Hispania

Hispania is the Latin name used by the Romans for the Iberian Peninsula, the land map that roughly corresponds to present‑day Spain and Portugal. The term appears in classical texts and continued to be used in late antiquity and the medieval period to refer to the western part of Europe that stretched from the Pyrenees to the Atlantic and the Mediterranean coasts.

Geography and administration

The peninsula lies in southwestern Europe, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. Under Roman rule, Hispania was organized into multiple provinces. Early in the Empire it was divided into Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior; later reorganizations produced a set of more numerous provinces, including Hispania Tarraconensis, Hispania Baetica, and Hispania Lusitania, with further subdivisions such as Gallaecia and Carthaginensis in various administrative schemes of the late Empire.

History and legacy

Roman conquest and settlement integrated the region into Latin‑speaking administration and culture, laying foundations for the Romance languages. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Visigoths established a kingdom centered in Hispania. In the 8th century, much of the peninsula came under Islamic rule, while Christian kingdoms slowly reconquered the territory in the ensuing centuries. By late medieval times the name Hispania remained in use in Latin and vernacular traditions, even as the modern political distinction between kingdoms and realms evolved. The term also influenced the development of the modern names for the region, including España, which later became the standard designation for the sovereign state arising on the peninsula in the early modern period.