Duncan Shaw looks at how the entry of Spain into the EEC in 1985 furthered its process of integration into the European community. During the Franco years, the ostracised regime used football to initiate this gradual road towards acceptance. The Catalans and the Basques, however, used football as a means of popular protest.
Charles Mordaunt, Third Earl of Peterborough, 1658-1735, is probably best remembered as the captor of Barcelona in 1705. Aram Bakshian Jr. shows that, in addition to being a soldier, he was also 'a sailor, courtier, conspirator, diplomat, wit and rake'.
Geoffrey Parker looks at the moment when the representatives of certain provinces of the Netherlands met together to depose their lawful sovereign Philip II of Spain.
In the mid-seventeenth century Spain was at the apogee of artistic and cultural achievement under the patronage of her monarch, Philip IV - but, as R.A. Stradling shows here, she was fighting for survival as a great imperial power.
The loss to the Turks of Constantinople, the ancient capital of the Eastern Empire, in 1453 had been a terrible blow to Christendom. It was the crusading dream of Charles V, argues Sinclair Atkins, to reconquer the Byzantine city.
In 1580, Portugal was joined with Spain in a sixty-year long and unpopular union.
