[c. 1000 BCE - 219 BCE] Pre-Roman Iberia

Before the legions marched, before the name Hispania was ever uttered by a Roman senator, the land we now call Spain was a vibrant and violent tapestry of peoples, a world of iron, silver, and blood. Our story begins around the year 1000 BCE, in a peninsula that was not a single entity, but a mosaic of tribes and kingdoms, a place known to outsiders simply as Iberia. To the south and east, along the sun-drenched Mediterranean coast, lived the people we call the Iberians. They were not a unified nation, but a collection of sophisticated societies linked by trade and culture. Imagine their settlements, the *oppida*, perched high on defensible hilltops, formidable rings of stone walls protecting a dense heart of small, rectangular homes. Life here was dictated by a strict social hierarchy. At the top was a warrior aristocracy, their power displayed in the gleam of their bronze armour and the prestige of their weaponry. Below them were the artisans—potters spinning clay into beautiful, geometric-painted vessels and metalsmiths whose work was coveted across the sea. At the base were the farmers, coaxing wheat, barley, and olives from the dry soil. Their art speaks to us across the millennia. Consider the Dama de Elche, a limestone bust discovered centuries later. Her serene, almost haunting face is framed by an incredibly elaborate headdress with large coils over her ears. She is not a mere peasant; she is a noblewoman, perhaps even a priestess, her silent gaze a window into the soul of this lost Iberian world. They even possessed a written language, a script that we can read phonetically but, frustratingly, cannot fully understand. Their thoughts, their poems, their histories, remain locked away, a tantalizing secret. Then, sometime after 1100 BCE, strange ships appeared on the horizon. These were the Phoenicians, master seafarers from the eastern Mediterranean, their sails dyed with precious Tyrian purple. They were not conquerors; they were traders, drawn by whispers of a land overflowing with metal. They founded a port city on an island just off the Atlantic coast, calling it Gadir—the city we know today as Cádiz, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Western Europe. The Phoenicians brought with them revolutionary technologies: the potter’s wheel, iron-working techniques, and most importantly, the alphabet, a system of writing that would eventually evolve into the one we use today. In return for these wonders, they sought Iberia’s true treasure: silver. So vast were the silver deposits in the Rio Tinto region that, according to legend, the Phoenicians loaded their ships so heavily with the metal that they had to cast off their old lead anchors and forge new ones of pure silver just to make the journey home. Following the Phoenicians came their great rivals, the Greeks. Establishing their own trading post at Emporion (modern Empúries) on the northeastern coast, they brought their own distinctive pottery, their currency, and their philosophical ideas, adding another layer of complexity to the coastal cultures. Iberia was becoming a crossroads, a place where local traditions met foreign innovations. Yet, this was only half the story. While the Iberians along the coast were trading with the world, the interior and the rugged, rainy north were home to a different people: the Celts. Having migrated across the Pyrenees in waves beginning around 900 BCE, they brought with them a distinct culture. They lived in fortified hilltop settlements known as *castros*, their homes circular stone huts with thatched roofs. They were master metalsmiths, renowned for their gold torcs and intricate brooches. They were a people of the earth, their spirituality tied to the forests, rivers, and mountains. Where these two great cultures—Iberian and Celt—met, in the high central plains of the Meseta, they merged. This fusion created the formidable Celtiberians, a people who possessed the strategic organization of the Iberians and the raw ferocity of the Celts. They would become legendary for their skill in warfare, feared even by the Romans. Their weapon of choice was a masterpiece of deadly engineering: the *falcata*. This was a curved, single-edged sword of exceptional quality steel, its shape delivering a blow with the cleaving power of an axe but the precision of a saber. To face a Celtiberian warrior wielding a falcata was a terrifying prospect. For centuries, this was the state of Iberia: a dynamic, often-warring collection of peoples, enriched and sometimes exploited by traders from across the sea. But the balance of power in the Mediterranean was shifting. The Phoenician city of Tyre fell, and its most powerful colony, Carthage in North Africa, rose to take its place. The Carthaginian interest in Iberia was far more aggressive than that of their Phoenician ancestors. They saw not just a trading partner, but a source of wealth and, more importantly, manpower for their titanic struggle against a rising power in Italy: Rome. In 237 BCE, the Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca landed in Gadir. The era of peaceful trade was over; the era of conquest had begun. He and his son-in-law, Hasdrubal, carved out a new Carthaginian empire in southern Iberia, exploiting the silver mines with ruthless efficiency to pay for their armies. They conscripted and hired thousands of Iberian and Celtiberian warriors, whose fighting prowess they desperately needed. And then came Hamilcar’s son, a man whose name would echo through history: Hannibal Barca. Fueled by a legendary oath of eternal hatred for Rome, sworn at his father's command as a boy, Hannibal saw Iberia as the key to his vengeance. He solidified Carthaginian control, his strategic genius on full display. The tribes of Iberia were now pawns on a much larger chessboard. The flashpoint came in 219 BCE. Hannibal laid siege to the city of Saguntum, a strategically important coastal city south of the Ebro River. Saguntum was an ally of Rome. By attacking it, Hannibal was throwing down the gauntlet, a direct challenge to the rival superpower. For eight brutal months, the people of Saguntum held out, hoping for Roman aid that never came. When the walls were finally breached, the city was sacked. The news of its fall ignited the Second Punic War, the bloodiest conflict of the ancient world. In response, Rome finally turned its full attention to the peninsula. The first Roman legions landed on the shores of Emporion. A new age was dawning, one that would be written in the language of Latin and enforced by the steel of the Roman gladius. The rich, diverse, and independent world of pre-Roman Iberia, a world of a thousand years of cultural evolution, was about to be shattered and reforged in the fires of a global war. The story of the Iberians, Celts, and Phoenicians was ending. The story of Hispania was about to begin.