139 Fun Facts About Spain

Which currency did Spain use before it adopted the euro?

The peseta was Spain's currency from 1868 until euro notes and coins replaced it in 2002, at 166.386 pesetas to the euro; the central bank went on exchanging leftover peseta notes until mid-2021.

Which Spanish architect designed the Sagrada Família basilica in Barcelona?

Antoni Gaudí took over the Sagrada Família in 1883, a year after Francisco de Paula del Villar began it, and devoted the rest of his life to it until his death in 1926; construction has run well over a century.

What is the traditional Spanish rice dish typically made with saffron, seafood, or meat?

Paella takes its name from the wide, shallow pan it is cooked in, traditionally outdoors over a wood fire; the word is simply Catalan for a frying pan.

Which football club plays its home matches at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium?

Real Madrid has played at the ground since it opened in December 1947; in 1955 it was renamed for Santiago Bernabéu, the former player who was club president when it was built.

What is gazpacho?

Gazpacho is a cold vegetable soup that is older than its best-known ingredients: the tomatoes and peppers blended into it reached Spain from the Americas only in the 16th century.

Which Spanish artist painted Guernica, a mural-sized work depicting the horrors of war?

Pablo Picasso painted Guernica in 1937 in response to the bombing of the Basque town during the Civil War; the canvas then spent decades at New York's Museum of Modern Art and reached Spain only in 1981.

What pilgrimage route across northern Spain ends at the shrine of the apostle James in Galicia?

The Camino de Santiago (Way of St James) is a web of routes converging on Santiago de Compostela, where the apostle's relics are said to rest; pilgrims who walk at least the last 100 km earn a certificate, the Compostela.

Which island group off the northwest coast of Africa is an autonomous community of Spain?

The Canary Islands lie about 100 km off the African coast; their name is thought to come from the Latin for 'islands of dogs', and the canary bird is named after the islands, not the other way round.

Which festival in the town of Buñol is a giant one-hour food fight?

La Tomatina falls on the last Wednesday of August, when trucks haul in well over 100 tonnes of overripe tomatoes; it grew so popular that since 2013 entry has been ticketed and capped at about 20,000 people.

Which river, reaching the Atlantic at Lisbon, is the longest in the Iberian Peninsula?

The Tagus (Tajo in Spanish, Tejo in Portuguese) runs about 1,007 km across Spain and Portugal to the Atlantic at Lisbon; because it leaves the country, the Ebro is the longest river wholly within Spain.

Which hilltop palace-fortress of the Nasrid sultans is famed for its Court of the Lions?

The Alhambra takes its name from the Arabic for 'the red', probably after the colour of its walls; Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra, published in 1832, later brought its Moorish palaces to the attention of the wider world.

Which cured ham's top grade, labelled 'de bellota', comes from acorn-fed black-hoofed pigs?

Jamón ibérico comes from black Iberian pigs or crosses that are at least half Iberian; for the de bellota grade they spend their last months ranging free through oak pastures, and the exercise and acorn diet flavour the meat.

Which annual festival in Pamplona features the running of bulls through the streets?

San Fermín fills Pamplona each July, with a bull run through the old town every morning; Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises made the festival known around the world.

Which tennis player from Mallorca has won a record number of French Open titles?

Rafael Nadal, born in Manacor on Mallorca, won the French Open 14 times between 2005 and 2022; in 2021, while he was still competing there, the tournament unveiled a statue of him in its grounds.

By what name does Spain's 1978 constitution call the Spanish language?

Castilian, or castellano, is the constitution's name for the official language of the whole state, because Spain's other languages count as Spanish languages too and are co-official in their own regions.

Which museum in Madrid houses works by Velázquez, Goya, and El Greco?

The Museo del Prado opened in 1819 in a building commissioned as a natural history museum; by the time it was finished, King Ferdinand VII had decided it should show the royal paintings instead.

What type of dance and music originated in the Andalusia region of Spain?

Flamenco fuses song, dance and guitar, with hand-clapping and foot-stamping as its percussion; UNESCO, which listed it in 2010, notes that it also has roots outside its heartland, in Murcia and Extremadura.

Which Spanish region has Barcelona as its capital and has a strong independence movement?

Catalonia's parliament declared independence on 27 October 2017, after a referendum the Constitutional Court had ruled illegal; Spain's government answered by sacking the regional cabinet and imposing direct rule.

What is sangria?

Sangria is a wine punch with fruit; the name probably comes from sangre, Spanish for blood, and under EU rules only Spain and Portugal may sell it as plain 'Sangria', so versions made elsewhere must say where they come from.

Who wrote Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel?

Miguel de Cervantes published Don Quixote in two parts, in 1605 and 1615; a rival's unauthorised sequel had appeared in 1614 under the name Avellaneda, and Cervantes answers it in his own second part.

What name is given to the eight-century campaign by Christian kingdoms against Muslim rule in Iberia?

La Reconquista was no steady advance: most of the peninsula was back in Christian hands by about 1250, yet one last Muslim emirate in the far south held out for nearly 250 years more.

What happens to most of the huge figures built for Las Fallas?

Set alight on the festival's final night, La Cremà: only the figures the public votes to pardon are spared the flames and kept in a museum.

Which strait separates Spain from Morocco and links the Mediterranean to the Atlantic?

The Strait of Gibraltar is named for the Rock beside it, from the Arabic for 'Mountain of Tariq': Tariq ibn Ziyad led the Muslim army that crossed these waters to invade Spain in 711.

What is a tortilla española?

A potato omelette, thick and round, made with eggs and fried potatoes; Spaniards split into rival camps, 'concebollistas' and 'sincebollistas', over whether it should also contain onion.

Which surrealist artist, known for melting clocks, was born in Figueres?

Salvador Dalí painted the melting clocks of The Persistence of Memory in 1931; he later turned his home town's burned-out theatre into a museum of his own work and is buried in a crypt beneath its stage.

What is the name of the Spanish parliament?

The Cortes Generales, with its lower and upper houses, keeps a medieval name: cortes means 'courts', after the royal councils of the Iberian kingdoms out of which their assemblies grew.

Which Balearic island is known for its electronic dance music nightlife scene?

Ibiza's clubs bred the eclectic 'Balearic beat'; a group of British DJs on holiday there in 1987, Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling among them, took the sound home, where it helped launch acid house.

Which Tudor queen did Spain's Armada set out to overthrow?

Elizabeth I's navy broke up the fleet's formation with fireships off Calais in 1588; storms then wrecked many of the ships on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland as they sailed home the long way round.

What are tapas?

Tapas are small snacks served with drinks; tapa means 'lid', and the name is said to come from the slices of bread or cured meat that drinkers once set on top of their glasses.

Which future FC Barcelona star was promised his first contract on a paper napkin at age 13?

Lionel Messi was 13 when Barcelona's Carles Rexach, pressed to prove the club was serious and with no other paper to hand, wrote the pledge on a napkin; Messi stayed until 2021 and scored a club-record 672 goals.

Which general, a leader of the 1936 coup that began the Civil War, ruled Spain until 1975?

Francisco Franco was made head of state by his fellow rebels on 1 October 1936; Sanjurjo, expected to lead the rising, and Mola, who had planned it, both died in plane crashes, leaving him without a rival.

What do Basque speakers call their own language, which is related to no other known tongue?

Euskara is a language isolate, with no proven relative anywhere; to give its scattered dialects a better chance of survival, the Basque language academy drew up a unified standard known as Euskara Batua.

Which mountain range forms a natural border between Spain and France?

The Pyrenees became the agreed frontier under a peace signed in 1659 on Pheasant Island, in a border river; the two countries still share that tiny island, handing it to each other every six months.

What is the vast plateau at the heart of Spain, on which Madrid sits, called?

The Meseta Central averages about 660 metres above sea level, which makes Madrid one of Europe's highest capitals; the altitude helps explain its crisp, cold winters, though its summers are dry and hot.

Which Tempranillo-led Spanish wine region on the Ebro was the first to gain DOCa status?

Rioja became Spain's first DOCa wine region in 1991; each summer the Rioja town of Haro stages a 'wine battle', in which the crowd throws red wine over one another until everyone is soaked purple.

Which city's surrender to Ferdinand and Isabella in January 1492 ended Muslim rule in Spain?

Granada's last emir, Boabdil, handed the city over on 2 January 1492; Columbus was in the royal camp for the siege, and within months the victorious monarchs agreed to back his voyage west.

Which Spanish city's cathedral is a former great mosque that still has its red-and-white arches?

Córdoba's Mezquita-Catedral began as the Umayyad Great Mosque and became a cathedral in 1236; in the 16th century a choir and high altar were built right into the middle of its hall of columns, and a belfry replaced the minaret.

Which North African city, like Melilla, is a Spanish autonomous city?

Ceuta was Portuguese from 1415 and came under the Spanish crown when the two kingdoms were united in 1580; when Portugal broke away again, the city stayed with Spain.

Which Spanish poet was killed by Nationalist militia weeks into the Civil War in 1936?

Federico García Lorca, author of Blood Wedding, was arrested by Nationalist forces in August 1936, weeks into the Civil War, and shot; his remains have never been found, despite repeated searches.

The Spanish word 'siesta' comes from the Latin name for which time of day?

Noon was the Romans' 'sexta hora', the sixth hour counted from sunrise, and sexta became siesta: a rest taken in the hottest part of the day.

Which Basque sport has players hurl a ball at a wall with a curved basket strapped to the hand?

Jai alai balls have been clocked at about 300 km/h, which is why the game is billed as one of the fastest sports in the world; it crossed the Atlantic and became a betting sport in Florida.

During the failed coup of 23 February 1981, Civil Guards led by Antonio Tejero stormed which building?

The Congress of Deputies was voting in a new prime minister when the gunmen burst in, firing into the ceiling; they held the deputies for about 18 hours, until the king's televised order to uphold democracy sank the coup.

Which fortified wine comes from the vineyards around Jerez de la Frontera?

Sherry takes its name from Xeres, the old spelling of Jerez: English drinkers first called it 'sherris', then took that for a plural and dropped the s. Styles run from bone-dry Fino to syrupy Pedro Ximénez.

Which painter created Las Meninas?

Diego Velázquez painted Las Meninas in 1656 and put himself in it, brush in hand at a huge canvas beside the five-year-old Infanta; the king and queen appear only as a reflection in a mirror on the back wall.

Which Spanish king abdicated in 2014 in favor of his son, Felipe VI?

Juan Carlos I gave up the throne in June 2014 after nearly 39 years as king; in 2020, with his finances under investigation in Spain and Switzerland, he left the country to live abroad.

The Guggenheim Museum in which Spanish city is credited with revitalizing its region through cultural tourism?

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, designed by Frank Gehry and opened in 1997, transformed the declining industrial city. Regeneration through iconic cultural buildings became known as the 'Bilbao Effect'.

What is the name of Spain's regulated wine-appellation system, the counterpart of France's AOC?

Denominación de Origen is not only for wine: the same legal protection covers Spanish foods too, which is why Manchego cheese has its own protected name and regulating council.

What name is given to the Muslim-ruled territories of Iberia between 711 and 1492?

Al-Andalus was born of a lightning conquest: an army from North Africa crossed in 711 and within a few years held almost the whole peninsula, which Christian kingdoms then won back piece by piece over centuries.

Which spice gives Spanish chorizo its deep red colour?

Paprika, called pimentón in Spain, gives chorizo its colour and often a smoky taste too, because the peppers for pimentón de la Vera are dried over oak smoke before they are ground.

Which island holds Teide, the highest point in Spain?

Tenerife's Teide is about half hidden: measured from the ocean floor it rises about 7,500 m, which makes it the third-tallest volcanic structure on Earth. It last erupted in 1909.

Mulhacén, the highest peak on the Spanish mainland, rises in which range?

Mulhacén, in the Sierra Nevada, is named after Muley Hacén, a 15th-century Muslim ruler who, legend says, was buried on its summit; the range's own name means 'snowy mountains', and it holds one of Europe's most southerly ski resorts.

Which Almería badland doubled for the Wild West in dozens of spaghetti westerns?

Tabernas, the desert behind Almería, had whole western towns built on it for the cameras, and some outlived the films: Fort Bravo and Mini Hollywood became western theme parks.

Doñana National Park sits on the marshy delta of which river?

Doñana lies in the marshes where the Guadalquivir meets the Atlantic, a winter refuge for hundreds of thousands of waterfowl; it is said to be named after Doña Ana de Silva y Mendoza, a duchess who had a country retreat there.

Llívia, a Spanish town of about 1,500 people, lies entirely inside which other country?

France surrounds Llívia because the 1659 treaty that moved the border handed over only the 'villages' of the valley, and Llívia ranked as a town; a road across a short strip of French land links it to the rest of Spain.

Which was Spain's first national park, created in 1918?

Picos de Europa began in July 1918 as the Montaña de Covadonga park, pushed through by Pedro Pidal, a marquess who in 1904 had made the first ascent of the range's landmark peak, the Naranjo de Bulnes.

The 1494 treaty splitting newly found lands between Spain and Portugal is named for which town?

The Treaty of Tordesillas drew a line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, with Spain taking lands to the west and Portugal those to the east; Brazil's coast fell on Portugal's side, which is why Brazilians speak Portuguese.

Which monastery-palace did Philip II build to mark his 1557 victory at Saint-Quentin?

El Escorial, built between 1563 and 1584, is dedicated to St Lawrence, on whose feast day the battle was won; its grid-shaped plan is traditionally said to echo the gridiron on which the saint was martyred.

Spain ceded Gibraltar to Britain under which 1713 peace settlement?

The Treaty of Utrecht, part of the peace that ended the War of the Spanish Succession, gave Britain both Gibraltar and the island of Menorca; Menorca went back to Spain in 1802, but Gibraltar has stayed British ever since.

In 929 the Umayyad ruler Abd al-Rahman III promoted himself from emir to which grander title?

Caliph: the title claimed leadership of all Muslims, and he took it to answer the Fatimids, a rival dynasty of caliphs that had risen just across the sea in North Africa.

Which Spanish city's coat of arms shows its own Roman aqueduct?

Segovia's aqueduct has stood since Roman times although nothing binds it together: its granite blocks were laid without mortar, held in place by their own weight, in two tiers of arches at the highest point.

The painted ceiling of Cantabria's Altamira cave shows a herd of which animal?

The bison of Altamira's ceiling were first noticed in 1879 by María, the eight-year-old daughter of the man excavating the cave; most prehistorians dismissed them as modern forgeries, and acceptance took some twenty years.

Which foreign volunteers fought the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War?

The International Brigades included the Americans' Abraham Lincoln Battalion; Spain's government sent them home late in 1938 in a vain bid to win British and French support.

Which Roman emperor, under whom the empire reached its greatest extent, was born at Italica near Seville?

Trajan, emperor from 98 to 117, was born at Italica, a town that the general Scipio Africanus had founded in 206 BC as a home for his army's veterans; its ruins lie just outside modern Seville.

Who brought the ship Victoria home in 1522 to finish the first circumnavigation?

Juan Sebastián Elcano brought the Victoria home in September 1522 with only 18 of the original crew, Magellan having been killed in the Philippines; Charles V granted him a coat of arms showing a globe.

Which Phoenician-founded port proclaimed Spain's liberal constitution of 1812?

Cádiz, under siege by Napoleon's army, sheltered the assembly that passed the constitution on St Joseph's day in 1812, which is why Spaniards nicknamed it 'La Pepa', from Pepe, the pet name for José.

Clara Campoamor won Spanish women the vote in 1931 under which regime?

The Second Republic, proclaimed in April 1931, wrote votes for women into its constitution after Campoamor out-argued Victoria Kent, another woman lawmaker, who wanted to wait until Spanish women had more political education.

Why did the 1918 pandemic end up being called the 'Spanish' flu?

Neutral Spain's press reported it freely while wartime censors in the fighting nations played it down, so the world wrongly assumed the outbreak had begun in Spain; Spaniards themselves called it the 'French flu'.

The Madrid bombings of 11 March 2004 targeted what?

Commuter trains: ten bombs tore through four rush-hour trains in an attack Spaniards call 11-M; three days later voters turned the governing party out in a general election.

Which armed Basque separatist group formally dissolved in 2018?

ETA was founded in 1959 by young members who broke with the moderate Basque Nationalist Party over its refusal to take up arms; it killed more than 800 people before declaring a permanent ceasefire in 2011 and disbanding in 2018.

Spain legalised same-sex marriage in 2005, third in the world after Belgium and which other country?

The Netherlands led the way in 2001 and Belgium followed in 2003; in Spain the Senate rejected the bill, but the lower house overrode it by 187 votes to 147.

Which Socialist prime minister governed Spain from 1982 to 1996?

Felipe González's Socialists won a landslide in 1982; he took Spain into the European Community and governed for more than thirteen years, until José María Aznar's conservatives beat him in 1996.

Which monument near Madrid was the dictator's burial site from 1975 until 2019?

The Valley of the Fallen, begun in 1940, was built partly by political prisoners working off their sentences; the dictator lay there until his remains were moved in 2019, and in 2022 it was renamed the Valley of Cuelgamuros.

What is unusual about Spain's national anthem, the Marcha Real?

It has no official lyrics: first written down in 1761 as a military march, it has been given words more than once, under Alfonso XIII and again under the dictatorship, but none was ever made official.

The giant black bull silhouettes on Spanish hilltops began in the 1950s as adverts for what?

The bulls advertised Osborne's brandy; a 1988 ban on roadside advertising took the lettering off, and when the silhouettes themselves were ordered down in 1994, parliament declared them part of Spain's heritage, so they stayed.

What do Spaniards eat with each of the twelve midnight chimes on New Year's Eve?

Grapes, one for each chime; the custom is recorded by 1895 and is said to have taken off in 1909, when growers in Alicante promoted it to sell off a bumper harvest.

Who traditionally announces the winning numbers at Spain's Christmas lottery draw, famous for El Gordo?

Schoolchildren from Madrid's San Ildefonso school draw the wooden balls and sing out each number and its prize as they come; the draw is held every 22 December.

What are castells, a UNESCO-listed Catalan tradition?

Castells are human towers, built by teams whose members climb onto one another's shoulders; a tower counts as complete only when a small child, the enxaneta, reaches the top and raises one hand.

What is the Botafumeiro that swings through Galicia's great pilgrimage cathedral?

The Botafumeiro is a giant incense burner; eight robed men, the tiraboleiros, haul on its rope until it swings in a great arc through the transept, almost touching the roof.

Which time zone has mainland Spain kept since 1940?

Central European Time arrived in 1940, when the regime moved the clocks forward an hour, and the change was never undone; the mismatch with the sun is often blamed for Spain's famously late mealtimes.

Which Spanish lollipop brand's daisy logo was drawn by a famous painter in 1969?

Chupa Chups, launched by Enric Bernat in 1958, got its daisy logo from the painter in 1969; Bernat's idea had been to put a sweet on a stick because children kept getting their hands sticky.

Which 1999 Pedro Almodóvar film won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film?

All About My Mother won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and a Golden Globe; Almodóvar dedicated it to 'all actresses who have played actresses' and to his own mother. Talk to Her later won him a screenplay Oscar.

Javier Bardem won an Oscar for playing the assassin Anton Chigurh in which film?

No Country for Old Men won Javier Bardem the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, the first acting Oscar for a Spaniard; born into a family of actors, he had set out to be a painter and studied art before turning to the family trade.

El Greco, born on Crete, settled in which Spanish city in 1577 for the rest of his life?

El Greco settled in Toledo in 1577 and died there in 1614; he had come to Spain hoping to paint for the king, but an altarpiece he delivered displeased the monarch, the royal commissions stopped, and Toledo's churches became his patrons.

Goya painted his 14 Black Paintings directly onto the plaster walls of what?

Goya painted the Black Paintings on the walls of his own house, the Quinta del Sordo; its name, 'the Deaf Man's Villa', came from an earlier owner, although Goya himself had been deaf since an illness in 1792.

Who wrote the 1939 guitar Concierto de Aranjuez despite being nearly blind?

Joaquín Rodrigo, blind from the age of three, wrote the Concierto de Aranjuez although he was a pianist who never mastered the guitar; his wife said its slow movement recalled both their honeymoon and the loss of their first child.

In Money Heist, the Professor's first target is which building?

The first heist targets the Royal Mint of Spain, where the gang prints its own banknotes while holding hostages; the Bank of Spain comes later, and the series made the old Italian song 'Bella ciao' a hit across Europe in 2018.

Which guitar virtuoso from Algeciras recorded 'Entre dos aguas'?

Paco de Lucía, born in Algeciras in 1947, made a string of albums with the singer Camarón de la Isla, then took his guitar well beyond Spain in a touring trio with John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola.

Fashion giant Zara opened its first shop in 1975 in which city in Spain's far north-west?

A Coruña is where Amancio Ortega started out as a teenager running errands for a shirt shop; he opened the first Zara there in 1975, and it became the flagship of his Inditex group.

Which Spaniard shared the 1906 Nobel Prize in Medicine for work on the nervous system?

Santiago Ramón y Cajal shared the 1906 prize with Camillo Golgi, whose silver stain he had used to show that the nervous system is built from separate cells, the neurons; Golgi himself never accepted that conclusion.

What kind of aircraft did Juan de la Cierva invent?

The autogyro grew out of a crash: after his three-engined plane came down, de la Cierva set out to build an aircraft that could not stall, and found the answer in a rotor spun freely by the passing air.

Who scored Spain's extra-time winner in the 2010 World Cup final?

Andrés Iniesta scored in the 116th minute against the Dutch, then pulled off his shirt to show a handwritten message honouring Dani Jarque, a friend and rival club captain who had died the summer before.

Fernando Alonso won his two Formula One world titles with which team?

Renault carried Fernando Alonso to both titles, in 2005 and 2006; the first made him Spain's first world champion and ended Michael Schumacher's run of five straight championships.

Which Spaniard won golf's Masters in 1980, aged 23, and again in 1983?

Seve Ballesteros taught himself the game as a boy on the beach near his village, hitting pebbles with a single club, an old 3-iron; he turned professional at 16.

Which La Liga club fields only players born or trained in the Basque region?

Athletic Bilbao has kept its Basque-only rule for more than a century, yet it is one of just three clubs never relegated from La Liga since the league began in 1929, a record still intact as of 2025.

Spain won a record fourth European Championship in 2024 by beating which team 2–1 in the final?

England had drawn level through Cole Palmer, but Mikel Oyarzabal, a substitute, scored Spain's winner four minutes from the end of normal time.

About 95% of cava sparkling wine comes from which Catalan region?

The Penedès, southwest of Barcelona, produces about 95% of cava; its village of Sant Sadurní d'Anoia hosts the biggest houses, Freixenet and Codorníu, and only wine made by the traditional bottle-fermentation method may carry the name.

Spanish horchata, unlike the Mexican rice version, is traditionally made from what?

Tiger nuts are not nuts at all but the small tubers of a sedge called chufa; soaked, ground and sweetened, they give Spain its own sweet, milky horchata.

Manchego cheese must be made from the milk of which animal?

Sheep of the Manchega breed must supply all the milk; the zigzag pattern on the rind copies the plaited esparto-grass moulds in which the cheese was traditionally pressed.

Which Spanish province produces the most olive oil?

Jaén produces so much that this one province accounts for about a fifth of all the olive oil made in the world, which is why it is nicknamed the 'world capital of olive oil'.

The heir to the Spanish throne takes a princely title from which northern autonomous community?

Asturias has lent its name to the heir's title since 1388, when King John I created it for his eldest son, the future Henry III.

Which city, whose Giralda bell tower began life as a mosque's minaret, is the capital of Andalusia?

Seville is also Andalusia's largest city, and the Giralda gained its Renaissance belfry after the Almohad mosque it served gave way to a cathedral.

Which city, the birthplace of a global banking giant of the same name, is the capital of Cantabria?

Santander lent its name to Banco de Santander in 1857, and the bank has kept its legal headquarters in the city ever since.

Ferdinand II, who married Isabella I in 1469, inherited the crown of which present-day Spanish region from his father?

Aragon came to Ferdinand in 1479, and because he reigned jointly with his wife over a dynastically united country he is often counted as the first king of Spain.

Which city, founded as a Roman camp, is the capital of the Balearic Islands?

Palma is also the islands' largest city, and its Gothic cathedral, La Seu, rose on the site of a mosque after the island's conquest in 1229.

Cantabria, the Basque Country and the rest of Spain's northern coast face which arm of the Atlantic?

The Bay of Biscay's southern stretch is known locally as the Cantabrian Sea, and its shallow continental shelf is to blame for famously rough water.

Mahón, the port often credited with giving mayonnaise its name, is the capital of which Spanish island?

Menorca was invaded by the Duke of Richelieu's French troops in 1756, and one popular account has his cook carry the local sauce home as 'mahonnaise'.

Galician, spoken in northwestern Spain, grew from the same medieval tongue as which country's language?

Portugal and Galicia shared one language, Galician-Portuguese, the vehicle of a celebrated school of medieval lyric poetry, until the two halves drifted apart from the 14th century.

Which autonomous community, the largest in Spain by area, includes Burgos, Salamanca and Ávila?

Castile and León was formed in 1983 from nine provinces of the historic regions of León and Old Castile, and it remains sparsely populated for its size.

Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro, conquerors of the Aztecs and Incas, were both born in which Spanish region?

Extremadura sent a striking share of the conquistadors to the Americas, and its two most famous sons were distant cousins.

Which Spanish region shares with the Basque Country the historic right to raise its own taxes?

Navarre kept the fiscal rights of its old kingdom, so it collects taxes itself and pays an agreed sum to the central government for shared services.

Which Spanish region holds the Mar Menor, a saltwater lagoon cut off from the sea by a long sandbar?

Murcia's lagoon is the largest in Spain, and in 2022 it became the first ecosystem in Europe to be granted legal rights of its own.

Which city, named European Green Capital for 2012, is the seat of the Basque Country's government?

Vitoria, officially Vitoria-Gasteiz, was the first Spanish municipality to win the Green Capital title, and it is also the capital of the province of Álava.

Which body does Spain's constitution make the chamber of territorial representation for its regions?

The Senate takes one member from each regional legislature plus another for every million residents, alongside the senators that voters elect directly.

Under which kind of tree in Gernika did rulers traditionally swear to respect Basque liberties?

Oak trees on the spot are raised from their predecessors' acorns, and the one planted in 1860 lived through the 1937 bombing of the town.

Which mythical hero is shown taming two lions between a pair of columns on the emblem of Andalusia?

Hercules stands between the pillars that bear his name on an emblem designed by Blas Infante, the man remembered as the 'Father of Andalusia'.

What name is given to the basic law of each Spanish region, setting out its institutions and powers?

Statute of Autonomy texts are quasi-constitutional: amending one takes a strong majority in the regional parliament and then approval by the national one.

What is the red, white and green flag of the Basque Country, designed by the Arana brothers, called?

Ikurriña is a word the brothers coined from a Basque root meaning 'mark' or 'sign', and flying the flag was illegal for decades after 1938.

What is the regional government of Galicia, presided over for fifteen years by Manuel Fraga, called?

Xunta revives the name of the assembly of the old Kingdom of Galicia, a body that sat from 1528 until 1833.

Which form of Occitan, spoken in one mountain valley beside the French border, is an official language in Spain?

Aranese has been taught in the schools of the Val d'Aran since 1984, and in 2010 it was declared the third official language of the whole of Catalonia.

Which date is traditionally unlucky in Spain, in place of the Friday feared in the English-speaking world?

Tuesday the 13th is 'martes trece' in Spanish, and one common explanation is that martes is the day of Mars, the Roman god of war.

Which animal does the tooth fairy's job in Spain, collecting children's lost teeth from under the pillow?

A mouse called Ratoncito Pérez got the job in 1894, when the writer Luis Coloma made him a tooth dealer in a tale written for the eight-year-old King Alfonso XIII.

Who parades through Spanish towns on the evening of 5 January, then leaves children presents overnight?

The Three Kings ride through the streets while their pages throw sweets, and children leave out shoes for the gifts, plus a bucket of water for the camels.

In the Catalan Christmas custom of Tió de Nadal, children beat what object with sticks until it gives presents?

A log with a painted face is 'fed' each night from 8 December and kept warm under a blanket, then beaten at Christmas until it 'poops' out presents.

At the El Colacho festival, held in a village near Burgos since 1620, men dressed as devils leap over what?

Babies born in the previous twelve months are laid on mattresses in the street, and the leap is said to carry off their original sin.

What is unusual about the traditional local language taught in schools on the Spanish island of La Gomera?

It is whistled: Silbo Gomero lets messages cross the island's deep ravines and narrow valleys, carrying as far as five kilometres.

The castanets clicked by Spanish dancers take their name from the Spanish word for which nut?

Chestnut is castaña in Spanish, and the paired hardwood shells are said to owe the name to their likeness to the nut.

Which instrument, known locally as the gaita, leads the traditional folk music of Galicia in Spain?

Bagpipes head Galician folk bands, and the word gaita serves as a general name for the instrument right across northern Spain.

In traditional Spanish naming custom, a person's second surname comes from whom?

Their mother supplies the second surname and their father the first, and because nobody changes name on marrying, spouses keep different surnames for life.

Which ridged sticks of fried dough do Spaniards traditionally dip in a cup of thick hot chocolate?

Churros get their ridges from a churrera, a syringe-like tool with a star-shaped nozzle, and a thicker version is sold as a porra.

On Spain's Día de los Santos Inocentes, 28 December, what do people traditionally do to one another?

Spaniards play practical jokes on the day as others do on 1 April, greeting each victim with a cry of '¡Inocente!', a word for innocent or gullible.

Which religious observance sees hooded penitents in pointed capirotes escort floats through Spanish city streets?

Holy Week processions are staged by lay brotherhoods called cofradías, and the cone-tipped hood is there to conceal the face of the penitent wearing it.

On Sant Jordi's Day, the Catalan feast of Saint George, loved ones exchange roses and which other gift?

Books joined the roses in the 1930s, once Spain's Book Day was moved from October to the saint's day, and in 1995 UNESCO adopted the same date as World Book Day.

Which almond-and-honey nougat, a speciality of Jijona and Alicante, is Spain's classic Christmas sweet?

Turrón has been made in Jijona since at least the 15th century, and the town's own style is the soft one, with the almonds ground to a paste.

Before the letter ñ took hold, medieval Spanish scribes wrote its sound using which pair of letters?

The nn of Old Spanish anno was abbreviated by writing a small second n above the first, and that squiggle survives as the tilde.

Which drink do waiters in northern Spain pour from above head height into a glass held low, to aerate it?

Cider poured this way picks up air bubbles that give it a brief champagne-like sparkle, so only a splash is served at a time.

What is the smaller red cloth that a matador carries with a sword in the final stage of a Spanish bullfight?

Muleta colour means nothing to the bull, which is functionally colour-blind to red and charges at the movement; the shade is thought to have been chosen to mask blood.

What name do Basque bars give their bite-sized food, typically pinned to bread with a toothpick?

Pintxos are named after the Spanish for 'spike', and going from bar to bar eating them with friends is treated as a cornerstone of local social life.

Which Spanish form of musical theatre, alternating spoken and sung scenes, shares its name with a royal palace?

Zarzuela may owe its name to the Palace of Zarzuela, a royal hunting lodge where such shows are said to have first been staged, itself named after the brambles around it.

Which Catalan dance has men and women join hands in an inward-facing circle, to the music of a cobla band?

Sardana tunes can carry political weight: in 1924 one patriotic piece, La Santa Espina, was banned under the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera.