While the Iberian Peninsula has been many things to a good many different people, since 1492 it has been Castile, for all those who sought a homogeneous Catholic state. Castile is the broad area of land at the center of Spain, and the region from which the Christian Spaniards set out to conquer the southern parts of the country from the Moors, but also the continents of Central and South America, parts of Italy, eastern France, Holland, Belgium, the Philippines, parts of Africa, and a number of landmasses on the Asiatic seaboard. Political unification meant the expulsion of the Jews and the Moors and a mandate that the Castilian dialect become the official language throughout.

Before Castile, there was Al-Andalus, the name the Arabs gave to the kingdom after they succeeded in bringing the Iberian Peninsula under their civilization. Ruling from the south for just over seven centuries, the Arabs allowed Muslims, Christians, and Jews to live and work together harmoniously. For the most part tolerant and peaceful in its administering of the land, the Andalusian caliphate thus encouraged a cultural blossoming – one which was as yet unknown to Spain, or even to the rest of Europe in these early times. Two hundreds years into their reign and Cordoba had become the most enlightened city in Europe, a center of Islamic and Christian intellectual life with learned poets, philosophers, and scientists making their marks within society.

Spanish culture is a unique development of its particular history, and today, the particular quality of life in Spain is defined by any number of elements, even if a certain few appear to greatly stand out from the others. There are the Moorish aesthetics, but also those of Modernism, and the juxtaposition of both within the same land is perhaps much of what fascinates the outsider and visitor to Spain. The spectacles of Catholic Christianity and Spanish contemporary society too make for splendid variety. The bull and the bullfighter, the flamenco guitarist and the flamenco dancer, Spanish cuisine and Spanish time continue to be amongst the things which spice the cultural mixing bowl. And still, there is more.