Salamanca in the universal history Salamanca has been linked to Universal History by a series of events and personalities that came to mark the evolution of Western society: • The creation of the first grammar of
Spanish language in 1492 by
Antonio de Nebrija, the famous
Gramática de la lengua castellana. It was the first study of the rules of a Western European language other than
Latin and this fact marks the beginning of the
Spanish Golden Age. • The preparations of
Christopher Columbus for his first voyage in the
European discovery of the Americas. The Cloister of the
University of Salamanca met in council to discuss his project. During these years, Columbus obtained the support of the
Dominicans, staying at the
Convento de San Esteban. The Salamanca astronomer
Abraham Zacuto was his great scientific support for the trip. • The years of study of
Hernán Cortés before leaving for the Americas and conquering the
Aztec Empire. • The defense of the rights of the natives of the
New World by the
School of Salamanca, which, with
Francisco de Vitoria at its head, reformulated the concept of
natural law, renewed
theology, laid the foundations of modern law of nations,
international law and modern economic science, and actively participated in the
Council of Trent. • At this council, mathematicians from the
University of Salamanca proposed to Pope
Gregory XIII the calendar that came to be known as the
Gregorian calendar and is currently used all over the world. The germ was two studies carried out in 1515 and 1578 by scientists at the university, which were submitted to the church. • The partial translation of the Bible into Spanish, made by
Friar Luis de León. • The oldest preserved printed book on modern
chess,
Repetición de amores y arte de ajedrez, by the religious
Luis Ramírez de Lucena, published in Salamanca in 1496. • The stay of
Miguel de Cervantes, a possible student at the university, which influenced his books:
La Cueva de Salamanca,
Don Quixote of la Mancha in which he makes references to Salamanca through the character of the bachelor Sansón Carrasco,
La tía fingida and
El licenciado Vidriera.
Antiquity The first human habitat in the Salamanca area has been dated to the beginning of the first millennium BC. This is attested by the ceramic remains found in the "
San Vicente hill" and which have been ascribed to the
Las Cogotas I culture of the
Final Bronze Age. In this same hill has been found what to date is considered the first human settlement of stable and continuous character, although already ascribed to the culture of the Soto de Medinilla of the
first Iron Age (7th century BC). Later, already in the
second Iron Age (from the 4th century BC), it has been found that a new population center developed in the so-called "teso de las catedrales or cerro de San Isidro", this already of
Castro character and that lasted until the definitive Romanization of the city. All these settlements, and therefore the current site of Salamanca, owe their existence to the special geomorphological characteristics of the terrain on which they settled. Thus, the choice of the location of these successive settlements must have had a special influence on the fact that this area had three tesserae -formed by the erosion of the San Francisco and Santo Domingo streams-, their corresponding watercourses and especially the proximity of the Tormes River. These details point to the suitability of this territory for the primitive functions of defense and control of the surrounding territory. The settlement of the hill of San Isidro must have been a city of great importance between the 4th and 2nd centuries BC, not only for its dimensions, but also for its optimal orographic conditions and defensive protection, since it had a wall and moat. In 220 B.C.,
Hannibal, in his advance through
Iberia, besieged and conquered the ancient city of Helmantica (Salamanca). Thus,
Plutarch says that "Hannibal besieged it and its inhabitants, to avoid further damage, submitted to him offering them three hundred talents of silver and as many hostages, raising the siege, the Helmantiqueses, failed to keep their promises and protected by their women who had hidden their weapons and managed to defeat Hannibal's troops". However, the Carthaginian general ended up seizing them and, according to
Polybius, "admired by the bravery of his women, by them he returned to his men the homeland and wealth". After the
Second Punic War, the victorious
Roman army began its expansion throughout most of the Iberian Peninsula. Salamanca began an intense period of Romanization as a city annexed to the province of
Lusitania. The Roman Salmantica was restructured, limiting its settlement to the so-called teso de las catedrales, abandoning the site of the hill of San Vicente. Its new configuration kept it as a remarkable city, not only for its particular defensive and accessibility characteristics, but also for being a center of exchange. is an infrastructure that, since the 1st century, has provided passage over the Tormes River Three of the cultural elements that have had the greatest influence on the configuration and development of the city of Salamanca come from the Roman period. In the first place, the
Calzada de la Plata, considered as its main communication infrastructure, the main axis of city planning and a milestone in the development of its commercial function. Secondly, the
Roman bridge, as an infrastructure that since the 1st century guaranteed the passage over the Tormes river and therefore the access to the city from the south. The Roman bridge still remains today in the northern half, since the other half had to be rebuilt in the 17th century after the
San Policarpo flood. Finally, the so-called Cerca Vieja, primitive wall of the city that surrounded the perimeter of the hill of San Isidro or of the cathedrals on the layout of the previous
Castro. In November 2015, in the course of an emergency excavation carried out in the subsoil of a house located in
calle Libreros, several fragments of a male marble statue of a togado character were found, which must have been originally located somewhere in the Roman forum of the city of Salmantica, although it must have been later reused as filler material in the place where it was discovered. The statue is exhibited in the
Museum of Salamanca and is the first, and to date, the only sculptural find from the Roman period that has appeared in the subsoil of the city. Some specialists consider that this finding, put in relation with several Roman inscriptions from the beginning of the Empire found in the ancient Salmantica, allows to defend the hypothetical juridical promotion of the ancient indigenous
oppidum to Roman
civitas during the reign of
Augustus.
Middle Ages With the end of the
Western Roman Empire, the
Alans settled in
Lusitania and the city became part of this region. Later the
Visigoths conquered the city and annexed it to their territory. There is little information about the development of Salamanca in the Visigothic period, it is only known that in the 4th century the Roman walls were extended with
keeps on the same layout, and that the remains of the previous walls were destroyed practically in their entirety. It is known that in 589 the city was an
episcopal seat because it was among the cities that sent bishops to the
councils of Toledo. In 712, with
the Muslim invasion of the Iberian Peninsula,
Musa ibn Nusayr conquered the city. During the
Early Middle Ages, the area remained a "no man's land" and most of its population centers were destroyed by the frequent incursions (algaradas) of the Arabs. Salamanca was reduced to an unimportant and almost uninhabited nucleus, although the bridge remained intact, with some settlers in the surrounding area. The successive attempts of the Christian kingdoms to stabilize the area caused many clashes with Muslim expeditions to the north, which caused several skirmishes and battles, such as that of
Alfonso I of Asturias in 754, which ended up destroying what was left of the town. undertook a first repopulation in the 10th century. The area remained more or less depopulated until after the important Christian victory, in the
Battle of Simancas of 939, the effective repopulation of the riverside area of the Tormes began. According to the Pelagian wording of the
Chronicle of Sampiro, two months after the end of the Islamic attack,
Ramiro II of León ordered the advance of his army towards the banks of the Tormes, where he says that the repopulation began: Everything seems to indicate that to the pre-existing population was added during this phase the emigration that came fundamentally from comarcas located to the north of the Duero; in the case of Salamanca it is undoubtedly that it is preferably emigrants arriving from the vicinity of
León, according to the donation made by
Ordoño III of León in the year 953 to the church of León of all the churches recently constructed in the alfoz of Salamanca. definitively repopulated the city in 1085, entrusting the direction of this repopulation process to his son-in-law
Raymond of Burgundy After the conquest of
Toledo by
Alfonso VI of León in 1085, the definitive repopulation of the city took place. In 1102,
Raymond of Burgundy went to the city with a large group of settlers of diverse origins, with a composition similar to the new inhabitants of the city of
Ávila -
Franks,
Castilians, serranos,
Mozarabs,
Toroans,
Portugueses and
Bragançans, as well as with the occasional collaboration of Galicians, Jews and Muslims; which are collected in the
Fuero de Salamanca, by order of his father-in-law Alfonso VI. These founded their respective churches and parishes. Of all the repopulating groups the most important was that of the Serranos (mountainous-Castilian people) , also called the warrior-shepherds, dedicated exclusively to the care of their livestock and warfare. It should not be forgotten that all of medieval Extremadura, territory between the Duero and the Central System, was known in the Arab chronicles as "Country of the Serranos". The late 15th century population has been tentatively estimated at 15,000–25,000. By the turn of the 16th century most of the population dwelled at the right (north) bank of the Tormes, with a small
arrabal in the south bank inhabited by roughly 300 people. With the rise of the
Mesta, Salamanca gained importance as a center of
manufacturings draperies and as an exporter of
wool.
Early modern Age Convento de San Esteban, built between 1524-1610. Like the rest of the historical nuclei of the Crown that had representation in Cortes, Salamanca joined the
movement of the Communities of Castile (1520) against the new taxes demanded by
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor in the
Cortes of Castile and in defense of its textile manufactures against the privileges of the wool exporters. After the defeat of the Comuneros, King Carlos V had the upper part of the towers of the palaces of the Salamancans who joined the revolt removed. The 16th century was the period of greatest splendor of the city, both in demography and in university life, thanks to the prestige of its professors, with the so-called
School of Salamanca. Then it joined the general decline of the cities of the Crown of Castile in the Meseta Norte (12,000 inhabitants in 1651). Moreover, it was around that time that the
Church of San Isidoro was built. The juridical doctrine of the
School of Salamanca represented a change in trajectory from medieval law, which relied extensively on the tradition of
casuistry and on
Roman law, to a system that focused more on
scholasticism and
Thomism, and which tried to be more explicitly universal. Since Spain had just started colonizing the Americas, the School of Salamanca was interested in the rights on non-Europeans, including rights as a corporeal being (right to life), economic rights (right to own property) and spiritual rights (rights to freedom of thought and rights related to intrinsic human dignity). Due to the institutional connections of Dominicans at the University of Salamanca (especially
Francisco de Vitoria) and Dominican missionaries in the colonies (such as
Antonio de Montesinos and
Bartolomé de las Casas), the School of Salamanca was critical of the Spanish colonists and the laws that permitted their abusive treatment of native peoples. Their work on the idea of
ius gentium, or "rights of peoples/nations", was a crucial contribution to the modern development of
human rights and
international law. South facade of the
New Cathedral of Salamanca, church built between 1513 and 1733. During the 16th century, the city reached its height of splendour (it is estimated that Salamanca had about 24,000 inhabitants and around 1580 6500 students were enrolled each year). During that period, the
University of Salamanca hosted the most important intellectuals of the time; these groups of mostly-
Dominican scholars were designated the
School of Salamanca. In 1551, the Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor ordered an inquiry to find out if the science of Andreas
Vesalius, physician and anatomist, was in line with Catholic doctrine. Vesalius came to Salamanca that same year to appear before the board and was acquitted. The
Jewish quarter of Salamanca was located to the north, next to the walls (more or less the current avenida de Mirat). When,
in 1492, they were expelled, the neighborhood was walled up and respected by the Salamancans, probably thinking of a possible return, and when it became uninhabited it was filled with rabbits, so it has been known until recently as
barrio del Conejal. , painting of the 18th century. In the 18th century it had an important economic and cultural revival, which led to the completion of the
New Cathedral of Salamanca (whose works had been stopped for almost a century) and the construction of its imposing
baroque Plaza Mayor in 1729. When the great
Lisbon earthquake of 1755 struck, many of the city's monumental buildings saw the integrity of their fabrics endangered. One of the most revealing images of its effects can still be seen in the
Church of San Martín: many of the stones must have been in the air for a fraction of a second, enough for the pillars to tilt and the voussoirs of arches and vaults to fall in a place that was not exactly the one they had occupied until that moment, so that in its interior today one can see arched walls and pillars, deformed arches and ribs. However, the city's economic prosperity made it possible to renovate many of the monumental buildings damaged by the earthquake, including the cathedral, which was the most affected of all the Spanish cathedrals. In the cultural aspect, the influence of the
Bourbon Enlightenment was also noted in the university in the last third of the century.
Modern era During the
Peninsular War, Salamanca was occupied by the troops of Marshal
Soult in 1809 and remained in
French hands until the
Battle of Arapiles (1812), in which an
Anglo-Portuguese Army led by
Wellington decisively defeated the French army of
Marmont. During the occupation, the French built defenses and, in order to obtain materials, destroyed an important part of the Salamancan buildings, especially in the neighborhood called Caídos (demolished), where the well-known
colegios mayores of the university were erected, of which no trace remains. The western quarter of Salamanca was seriously damaged by cannon fire. The battle which raged that day is famous as a defining moment in military history and thirteen thousand men were killed or wounded in the space of only a few short hours. A bad moment came when
Fernando VII of Spain closed the Spanish universities. After the reopening, the University of Salamanca was reduced to a provincial university. For the province of Salamanca acted the Salamanca guerrilla and military
Julián Sánchez García "El Charro" in command of the
Lancers of Castile unit. In 1833 the
province of Salamanca was created, framed in the
Region of León, thus making the city of Salamanca the capital of that province, becoming home to the
Diputación de Salamanca. . In 1873, after the proclamation of the
First Spanish Republic, the first serious attempt to federalize Spain was undertaken through the
draft Constitution of 1873. Barely five days after the presentation of this project, Salamanca suffered a
Cantonalista uprising which, after four days of success, was put down on July 26, 1873. Subsequently, a military pronouncement took away the First Republic and the regionalizing initiative of the Federal State. During the rest of the 19th century the city experienced a slight recovery when it was named provincial capital and the
railroad linking
France with
Portugal, which passed through the Meseta (
Medina del Campo and Salamanca, 1877), was built. During the devastating
Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) the city quickly went over to the Nationalist side and was temporarily used as the
de facto headquarters for the rebel faction.
Francisco Franco was proclaimed
Generalissimo on 21 September 1936 while at the city. In April 1937, the
FET y de las JONS, the single party of the ensuing dictatorship, was created via a
Unification Decree issued at the city upon the merging of the fascist Falange and the traditionalist carlists. The Nationalists soon moved most of the administrative premises to
Burgos, which, being more central, was better suited for this purpose. However, some administrative apparatus, the
Episcopal Palace, next to the Old Cathedral was the residence and command center of General
Francisco Franco, and the military commands stayed in Salamanca, along with the German and Italian fascist delegations, making it the
de facto Nationalist capital and centre of power during the entire civil war. Like much of fervently Catholic and largely rural
León and
Old Castile regions, Salamanca was a staunch supporter of the Nationalist side and
Francisco Franco's regime for its long duration. After the war, the documents seized by the rebel army as they occupied the territory that had defended the Republic were concentrated in Salamanca, creating a large documentary archive on the Spanish Civil War (
General Archive of the Spanish Civil War). The part of this archive, which deals with
Catalonia, as well as many valuable papers and documents of individuals and institutions not belonging to that region, was transferred to
Barcelona in the spring of 2006, after great disputes between the
Salamanca City Council and the Spanish government, and popular demonstrations. The Salamanca City Council, presided by Julián Lanzarote (
PP), changed the name of the street where the archive is located from "Gibraltar" (a name that paid homage to the Salamanca militias that went with
Alfonso XI of Castile to the conquest of
Gibraltar) to "El Expolio", as a sign of protest after the transfer of the "
Salamanca Papers" to Catalonia. in 1984. In 1940,
Pope Pius XII founded the
Pontifical University of Salamanca as a continuation of the ancient theological studies. In 1988 Salamanca was declared a
World Heritage City by UNESCO. In 1998, by agreement of the ministers of culture of the
European Union, Salamanca was designated (shared with
Bruges),
European Capital of Culture for the year 2002. The city also aspires to obtain the candidacy for the Universal Exposition of Salamanca in the not too distant future. Currently the population of the capital of Salamanca, stagnant for about three decades, is around 160,000 inhabitants, although in 2006 it decreased by more than 11,000 people with respect to the year 1994. This is mainly due to the transfer of part of its population to the metropolitan area, and a
very low birth rates that occurred from the 1980s onwards (See
Demographics of Spain) leading to an
aging population, a phenomenon common to many other Spanish cities, although there is also a high rate of emigration to places like
Madrid. It is significant to note that the province of Salamanca has a high rate of aging population with respect to national data. From June 7–10, 1994, the World Conference on Special Needs Education took place in the capital of Salamanca, with 92 governments and 25 international organizations represented, and concluded with the "Salamanca Declaration of Principles, Policy and Practice for Special Needs Education". For its part, the service sector (the buoyant
cultural tourism and the
University) is the main source of income for the city. Particularly relevant is the educational activity during the summer, as it has a large influx of students from many countries, who mostly come to learn the
Spanish language and attend various summer courses. On October 14 and 15, 2005, the capital of Salamanca hosted the XV
Ibero-American Summit of heads of state and government. The crown prince of Japan
Naruhito visited the city on June 13, 2013 on the occasion of the commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the Spanish-Japanese exchange. He received from the hands of Mayor
Alfonso Fernández Mañueco the keys to the city. == Geography ==