¶ Introduction to the Podcast Series
I guess we'll get started. I had not really thought of any sort of an intro.
All right.
I suppose I could. So how about I say: welcome to the Spanish ArPodA. My name is Sarah.
And my name is Peter.
And this is our first series called Yo el Rey, where we will be reviewing and ranking all of the rulers of Spain, from Leovigild to Felipe VI. But today we're not going to review any sort of person, because we're going to kind of talk about this podcast series, what it's going to consist of, and a little bit about Spain. Yeah, so Peter and I are both fans of other ranking podcasts. We both -
Indeed, indeed.
- listen to Rex Factor.
Yes, Totalus Rankium.
Totalus Rankium, you're a big fan of the American President series.
Yes, I am.
Yes. And we also are both fans of The Dollop which kind of has a similar structure. Yeah.
Yes, yes, indeed.
Where one person explains something that the other person knows absolutely nothing about.
Which makes Spain an ideal topic for me.
Well, it's actually your fault that I finally decided to pull the trigger and do this. Two things actually really caused me to do this. First of all, I recently took my doctoral comprehensive exams, and when I was reviewing for them, I remember thinking many times like, jeez, I wish there was some sort of podcast about Spanish history, because there's so much of it and it's a lot of notes to review. I really wish I could just listen to something and review everything I had
learned. But, you know, I learned so much about Roman emperors and about British monarchs from the other Rankium podcasts. So I that's the first thing that that happened. The second thing that happened, this is probably three years ago. at this point, two or three years, it was pre-pandemic. We had just left pints, I think we were going to Buena Vista Café, you and I and our respective spouses, and you asked me if I
Right, right.
And I said, Oooooo, or podcast, you said books or knew of any book in English that covered the Muslim conquest, podcast.
Right. No, absolutely.
Oh, I don't think I really know anything in English, but I will look. And you said, Yeah, you know Spain and Spanish history is a big blank in my knowledge. I'd really like to learn more. And I kinda joked with you. I said, what? You're not going to start with the Visigoths? And you kind of went, Oh, I'll get there, I'll get there. I'll get there eventually. So, it's really your fault that I decided to do this.
There's, there's nothing really good in English, so I'm going to tell you all about Spanish history now.
Excellent. I take full responsibility. Okay.
So the format of the podcast is going to be similar to other Rexy podcasts that you might know, but we're gonna, this is the structure. I'm gonna start out talking about the sources. I'm really into primary sources. You're an English professor, so we're big on texts. We're gonna want to, I'm gonna want to talk about the texts that I'm using for this information, where they come from, and how ridiculous they are. Because, you know, medieval Chronicles are...
Oh yes.
They're great. They're great, sometimes totally normal. And sometimes they're bananas.
There is a fine distinction between history and a story.
Yes, and I hope to present both on this podcast. So we'll talk about the sources, then we'll have just a general biography of the person we're reviewing, whether that's a king or a queen, or whether that's a Muslim governor or an Emir or a Caliph. We're going to see all of these different kinds of people. So I'll tell you the basic story of their life, the kind of stuff that they got up to, and then we are going to go to the ranking categories.
¶ Explanation of Ranking Categories
Yes.
Yeah, that's the fun part.
That is the fun part.
Each of these categories is going to be worth, we'll each give 10 points for a total of 20. So the first category is Conquistadores. Obviously, how much land or people did they conquer? How many wars did they fight and win or lose? We'll each award 10 points based on this. This is probably the category that you know the most about.
Probably, yes, I was. I was talking about Spain to another person who was equally ignorant of the subject, and I said, and they said, Well, what, what impression do you have of Spain? And I said, Well, taking the broad view, I think of Spain as a country that was subjugated by two empires and learned all the wrong lessons about that. Basically decided, well, I guess we're experts. Now, let's, let's export.
Yes, that's, that's really an apt description. The interesting thing about the Conquistadores section is that it's going to go on a lot longer than I think you might expect.
Yeah, yeah. I know, but, right.
There's going to be up into the 20th century. We're going to have people scoring points in this.
Wow. Okay, yeah, all right, looking forward to this.
That'll be fun. So that's category number one. Category number two is called No Me Digas. No Me Digas is an expression in Spanish that means something along the lines of, "You don't say!", "No way!", or, "Oh my goodness!" right. It's something you say in response to gossip.
Gotcha. Gotcha.
This is going to be any sort of scandal or gossipy things that happen during the reign. Again, there's going to be a wide variety and a wide kind of things that will make you say No Me Digas. There will be some rulers that got up to antics in the bedroom. There are going to be some rulers that perpetuated genocide. So it's gonna run, you know -
Right, all the way from shenanigans to holocaust. So, all right, good. All right.
And I think that's actually a good point, as we go into our third category, to point out that scoring points in these categories does not necessarily mean that they were good rulers or good people.
No, no, no, no, no, no no.
Yeah, our next category is Ortodoxia, which means orthodoxy. I actually got a comment about this on social media already, just a question that, does that mean that being more orthodox is good? And it does not. Just like scoring high in Conquistadores or in No Me Digas means that they're good people at all? Yeah, I think what points really means is that it makes a more interesting story.
Right, right. I think just to draw a comparison, Andrew Jackson is the most interesting US President, narratively speaking, but also the most genocidal, so.
Right! And I think Totalus Rankium, you kind of got around that by doing negative points.
Which was very smart.
Which is very smart, but I didn't want to do that. Short answer to that. So yeah, points does not mean good person or even necessarily good ruler. So, Ortodoxia. Originally, I wanted to name this category something to do with Catholicism, but I realized it wouldn't be exactly fair to all the Muslim rulers that we're going to have.
Indeed, indeed.
Yeah, they would automatically score zero points, because they would not be very Catholic at all. So I decided orthodox is a better way to do this. How, how religious were they? How, what did they do to uphold their chosen religion, whether that was Catholicism or Islam, right. And again, we're going to have rulers that run the gamut. Everyone is going to be at least nominally religious. I don't think we're going to have a single ruler who is not religious or who does not say
they're religious. We're going to have heretics. We are going to have people who say that they're religious and then do things completely against their religion. And then we're gonna have people who perpetrate the Spanish Inquisition, right? So...
Always fun.
Always fun. So those are our first three categories. 20 points each, we'll each be awarding 10. Our next category is called El Rey-sto, which I'm actually pretty proud of the name of that. Rey, obviously meaning King, and resto meaning the rest. So these are things where we're going to look at, what did this ruler leave behind for us to look at, right? We're talking things that don't really fit into the other categories, things like coins, sculptures, paintings, depictions in
manuscripts. Did they write any letters or treatises that we have? How did they die? You know, was it interesting? Did they have an interesting death? How many children did they have? How long did they rule? These two specific things are usually separate in, in other ranking podcasts, but I decided to put them here and have us grade them subjectively, rather than objectively.
I like it.
First of all, the Visigoths, who are going to be our first people that will provide rulers for Spain. They lived in the five and six and seven hundreds. A lot of them didn't live very long.
No, I was going to say that'll be probably pretty brisk.
When we get into more modern times with modern medicine and medical treatments and better health outcomes, we're gonna have people living a really long time. Rex Factor tried to ameliorate this by having a special scale where everything was set off in quartiles. But one, I don't really feel like doing all of that math. And two, I still think it should be, for example, Roman emperors, Aurelian, just five, if I remember correctly, four or five years he was
Emperor. He turned the entire empire around and kept it going for another couple 100 years.
Couple 100 years, yep.
Yeah, it would have been completely gone in the two hundreds, if it wasn't for him.
Exactly.
On the other hand, Honorius, who ruled for a stupid long amount of time.
Forever!
Forever, and did basically nothing. I mean, his rule is all about Stilicho and Alaric. It has nothing to do with him. But he had a great score on Longevity, because he just happened to be alive for so long. I don't like that. We're not doing that. We are going to subjectively grade how we feel about the length of time that they were rulling. So, that is that. So that's 12345, that's, no four categories. Conquistadores, No Me Digas, Ortodoxia, and El rey-sto. 20
points each. So the maximum point total is going to be 80 points for any one ruler. The final category, though, this is where we decide, apart from the score, whether we really like them or not, whether they're super interesting, even if they score terribly. Is this a, is this a ruler that we would tell people about?
Okay.
This category is called fuero or fuera, and I think have to explain that a little bit.
Yes, please do.
So, a fuero is a medieval charter. It's something that medieval kings would sign with their populace, and it set out the rights and responsibilities of each person towards each other, right? So it laid out taxes the population would have to do. It laid out responsibilities that the king would have to protect the population, basically, kind of like a Magna Carta of sorts, right? So these are called fueros, and each community in Spain up through the middle ages
would have their own fuero with the king. It was actually quite an interesting way to set things up where there was kind of a give and take between the ruler and those that he ruled. When the king would sign a fuero, he would sign it with his signature. But kings in Spain for a long time did not sign with their name, they signed with their title. They signed Yo El Rey. I'm the king. Yes, 'cause obviously everybody knows who that is!
Right, right.
Yeah. It's actually really interesting. On Wikipedia, you can look up the different Spanish monarchs, and it has their signature, and all the signatures just say Yo El Rey in different handwriting. But, you know -
Somewhere out there, Kanye West is saying, Wait, you can do that? Oh!
He should have thought of it, yeah.
Absolutely!
Absolutely, I'm the king. So if we, if we grant them a fuero, that means they get to sign Yo el Rey and they are the best of the best. Fuera, on the other hand, despite being the same word, but a feminine word with an A on the end, means nothing the same, it means get out, go away. So we have to decide what we're gonna say to these rulers, fuera or fuera.
I see.
Yes. So those are, that's the basic format of the podcast.
All right.
¶ Overview of Spanish History
So let's talk about Spain a little bit. What do you know about Spanish history already?
Ah, as I say, next, next to nothing. I know....
Well you mentioned being subjugated by two empires, do you know which ones those are?
I know those. That is the Roman Empire, and it's, I know of the Moors. I know very little of the exact name of the, I think it's fair to call it an empire. You know, the way I look at it is, if you're expansionist and you're conquering people, and, you know, using the land for your own purposes, you're an
empire. It doesn't matter what you call yourself. And I know about the expulsion of the Moors, most, mostly because I was educated as an elementary school student in a Christian school in Southern California, which means I was taught to worship at the altar of Columbus. So all of the Columbus story including Ferdinand and Isabella, was something that I
was spoon-fed repeatedly year after year. So I know about Ferdinand and Isabella, and I know, you know the, Isabella sold her jewels to finance the expedition, and so on and so forth.
Spanish history does tend to have a lot of those kind of mythical stories, that came into play sometimes hundreds of years later. I mean, Ferdinand and Isabella is not the only one. We'll see that again with Roderick, who's the last king of the Visigoths, there's a lot of big stories like this.
Yeah. I mean, to give you an idea of the kind of education I received, I was literally taught that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree, like that was a fact that I was taught.
And he could never tell a lie.
And he could not tell a lie. That's right. So, so I, I, as you, as you know, I am an English professor. I study Shakespeare, so I know all about the Tudors, and thus I know about Mary, and therefore I know about Philip II.
Yes, it's so interesting our different viewpoints on Philip.
Right, the Queen of England, married to the king of Spain. And what a big deal that was. And of course, I know about the Spanish Armada.
The name of this podcast!
Exactly so, exactly, I know about, I know about him. And I know about Isabella II, and you are the reason that I'm, exactly I know that because you had to read a very big book about her, and you wanted to spread the joy.
Oh yeah, that was for my, for my comprehensive exams, which didn't come up. But I think the reason that I was set that biography -
That must have been frustrating.
It was a little bit but it did help, because she was Queen at a time where a lot of other things were happening in Spanish history. It kind of filled in the gap for me in between the 1700s and what I think of as the modern Spanish monarchy, there's this big hole for me, right? And the 1800s, so I think that's why they set that book specifically to be read. But it did not come up.
Right. And I was talking with a friend of mine, and here's, here's the other thing I know about, Isabella II is, I was talking with a friend of mine in LA and I mentioned that you had told me all about Isabella II and he said, Oh, the little girl from Amistad. Like, yes.
Oh, wow! Oh, I guess so.
Now I know two things.
I didn't even think about that, but yes, yes, that's exactly it.
So there you go.
Okay, very cool. Well, I'm going to do just a brief overview of Spanish history before the start of our podcast, which is going to start in 560 CE, right. So we're starting relatively early, but there's obviously still a lot more history. Now I will say one thing. This is going to be my first plug for another podcast. If you speak Spanish at all, you should listen to La Historia de España by David Cott. He has a lot of really great episodes on pre-historical Spain, cave
paintings. You should definitely listen to that if you can, if you speak Spanish at all, if you don't, I'm sorry, I don't know of anything in English.
Which I don't. Again, can't stress the subrosa racism of my upbringing. But here's another example, I was, again, I was raised in Southern California, and I was taught French.
There we go.
So just just really emphasize the fact that within the walls of that school, it was understood that we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna train you to be a snotty turn of the century Englishman. That was, and they succeeded.
Well, they did, you're an English professor now. So there we go.
It was money. It was money, well spent, to be sure.
Well. So we're going to start kind of not, not as early as cave paintings, but we're going to start with the quote, unquote, native populations of the Iberian peninsula. These are known as the Iberians and the Celts right, or Celts right. I call them Celts because in Spanish, what eventually happened with these two peoples is they started intermarrying, and the population is usually called the celtíberos, the
Celt-Iberians, right. Generally, the Celts, who are an Indo-European people, kinda lived in the center and to the western parts of the Iberian Peninsula, whereas the Iberians, who are not Indo-European, as far as I know, lived on the Mediterranean coast. So there were a few cities on the Iberian Peninsula that were founded by other nations, such as Phoenicia. Right, forming, settling Cádiz or like, Ampurias
was a Greek settlement, right, right? But Spain was not really part of any larger empires until the Punic Wars.
Okay. Okay.
So the Punic Wars were wars between Rome, which at this point was just a republic, it was not.... It was actually just Rome. It didn't even have control over the entire Italian Peninsula yet, and Carthage. And Carthage was the huge Mediterranean sea power. Right? Their capital was in what is modern day Tunisia, but they basically controlled all the
shipping lanes and had lots of power. And in the First Punic War, Carthage went to war against Rome, who, in its entire history, never really developed naval power at all.
No, no, no, no, it is. It's very surprising. They never really solved the problem, among other things, of North African pirates. And the secret was, we spent a few 100 years studying how to build ships. That's, that's the secret. I mean, Rome basically decided we got infantry. That's all we really need. But no, you don't, guys.
Well, surprisingly enough, Rome won the First Punic War. Completely devastated the Carthaginians. It was a big surprise to everybody, I think. Rome was surprised, Carthage was certainly surprised. But one of the things that came out of the First Punic War was an indemnity that Carthage had to pay to Rome forc for the war. Right? They lost the war, so they had to pay a whole bunch of money. This, ironically, led to Carthage
expanding even more. They didn't have the resources to pay this indemnity, so they had to start taking over new lands, and getting the natural resources there to pay this indemnity.
Okay. I'm sure, I'm sure a long term debt owed didn't lead to bad feelings and a further war or two. I'm guessing.
Well, there's a lot of parallels between the First and Second World War.
Yeah, there really are.
Yep. Anyway. So this is what led to Carthage taking over parts of the Iberian Peninsula and Spain, mostly on the Mediterranean coast. So where the Iberians originally were, but this, this was done basically to provide fuel for this indemnity that they had to pay. The people that were already there in Spain, not, not thrilled, not thrilled about this incursion.
You've used the word Celts or Celts, and I'm
When are these people going to leave and go to my homelands to invent whiskey?
Well, they didn't actually leave. They kind of just congregated up in the upper corner of Spain, we will meet them.
Okay, good.
But what sparked the Second Punic War was a disagreement from one of the Greek settlements at Ampurias. Saying, why are all these Carthaginians here? So they called on Rome and said, Hey, we don't want these people here. And so the Second Punic War began. This is the one with Hannibal and -
And the elephants! The elephants, yay.
But Rome won this one too. Surprisingly enough, I don't know what, what happened with Carthage, but yeah, Rome won that one too, and that meant that Rome took over all the land in Spain that had belonged to Carthage. So this is how Spain became part of the Roman Empire.
Right, right.
This is about, uh, the two hundreds BC. I'm not great at dates.
Okay, okay. No, that's it. That sounds about right, because I had to learn about this stuff in one of my Latin classes. So Fabius Maximus. This is, yeah, this is about 200 or so.
I learned about most of this from La Historia de España, the podcast that I mentioned before. So, right. So this is how Spain enters the Roman Empire. It was actually their first colony.
Really?!
I mean, it was before Julius Caesar -
Oh, yeah, took over Gaul, right.
Right, way before Britain. And, of course, Trajan and Hadrian hadn't -
Oh, no long time before, sure.
This is, this is really, truly, your first colony. They remained in the Roman Empire... I mean, technically, they remained in the Roman Empire until the Western Roman Empire fell. But that's not 100%, not 100% accurate, because we have the Visigoths moving in. And I will talk more about this in our Visigoth background episode. But basically what happened is that the Visigoths were placed close to the Iberian Peninsula to keep other barbarians out. And they
ended up basically forming their own state there. So this is where we're coming into the story with the Visigoths: a bit after the fall of the West, but, but right around that time. So this is, this is where we're going to be starting with our podcast. And I'll talk a little bit more in the next episode about why I chose specifically there to start.
¶ Geographical Context of Spain
Last thing I want to do with this is talk a little bit about geography. We're going to take a moment to talk about Spanish geography, because a lot of podcasts will just introduce places and events without really specifying where everything is.
That is a problem. Yes.
It a problem! It's an audio medium, and you really gotta kind of explain where things are. So I'm gonna describe the Iberian Peninsula.
Oh, goodie.
For you guys. If you're listening, you can bust out a map of Spain if you can, or if you know what it looks like, you can just imagine it. If you're driving or sleeping or in the Don't do that. Just imagine an upside down pentagon shower...
Please don't. with unequal angles, by which I mean, you know, like the home plate in baseball. It's like, square with a triangle on top. Like, you try to draw a house. Then turn that over so the point of the triangle is down. This is Spain or the Iberian Peninsula. And actually, Peter, I'm going to share a picture with you, so you can, you can actually look. This picture I'm sharing is actually a map of what the Iberian Peninsula was when the Visigoths were there. Oh, this is great. Oh, yeah.
So it's great. So we're going to start at the bottom point of this pentagon. This is roughly the location of the Rock of Gibraltar. Now, in real life, the Rock of Gibraltar is not the southern most point in Spain. There's going to be a town here called Tarifa. That's going to be, Rock of Gibraltar, if you can see this little bay here?
Yeah, I do.
It's up from the bottom point, right?
Okay. Gotcha.
Below this bottom point of Spain is the Strait of Gibraltar. It's eight miles wide, which is 13 kilometers. So you can see Africa from Tarifa. If you're at Tarifa, you can see Africa, and you will take a picture of it. And then when you take the ferry across and you get to Africa, you can see Spain, and you'll take a picture of that too. And then you'll have two pictures that look exactly the same. I don't know why you do that.
The Spanish, the Spanish equivalent of Sarah Palin says that she can see Africa from her house.
Can see Africa, yeah, I don't know. We were just so amazed when we got to Tarifa. We're like, we can see Africa! And then when we got to Africa, we were like, we can see Europe! Even though we were literally just there. Okay, actually, if you're on top of the Rock of Gibraltar, your cell phone is going to say, Welcome to Morocco. Here's information onroaming charges. That's how close -
All right!
Very close, regardless. At this point in history, the rock is not known as Gibraltar. Nobody calls it Gibraltar. Doesn't have that name. It, and the mountains on the African side, are called the Pillars of Hercules, right? So these represent the end of the known world, because it's the end of the Mediterranean, right?
Right.
This is not to say that people didn't sail past them because they did, and they went up and down the coast, but nobody went out into the open sea.
Right in, in Homer's Odyssey, that is the place that represents the entrance to the underworld. Yeah, that that's, that's the, it's the limit of the place where you can live.
Yes, it's the end, there's nothing past it.
Nothing past it, right.
So, Pillars of Hercules, that's at the very bottom. Most of the area in this lower triangle of Spain is the modern day region of Andalucia. We go maybe halfway up each of the sides of the triangle. And then in. This is where your famous cities of Seville, Córdoba and Granada are. And many of them are here today. You can see this star that says Hispalis, that's Seville. That's Seville. And then here you can see Corduba, right. I don't know that Granada has been founded.
It's around here-ish. But if you think of Spain, and you think of Spanish cities, these are the ones you think of, they're all in the south here.
Gotcha. Okay.
Well, at this point in our story, this region is called the province of Bética. That's what, okay, it's called the province, and the Visigoths just continue, right? We're gonna move clockwise around the pentagon, now. The left or the west coast of the peninsula, we have the Atlantic Ocean on the left, and the coast is modern day Portugal, right? It was not a separate country at this time. It was considered part of Hispania, and it was called the province of Lusitania.
Okay.
So Lusitania takes up most of the left side of the pentagon, but there's also a lump further inland, which is also part of Lusitania. And that's the current region, Spanish region of Extremadura, right? So this is all the province of Lusitania.
Got it.
In the top left or northwest of the pentagon. We've got basically a square area in the corner, which is not part of Portugal/Lusitania. This is Galicia, It was called Galicia by the Romans. It's still called Galicia to this day. This area was really hard for the Romans to assimilate. So it's not highly Romanized. It's still very Celtic. And at this time in our story at 560s it's still it's its own kingdom, and it has its own king.
Oh! Okay.
And we're gonna meet him in the first episode.
Oh, goody.
Yes. So now we're moving across the top of Spain, or the top of the pentagon, the coast, the sea is called the Bay of Biscay, to the north. If you went even further north, you would hit Brittany. This is kind of where we are. And then along the north coast, there's some lowlands between the coast and then moving inland. But then there's a mountain range right here. It's called the Picos de Europa, or the peaks of Europe.
Right.
So there's this strip of land in between the sea and the mountains, and it's historically been a really good place to hide.
Right, right.
Any conquerors that come you want to hide there. Indigenous population did it when the Romans showed up, and then it's going to happen again when the Muslims show up, right? So this area was also very lightly Romanized. Going from left to right, we have the regions of Asturias and Cantabria, and they have the same names now as they did then.
Okay.
Halfway across the top line of the pentagon, we've got another mountain range, and this is the Pyrenees, right. So the Pyrenees starts about halfway across, and it goes to the, to the sea, and above the Pyrenees. North of the Pyrenees, we have modern day France.
France, yes.
You want to mentally attach like a hexagon to the upper-right section of your pentagon, go, knock yourself out. Right now, in the 560s France is ruled by several kingdoms of the Franks, so they're also ruled by barbarians.
Right.
On the Spain side of the border, what we have is the Basque Country. The Basque Country has always been there and has always been called that, you can see here, it's called Vasconia on our map here.
That's an area of the country that will never be troubled or in any way controversial, just a land of absolute peace and harmony for the remainder of history. Okay.
Well, it's got the same issue going on as Galicia, Right, even though it's not an official language. This Asturias, and Cantabria. It's very mountainous, so it's really
easy to hide. Anybody who comes through is going to find it very hard to assimilate this area into their own empire, which is area is doing their own thing, as they will for most of why the Basque Country still retains so strongly its own culture, its own language, its own traditions, etc. Modern day, this is three different regions, Pais Vasco, Navarre and La history. But they don't have a king like Galicia. Rioja. Nowadays, Navarre and La Rioja are not really considered
Basque. But if you go there, for example, Navarre, Navarra has Pamplona there. And if you go to Pamplona, the signs are still in both Basque and Spanish.
Oh, they don't?
They're just not part of the Gothic kingdom. But they don't, they're not a kingdom. Yet. They will be. Okay, heading around, around the top right corner, we have the modern regions of Aragón and Catalonia, but at this time this whole area was called Tarraconensis, right? That's, that's the Roman name of the province. That's what they still call it. Cataluña's on the coast, the right or east coast, and this is the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Okay, you can see Barcelona is not quite here
yet. It will be showing up. Here's Ampurias. That's the Greek city that sparked the Second Punic War. And then when we go down the, the coast, here the Mediterranean coast, we're going to pass two other modern day Spanish regions, the one called Valencia, and another one is called Murcia, right? So they're down here on the coast. These two areas are not part of Gothic Spain, right now.
Oh, okay.
They're not controlled by anybody Spanish. They're part of the Byzantine Empire.
Oh, my god. Really?!
Yeah, Justinian went and conquered, he wanted to restart the full empire, Mediterranean Roman Empire. So he conquered basically this coastline here. So all of this is Eastern Roman Empire.
Wow. Okay, I'm sure news traveled quickly between those two areas.
Well, no, but there is more Byzantine influence in Spain than you would expect, just because -
Yeah!
All right, so now we're at the bottom of the pentagon again, and we're back at Andalucia, Bética. That's the circle. Now we're going to talk about the middle of the country. In modern times, this middle part is known as Castile, and that's why sometimes the Spanish language is called Castilian.
Sure.
In modern times, there are three regions in it. From northwest to southeast, they're called Castilla Leon, Madrid, and Castilla La Mancha.
Gotcha.
So we got three, but this central area was called Carthaginesis, at this time, right?
Of course. Right.
I want to point out Madrid is not a thing yet.
I was gonna say there's, I'm looking and I ain't seein it.
No, but you will see Toledo, right? This was the capital of the Visigoths. Toledo is just south of where Madrid will be. It's a pretty easy day trip from Madrid. If you ever go, you could take the train. It's like 30 minutes, but this
Toledo. Three other geographical things I want to mention. First, if you've been counting along with me, I've only mentioned 15 modern regions of Spain, but there are 17 autonomous communities. So the last two are island chains, and we can see one of them on our map. This is the Balearic Islands. Right here. This is where Majorca, Menorca, Ibiza, all of those places are. They're Byzantine right now, also. So we'll talk about them presently, but not quite yet.
I was gonna say, already. They're, they're, they're currently building beach front communities for British expats.
Yes, they're working on that for a long -
In a couple 1000 years. Trust me, this land is going to be worth millions.
Oh, yes. Then the second island chain is the Canary Islands,
Which are... out in the-
They're out in the Atlantic Ocean, they're off the southwest coast of Morocco. We're not going to talk about them for another 800 years.
Ah, okay, all right.
We got a while. And we have one bit of modern day France that's going to come in at part of our story. You can see it on the map. It's this part that says Septimania. It's north of the top right corner of Spain. It's on the other side of the Pyrenees. Narbonne is here. That's what Narbo is. Toulouse is here. Toulouse was actually the historical capital of the Goths.
Okay.
So that's why this region remains under Gothic control. So we will be talking about events that happen here for a little bit. But it, as you know, it's not part of modern day Spain, so it will eventually go away. So that's kind of the big picture of Spain. All right, so I'm going to wrap this up
¶ Wrap-up
here. Our next episode is going to be talking more specifically about the Visigoths, how they got where they are and, and why they became the rulers of Spain. And that is going to be that. So Please, continue listening. Stick with us. If you -
Excellent. enjoyed what you heard, download us on Apple Podcasts. Pretty much anywhere you can get podcasts. You can follow us on Facebook or Twitter. Those are Spanish ArPodA. I think you're already following us, Peter. I would hope so.
Yeah, Spanish Arpoda, and we'll be releasing through Podbean, so eventually there will be a website. I'm still kind of working on that, but.
I believe we're contractually obligated to use Squarespace.
I think so. We'll see, we'll see what happens.
All right.
Anyway, so we will see you next time. Goodbye.
All right. See you. Goodbye.