Some great characters in the history of Spain

Abd ar-Rahman III (891–961), Umayyad emir (912–29) and first caliph (929–61) of Córdoba. When he succeeded to the throne, the Spanish emirate was reduced to Córdoba and its environs and beset with tribal warfare. Abd ar-Rahman recovered the lost provinces, consolidated the central government, and created internal peace and prosperity. He built up a strong army and navy and waged war successfully against the Fatimids in N Africa and the Christian kings of León. He made Córdoba one of the greatest cities in the West.

Alfonso I (Alfonso the Battler) d. 1134, king of Aragón and Navarre (1104–34), brother and successor of Peter I. The husband of Urraca, queen of Castile, he fought unsuccessfully to extend his authority over her kingdom. He also fought energetically against the Moors, from whom he captured Zaragossa (1118), Calatayud (1120), and many other towns. His raid (1125) into Andalusia bolstered Christian morale, and he encouraged Christians in Muslim lands to settle in his domain. Alfonso was killed in battle against his stepson, Alfonso VII of Castile, and was succeeded by his brother Ramiro II in Aragón and by García IV in Navarre.

Cid or Cid Campeador [Span., = lord conqueror], d. 1099, Spanish soldier and national hero, whose real name was Rodrigo (or Ruy) Díaz de Vivar. Under Ferdinand I and Sancho II of Castile he distinguished himself while fighting against the Moors, but Alfonso VI distrusted him and banished (1081) him from Castile. Entering the service of the Moorish ruler of Zaragoza (a course not unusual among Castilian nobles of his time, in accord with the rights of a free lord in feudal society), he fought against Moors and Christians alike. In 1094 he conquered the kingdom of Valencia, which he ruled until his death. His widow Jimena surrendered the kingdom to the Almoravids in 1102. The Cid's exploits have been much romanticized.The Song of the Cid, an anonymous Old Spanish work of the 12th cent., has served as basis for numerous treatments, notably the plays by Guillén de Castro y Bellvís and Pierre Corneille.

Palafox, José de, (1776?–1847), Spanish general in the Peninsular War, celebrated for his heroic defense of Zaragoza. Elected captain general of Aragón in 1808, he held Zaragoza against the French with an improvised garrison of citizens and peasants. Though the French breached the city walls, his forces held out behind street barricades from June to Aug., 1808, when the French withdrew. In Dec., 1808, the French under Lannes again besieged the city. Palafox surrendered only in Feb., 1809, after three weeks of street fighting. He was held a prisoner in France until 1813. Palafox commanded the royal guards during the uprisings of 1820–23 against Ferdinand VII, but he lost his post because of his stand in favor of the liberal constitution. He later commanded the loyal troops against the Carlists and was created duque de Zaragoza.

Suárez González, Adolfo, (1932–2014), Spanish political leader. Because he worked in the Nationalist Movement (the Falange) for 18 years and became its secretary-general after Franco's death (1975), centrist and leftist forces opposed his appointment in July, 1976, as premier by King Juan Carlos. In 1977 he led his Union of the Democratic Center to victory in Spain's first free elections in 41 years. His centrist government instituted democractic reforms, and his coalition again won the 1979 elections under the new constitution. Less successful as a day-to-day organizer than as a crisis manager, he was replaced as prime minister in 1981; Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo succeeded him, but only after a failed coup in which the Cortes was seized while in session. In 1982 he founded the Democratic and Social Center party. He retired from active politics in 1991.

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes; (30 March 1746 – 16 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of late 18th and early 19th centuries and throughout his long career was a commentator and chronicler of his era. Immensely successful in his lifetime, Goya's late works especially have been highly influential and he is often referred to as both the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns.

Goya was born to a modest family in 1746 in the village of Fuendetodos in Aragon. He studied painting from age 14 under José Lúzan y Martinez and moved to Madrid to study with Anton Raphael Mengs. He married Josefa Bayeu in 1775; the couple's life together was characterised by an almost constant series of pregnancies and miscarriages. He became a court painter to the Spanish Crown in 1786 and the early portion of his career is marked by portraits commissioned by the Spanish aristocracy and royalty, and the Rococo style tapestry cartoons designed for the royal palace.

Goya was a guarded man and although letters and writings survive, we know comparatively little about his thoughts. He suffered a severe and undiagnosed illness in 1793 which left him completely deaf. After 1793 his work became progressively darker and pessimistic. His later easel and mural paintings, prints and drawings appear to reflect a bleak outlook on personal, social and political levels, and contrast with his social climbing. He was appointed Director of the Royal Academy in 1795, the year Manuel Godoy made an unfavorable treaty with France. In 1799 Goya became Primer Pintor de Càmara, the then highest rank for a Spanish court painter. In the late 1790s, commissioned by Godoy, he completed his La maja desnuda, a remarkably daring nude for the time and clearly indebted to Diego Velázquez. In 1801 he painted Charles IV of Spain and His Family, the tone and intent of which is still debated; likely Goya saw Charles IV as a weak, ineffectual king. In 1807 Napoleon lead the French army into Spain.

He remained in Madrid during the disastrous Peninsular War, which seems to have affected him deeply. Although he did not vocalise his thoughts in public, they can be inferred from his "Disasters of War" series of prints (although published 35 years after his death) and his 1814 paintings The Second of May 1808 and The Third of May 1808. Other works from his mid period include the "Caprichos" and Los Disparates etching series, and a wide variety of paintings concerned with insanity, mental asylums, witches,fantastical creatures and religious and political corruption, all of which suggest that he feared for both his country's fate and his own mental and physical health. His output culminates with the so-called "Black Paintings" of 1819-1823, applied on oil on the plaster walls of his house the "Quinta del Sordo" (house of the deaf man) where, disillusioned by domestic political and social developments he lived in near isolation. Goya eventually abandoned Spain in 1824 to retire to the French city of Bordeaux, accompanied by his much younger maid and companion, Leocadia Weiss, who may or may not have been his lover. There he completed his "La Tauromaquia" series and a number of canvases. Following a stroke which left him paralysed on his right side, and suffering failing eyesight and poor access to painting materials, he died and was buried on April 16th 1828 aged 82. His body was later re-interred in Spain.

Marco Valerio Marcial (40-104 ac): Writer and Spanish poet, born about the year 40 in the town of Bilbilis, modern Calatayud (city of the Spanish province called Tarraconensis), and dead to the 104, perhaps in the same Bilbilis. The cognomen Martialis or martial would derive, apparently, they were born on March 1. After educated in Hispania, marched to Rome in 64, famous year because it was the fire of Rome by Nero; It remained there, relationship with other intellectuals of Hispanic, such as Seneca and Lucan, until these and others fell into disgrace after the Pison conspiracy of the year 65. In the Urbs, he remained nearly thirty-five years, because we know that he left it in 99. After living as a poet for hire in search of a rich patron for years (which justifies the praise directed to various patricians and even the same Domitian), his fame grew, and with it, received honors, tax exemptions and the right to have slaves, the ius trium ius liberorum (but never married) and even an appointment as military Tribune. He took home in Rome and a villa in Nomento.

Related to all court, since the Emperor until the last of his acolytes, also maintained close contact with many writers (particularly, with Pliny the younger, Silius Italicus, Juvenal and his countryman, Quintiliancalagurritano), although it is known that its relations with Estació were really bad. All this universe is reflected in 1,561 epigrams he composed between 86 and 98; at the end of his life, according to the testimony of Plinio the younger, he sang the Palinode, regretted some of his poems and decided to return to his homeland to take charge of a villa donated by a such Marcella; After a long trip to Hispania, which paid for the same Pliny, it died about the year 104.

Baltasar Gracián (1601-1658): Writer, thinker and religious Spanish, born in Belmonte (a village belonging to the region of the zaragozan town of Calatayud, now known as Belmonte de Gracian) at the beginning of January 1601 (perhaps that same day 8 it is dated his baptism certificate), and died in Tarazona (Zaragoza), December 6, 1658. Possessor of a very broad humanistic education, an exceptional ability for analysis and reflection, and an amazing virtuosity in the handling of the literary language and its various rhetorical procedures, left a dazzling artistic and intellectual legacy which, at the formal level, makes it one of the best exponents of this Baroque conceptismo which reached its peak in Hispanic letters during the first half of the 17TH century printed, while, by the coverage of its contents, places him at the head of the Spanish philosophic thought of the modern era.