the Roman Empire to settle inside its borders, had risen against Rome and killed the Roman Emperor Valentinian in battle. His successor was Theodosius, a Spaniard, the last man to rule an undivided Roman Empire. In suing for peace, Theodosius allowed the Visigoths to cross into Spain and drive out the Vandals and other tribes.

For the next 300 years, the essence of Spain was blond, blue-eyed and Germanic.

Then came the Moors. In 711, these Arabic-Berber people from Northern Africa crossed into Spain, defeated the last king of the Visigoths, Roderick (Rodrigo, in modern Spanish) and drove the Visigoths to the far north of the peninsula.

It is almost impossible to overstate the influence of the Muslim invasion on Spain and Spanish culture. Islam's conquest of Spain broke a chain of history in which Spain was developing in parallel to the rest of Europe -- be it in Greek, Roman or Germanic times -- and created something unique: a Muslim land in Western Europe that lasted more than seven centuries. The Moors sometimes controlled nearly all of the peninsula and, for most of the time, at least its southern half.

Muslim rule of Spain coincided with the Dark and Middle Ages in the rest of Europe -- a time of rural feudalism, local wars and an aggressively superstitious ignorance. The Moors saved Spain from this fate. They developed the grandest and most elaborate cities then in Europe (Cordoba, Seville, Granada) and preserved the learning of the ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman philosophers, historians, astronomers, mathematicians and poets.

In northern Spain, small enclaves of Christendom managed to survive at the height of Muslim power and eventually grew into larger kingdoms. The most important were Castile, the heartland of Spain, and Aragon, on the eastern coast.

But many generations would pass before these Christian kingdoms were powerful enough to challenge the Moors in their stronghold of Andalucia in southern Spain.

World Empire

In 1492, two major events occurred in the Western world. First, Isabella, queen of Castile, and her husband, Ferdinand, king of Aragon, defeated the last Moorish rulers in Spain near Granada and reclaimed the Iberian peninsula for Christianity. Then, they dispatched Christopher Columbus and his three ships on a journey around the world to the Indies.

Everyone knows about Columbus's discovery of lands unknown to Europeans of the time. Soon, he was followed by other explorers and military men such as the conquistadors Hernando Cortes and Francisco Pizarro, who subjugated the Aztecs of what now is Mexico and the Incas of what has become Peru.

Ferdinand Magellan, sailing under the flag of Spain, set sail around the world and claimed the Philippines for his sponsors. These new territories presented Spain with an empire spanning the planet, one that would provide it enormous wealth for nearly 400 years.

Perhaps less well-known to many Americans is what was happening in the mother country during this time. Spain's successes in navigation, exploration and conquest in the New World were paralleled by her growth as a military power in the Old World.

Ferdinand and Isabella had a daughter, known to history in the Spanish-speaking world as Juana la Loca (Joanna the Mad). She was married to Philip the Handsome, whose parents were Mary, daughter of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, and the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I of the Hapsburg dynasty. The story of Juana's and Phillip's first-born son, Charles, in many ways reflects the story of Europe in the 1500s.

After Philip's death, Juana's insanity became more apparent. Legend has it that she refused to allow her husband's body to be buried and had it moved about the royal palace in a vain effort to stave off the undertakers.

Juana had inherited Castile from Isabella, who died in 1504, but her father acted as regent because of her mental condition. When Ferdinand died in 1516, both Castile and Aragon would have been Juana's but for her obvious incapacity. Instead, they went to Charles, who had been born and raised in what now is Belgium, had never set foot in Spain and spoke not a word of Spanish.

If one truly can judge a man by the quality of his enemies, Charles I, king of Spain, was a giant. He counted among his enemies:

Henry VIII, king of England, with whom animosity developed in part after Henry dumped Charles's aunt, Katharine of Aragon, the first of Henry's six wives. [You can read more about Henry VIII elsewhere in this edition of Horizon.]

Francis I, king of France, with whom Charles had rival claims to the duchy of Burgundy and control of territories in Italy. In 1525, in the northern Italian city of Pavia, Spanish imperial troops defeated Francis's knights and foot soldiers largely through clever use of firepower with the harquebus, an early form of long gun supported on a forked staff for firing.

Francis was captured during the battle, in which more than 10,000 Frenchmen were killed, and delivered to Spain as a prisoner of war. After a year in prison, Francis gave Charles possession of his two young sons to guarantee adherence to a treaty under which Francis promised to give up his claim to Burgundy in return for his release. In the end, Francis failed to live up to the treaty, and Charles gave up the young princes in exchange for a cash ransom.

Pope Clement VII, who was allied with France against Spanish interests in Italy and also held the keys to the annulment that Henry VIII was seeking from Charles' aunt, Katharine of Aragon. Charles's troops sacked Rome and locked up the pope for several months.

Martin Luther and the German princes who converted to Protestantism. It was on Charles's watch as Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, that Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door at Wittenberg, criticizing many practices of the Roman Catholic Church and launching the Protestant Reformation. Charles presided at the meeting, called the Diet of Worms, at which Luther was called to account for his heresy and the German monk defended himself with his famous -- and apocryphal -- declaration: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise." It fell to Charles, as a devout Catholic and Holy Roman Emperor, to lead the Counter-Reformation and try to maintain Europe united under the Catholic banner.

Suleiman the Magnificent and the Ottoman Turks. Suleiman, often in league with France, continually harassed Christendom and threatened the gates of Vienna, in the heart of the Hapsburg dynastic lands.

Why so many enemies?

In part, it was because of Charles's four grandparents, from whom he had inherited too much of Europe and the New World for the comfort of neighboring monarchs.

From Isabella, he received Castile, the largest kingdom in Iberia; the Philippines in the Pacific; and all of Spain's possessions in the Americas, from what now is California to Patagonia. This gave him vast resources.

From Ferdinand, he received Aragon, Sicily and the southern half of Italy, including Naples.

From Mary of Burgundy, he got Flanders, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Burgundy.

From Maximilian, he inherited the Hapsburg lands in Austria and parts of southern Germany, which made him the odds-on favorite for the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, a loose federation of principalities and duchies in the German-speaking world and northern Italy.

Another reason Charles had so many enemies was his devout Roman Catholicism. When not in conflict with princes and priests over land and political power, he disagreed with them about theology. Popes often opposed him for geopolitical reasons, yet paradoxically it was Charles, his troops and emissaries who defended Christendom from the Muslim Turks, attempted to keep Protestant views from spreading beyond northern Germany and converted indigenous souls in the New World to the Roman Catholic Church.

Charles's view of his place in the world and his duty to defend his faith is perhaps best summed up in his own words at the Diet of Worms as he rebutted Luther and the German princes tolerant of Lutheranism:

"Ye know that I am born of the most Christian emperors of the noble German nation, of the Catholic kings of Spain, the archdukes of Austria, the dukes of Burgundy, who were all to death the true sons of the Roman Church, defenders of the Catholic faith ... .

"It is certain that a single monk must err if he stands against the opinion of all Christendom. Otherwise Christendom itself would have erred for more than a thousand years. Therefore I am determined to set my kingdoms and dominions, my friends, my body, my blood, my life, my soul upon it."

Insofar as Charles's struggles and feuds involved the treasure and manpower of Spain itself, by far his most important holding, they represented Spain's emergence as the world's preeminent military power in the 16th century. His son and successor, Philip II, added immensely to Spain's holdings during his reign by mounting a successful claim to Portugal's throne after it fell vacant and bringing the neighboring Iberian nation's vast holdings in Brazil, southern Africa and Asia under the Spanish crown.

The Melting Pot Revisited

Exactly a century ago, the Spanish-American War swept away the last remnants of Spain's world empire as U.S. forces took Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. But in the 400 years that Spain held territories beyond its shores, it had ample opportunity to spread its culture.

In the New World, the Spaniard -- that centuries-old mixture of Celt; North African-Middle Easterner four times over (Iberian, Phoenician, Carthaginian, Moor); Greek; Latin; and German -- blended further with indigenous peoples in the central valley of Mexico, the tropical forests of Central America, the Andes Mountains of Colombia, Peru and Chile to give rise to new ethnic stock -- the Latin American.

In North America, the Spanish were trailblazers. Years before the English established their first permanent settlement at Jamestown, the Spanish had founded St. Augustine, Fla., still a beautiful and functioning city. In the West, the Spanish explored and colonized California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Louisiana.

The westward expansion of English-speaking Americans, the secession of Texas and its annexation by the United States and Mexico's defeat in the Mexican-American war of 1846-48 rolled back the areas of Spanish control in North America in the political sense. But decades of immigration and procreation among Hispanic Americans has increased the proportion of Latinos in the United states to about 11 percent of the population.

More people of Hispanic origin now live in the United States than in any country outside of Spain, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina.

Spanish is the third most widely used language in the world in terms of the number of native speakers, behind Mandarin and Hindi and just ahead of English. Spanish is the second most widely used language within the United States and growing rapidly as native English speakers learn it.

For a relatively small country on the edge of the world's smallest continent, that's a remarkable legacy.

© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company

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