Illinois
Illinois is a state in the midwestern region of the United States, achieving statehood in 1818. It is the 6th most populous state and 25th largest state in terms of land area, the word Illinois comes from a French rendering of a native Algonquin word. For decades, OHare International Airport has been ranked as one of the worlds busiest airports, Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and politics. With the War of 1812 Illinois growth slowed as both Native Americans and Canadian forces often raided the American Frontier, mineral finds and timber stands had spurred immigration—by the 1810s, the Eastern U. S. Railroads arose and matured in the 1840s, and soon carried immigrants to new homes in Illinois, as well as being a resource to ship their commodity crops out to markets. Railroads freed most of the land of Illinois and other states from the tyranny of water transport. By 1900, the growth of jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted a new group of immigrants.
Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars, the Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans in Chicago, who created the citys famous jazz and blues cultures. Three U. S. presidents have been elected while living in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Ronald Reagan, whose political career was based in California, was the only U. S. president born and raised in Illinois. Today, Illinois honors Lincoln with its official slogan, Land of Lincoln. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is located in the capital of Springfield. Illinois is the spelling for the early French Catholic missionaries and explorers name for the Illinois Native Americans. American scholars previously thought the name Illinois meant man or men in the Miami-Illinois language and this etymology is not supported by the Illinois language, as the word for man is ireniwa and plural men is ireniwaki. The name Illiniwek has said to mean tribe of superior men.
The name Illinois derives from the Miami-Illinois verb irenwe·wa he speaks the regular way and this was taken into the Ojibwe language, perhaps in the Ottawa dialect, and modified into ilinwe·. The French borrowed these forms, changing the ending to spell it as -ois. The current spelling form, began to appear in the early 1670s, the Illinois name for themselves, as attested in all three of the French missionary-period dictionaries of Illinois, was Inoka, of unknown meaning and unrelated to the other terms. American Indians of successive cultures lived along the waterways of the Illinois area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans, the Koster Site has been excavated and demonstrates 7,000 years of continuous habitation
Battle of Baton Rouge (1779)
The Battle of Baton Rouge was a brief siege during the Anglo-Spanish War that was decided on September 21,1779. Baton Rouge was the second British outpost to fall to Spanish arms during Bernardo de Gálvezs march into British West Florida, Spain officially entered the American Revolutionary War on May 8,1779, with a formal declaration of war by King Charles III. This declaration was followed by another on July 8 that authorized his subjects to engage in hostilities against the British. When Bernardo de Gálvez, the colonial Governor of Spanish Louisiana received word of this on July 21, as they marched upriver, the force grew by another 600 men, including Indians and Acadians. At its peak, the force numbered over 1,400, at dawn on September 7, this force attacked Fort Bute, a decaying relic of the French and Indian War that was defended by a token force. After a brief skirmish in which one German was killed, most of the garrison surrendered, the six who escaped capture made their way to Baton Rouge to notify the British troops there of the forts capture.
After several days rest, Gálvez advanced on Baton Rouge, only 15 miles from Fort Bute, the troops consisted of British Army regulars from the 16th and 60th Regiments, as well as some artillerymen, and several companies of Germans from the 3rd Waldeck Regiment. Dickson had decided earlier that Fort Bute, built in 1766 and in ruins, was not defensible. Beginning in July 1779, he directed the construction of Fort New Richmond and this fortification was an earthen redoubt with chevaux de frise on the outside. It was surrounded by a moat 18 feet wide and 9 feet deep, Gálvez first sent a detachment of men further up the river to break communications between Baton Rouge and British sites further upriver. The British turned and unleashed massed volleys at this body, but the Spanish forces, shielded by substantial foliage, while this went on, Gálvez dug siege trenches and established secure gunpits within musket range of the fort. He placed his artillery there, opening fire on the fort on September 21.
The British endured three hours of shelling before Dickson offered to surrender, Dickson surrendered 375 regular troops the next day, Gálvez had Dicksons militia disarmed and sent home. Gálvez sent a detachment of 50 men to control of Panmure. He dismissed his own companies, left a sizable garrison at Baton Rouge. When informed that Dickson had surrendered Fort Panmure, its commander was irate, the victory at Baton Rouge cleared the Mississippi River entirely of British forces and put the lower reaches of the river firmly under Spanish control. Gálvez was promoted to general for his successful campaign. Baton Rouge remained in Spanish hands for the rest of the war and it would not become American territory until 1810
Sioux
The Sioux /ˈsuː/ are groups of Native American tribes and First Nations peoples in North America. The term can refer to any group within the Great Sioux Nation or to any of the nations many language dialects. The Sioux comprise three major divisions based on divisions, the Dakota and Nakota. The Santee Dakota reside in the extreme east of the Dakotas, the Yankton and Yanktonai Dakota, collectively referred to by the endonym Wičhíyena, reside in the Minnesota River area. They are considered to be the middle Sioux, and have in the past been erroneously classified as Nakota, the actual Nakota are the Assiniboine and Stoney of Western Canada and Montana. The Lakota, called Teton, are the westernmost Sioux, known for their hunting, the name Sioux was adopted in English by the 1760s from French. It is abbreviated from Nadouessioux, first attested by Jean Nicolet in 1640, the name is sometimes said to be derived from an Ojibwe exonym for the Sioux meaning little snakes. The spelling in -x is due to the French plural marker, the Proto-Algonquian form *na·towe·wa, meaning Northern Iroquoian, has reflexes in several daughter languages that refer to a small rattlesnake.
An alternative explanation is derivation from an exonym na·towe·ssiw, from a verb meaning to speak a foreign language. The current Ojibwe term for the Sioux and related groups is Bwaanag, this refers to the style of cooking the Sioux used in the past. The alternative English spelling of Ogallala is considered improper, the historical Sioux referred to the Great Sioux Nation as the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, meaning Seven Council Fires. Each fire was a symbol of an oyate, the seven nations that comprise the Sioux are, Bdewákaŋthuŋwaŋ, Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ, Waȟpékhute, Sisíthuŋwaŋ, the Iháŋkthuŋwaŋ, Iháŋkthuŋwaŋna, and the Thítȟuŋwaŋ. The Seven Council Fires would assemble each summer to hold council, renew kinships, decide tribal matters, the seven divisions would select four leaders known as Wičháša Yatápika from among the leaders of each division. The last meeting of the Seven Council Fires was in 1850, today the Teton and the Minnesota Dakota, and Yankton/Yanktonai are usually known, respectively, as the Lakota, Eastern Dakota, or Western Dakota.
In any of the three dialects, Lakota or Dakota translate to mean friend or ally, referring to the alliance that once bound the Great Sioux Nation. The Dakota are first recorded to have resided at the source of the Mississippi River during the seventeenth century, by 1700 some had migrated to present-day South Dakota. Late in the 17th century, the Dakota entered into an alliance with French merchants, the French were trying to gain advantage in the struggle for the North American fur trade against the English, who had recently established the Hudsons Bay Company. The first recorded encounter between the Sioux and the French occurred when Radisson and Groseilliers reached what is now Wisconsin during the winter of 1659–60
Battle of Lake Pontchartrain
The Battle of Lake Pontchartrain was a single-ship action on September 10,1779, part of the Anglo-Spanish War. It was fought between the British sloop-of-war HMS West Florida and the Continental Navy schooner USS Morris in the waters of Lake Pontchartrain, the larger crew of the Morris successfully boarded the West Florida, inflicting a mortal wound on its captain, Lieutenant John Payne. The capture of the West Florida eliminated the major British naval presence on the lake, significant military activities of the American Revolutionary War did not occur on the Gulf Coast until 1779, when Spain entered the war. Before then, New Orleans, the capital of Spanish Louisiana, served as a source of money. The cause was supported by the Spanish governors before 1779, and often mediated by Oliver Pollock. In 1778 James Willing led an expedition directed against targets in British West Florida. One prize that he captured on the Mississippi River was a British ship, the Rebecca and she was brought into the Continental Navy and rechristened the USS Morris in honor of Philadelphia financier Robert Morris.
The British province of West Florida extended from the Mississippi River in the west to the Apalachicola River in the east, Burdon was unsuccessful in tracking down Willing during his 1778 raid, and returned to Pensacola, West Floridas capital, for refit and repair late in 1778. In January 1779 Burdon was replaced at her helm by Lieutenant John Payne, the West Florida was a sloop-of-war armed, according to its captors, with several four- and six-pound cannons and carrying a crew complement of about 30. Payne cruised West Floridas waters uneventfully until August 1779, on August 27 he sent a boat with a few men to make contact with a detachment of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Dicksons men at Manchac. On that day Bernardo de Gálvez, the governor of Spanish Louisiana, launched an expedition to control of British military posts on the Mississippi. Payne however was unaware of these activities, Pollock used commissioning authority granted him by Congress to give command of the Morris to Continental Navy Captain William Pickles.
However, she was destroyed in a hurricane, and Gálvez provided another ship for Pickles use, the crew was not otherwise well prepared for close action, lacking axes and other tools useful for a boarding action. Pollock instructed Pickles to harass British military shipping on the lake, Pickles sailed from New Orleans with a crew of 57 Americans and Spaniards. To hide his intentions, Pickles flew a British ensign as a false flag, spotted on September 10, the two ships closed, and Payne hailed the Morris to discover her intentions. He was told she was a merchant bound for Pensacola shortly before Pickles had the false colors hauled down, the Americans and Spaniards threw grappling hooks to bring the ships together and opened fire with their swivel guns while Lieutenant Rousseau prepared a boarding party. It is unlikely that either ship fired its larger guns, paynes small crew put up spirited resistance, twice repulsing the boarders. The third boarding attempt succeeded, and Payne himself went down with a wound in fighting described as very violent
Meskwaki
The Meskwaki are a Native American people often known to Anglo-Americans as the Fox tribe. They have been linked to the Sauk people of the same language family. In the Meskwaki language, the Meskwaki call themselves Meshkwahkihaki, which means the Red-Earths, historically their homelands were in the Great Lakes region. The tribe coalesced in the St. Lawrence River Valley in present-day Ontario, the Meskwaki suffered damaging battles with French and their Native American allies in the early 18th century, with one in 1730 decimating the tribe. In the 19th century, Euro-American colonization and settlement proceeded by the United States and they forced the Meskwaki/Fox south and west into the tall grass prairie in the American Midwest. In 1851 the Iowa state legislature passed an act to allow the Fox to buy land. Other Sac and Fox were removed to Indian territory in what became Kansas, Oklahoma, in the 21st century, three federally recognized tribes of Sac and Fox have reservations. The name is derived from the Meskwaki creation myth, in which their culture hero and they called themselves Meshkwahkihaki in Meskwaki, meaning the Red-Earths.
Later the English and Anglo-Americans adopted the French name, using its translation in English as Fox and this name was used officially by the United States government from the 19th century. Historically the Meskwaki used Triodanis perfoliata as an emetic in tribal ceremonies to make one sick all day long and they traditionally smoked it at purification and other spiritual rituals. Meskwaki are of Algonquian origin from the prehistoric Woodland period culture area, the Meskwaki language is a dialect of the language spoken by the Sauk and Kickapoo, within the Algonquian languages family. This broad group includes many tribes on the Atlantic Coast and around the Great Lakes, the Meskwaki and Sauk peoples are two distinct tribal groups. Linguistic and cultural connections between the two tribes have made them often associated in history, under US government recognition treaties, officials treat the Sac and Meskwaki as a single political unit, despite their distinct identities. Historically the Meskwaki lived along the Saint Lawrence River in present-day Ontario, the tribe may have numbered as many as 10,000, but years of war with the Huron, whom French colonial agents supplied with arms, and exposure to new European infectious diseases reduced their numbers.
In response to pressures, the Meskwaki migrated west, first to present-day eastern Michigan in the area between Saginaw Bay and Detroit west of Lake Huron. Later they moved further west into what is now Wisconsin, the Meskwaki gained control of the Fox River system in eastern and central Wisconsin. As part of the Fox–Wisconsin Waterway, the Fox River allowed travel from Lake Michigan, at first European contact in 1698, the French estimated the number of Meskwaki as about 6,500. By 1712, the number of Meskwaki had declined to 3,500, the Meskwaki fought against the French, in what are called the Fox Wars, for more than three decades to preserve their homelands
Illinois Country
The Illinois Country — sometimes referred to as Upper Louisiana — was a vast region of New France in what is now the Midwestern United States. Explored in 1673 from Green Bay to the Arkansas River by the Canadien expedition of Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette and it was settled primarily from the Pays den Haut in the context of the fur trade. Overtime, the fur trade took some French to the far reaches of the Rocky Mountains, the French name, Pays des Illinois, means Land of the Illinois and is a reference to the Illinois Confederation, a group of related Algonquian native peoples. The territory thus became known as Upper Louisiana, by the mid-18th century, the major settlements included Cahokia, Chartres, Saint Philippe, and Prairie du Rocher, all on the east side of the Mississippi in present-day Illinois, and Ste. Genevieve across the river in Missouri, as well as Fort Vincennes in what is now Indiana. As a consequence of the French defeat in the Seven Years War, the Illinois Country east of the Mississippi River was ceded to the British, and the land west of the river to the Spanish.
Following the British occupation of the bank of the Mississippi in 1764, some Canadien settlers remained in the area, while others crossed the river. Eventually, the part of the Illinois Country became part of the British Province of Quebec. Louis to the confluence with the Ohio River, the boundaries of the Illinois Country were defined in a variety of ways, but the region now known as the American Bottom was nearly at the center of all descriptions. One of the earliest known geographic features designated as Ilinois was what became known as Lake Michigan. Early French missionaries and traders referred to the area southwest and southeast of the lake, including much of the upper Mississippi Valley, Illinois was the name given to an area inhabited by the Illiniwek. A map of 1685 labels a large area southwest of the lake les Ilinois, in 1688, in 1721, the seventh civil and military district of Louisiana was named Illinois. Thus and Peoria were the limit of Louisianaa reach, as part of a general report on conditions in the newly conquered lands, Gen.
Many French settlers moved west across the river to escape British control, on the west bank, the Spanish continued to refer to the western region governed from St. Louis as the District of Illinois and referred to St. Louis as the city of Illinois. The first French explorations of the Illinois Country were in the first half of the 17th century, led by explorers, Étienne Brûlé explored the upper Illinois country in 1615 but did not document his experiences. Joseph de La Roche Daillon reached an oil spring at the northeasternmost fringe of the Mississippi River basin during his 1627 missionary journey. In 1669–70, Father Jacques Marquette, a missionary in French Canada, was at a station on Lake Superior. He learned about the river that ran through their country to the south
Action of 14 September 1779
The Action of 14 September 1779 was a minor naval engagement between a British Royal Naval frigate HMS Pearl and a Spanish frigate Santa Mónica off the Azores during the Anglo-Spanish War. At 09, 30am, Pearl caught up with the ship, after fighting for two hours, the Santa Mónica becoming severely damaged and having had 38 men killed and 45 wounded, struck her colours. The Santa Mónica was a new ship, mounting 26 long 12-pounders on her main deck, Santa Mónica in addition exceeded the Pearl in point of tonnage. The Pearl was little damaged except to her rigging and suffered a loss of 12 men killed and 19 wounded, ulloa was acquitted in a court martial back in Cadiz in October back because of the loss of the Santa Mónica. Naval and Military Memoirs of Great Britain, From 1727 to 1783, British Warships of the Age of Sail 1714–1792, Construction and Fates. External links HMS Pearl and the Santa Monica,14 September 1779
Great Siege of Gibraltar
The Great Siege of Gibraltar was an unsuccessful attempt by Spain and France to capture Gibraltar from the British during the American War of Independence. This was the largest action fought during the war in terms of numbers, at three years and seven months, it is the longest siege endured by the British Armed Forces. In 1738 a dispute between Spain and Great Britain arose over commerce between Europe and the Americas, a short time later, the War of Jenkins Ear began, and both countries declared war on 23 October 1739, each side drawing up plans to establish trenches near Gibraltar. Seeing these first movements, Britain ordered Admiral Vernon to sail from Portobello, the passage of years failed to break the hostilities in the region. Then on 9 July 1746, King Philip V of Spain died in Madrid and his successor, Ferdinand VI, soon began negotiations with Britain on trade. The British Parliament was amenable to such negotiations, and even looked favourably upon lifting the British embargo on Spain, the neutrality adopted by Ferdinand VI quickly ended with his death in 1759.
The new king, Charles III, was willing to negotiate with Great Britain. Instead, he signed a Family Compact with Louis XV of France on 15 August 1761, at that time France was at war with Britain, so Britain responded by declaring war on Spain and capturing the Spanish colonial capitals of Manila and Havana. Two years later, after cessation of hostilities, Spain recovered Manila, in the years of peace that followed both France and Spain hoped for an opportunity to launch a war against Britain on more favourable terms and recover their lost colonial possessions. Following the outbreak of the American War of Independence, both states supplied funding and arms to the American rebels, and drew up a strategy to intervene on the American side and defeat Britain. On 12 April 1779, France and Spain signed the Treaty of Aranjuez wherein they agreed to aid one another in recovering lost territory from Britain, then, in June 1779, Spain declared war on Great Britain, France having done so the year before.
The Spanish blockade was directed by Martín Álvarez de Sotomayor, Spanish ground forces were composed of two battalions of Royal Guards, another two of Walloon Guards, with artillery and cavalry, about 13,000 in all. The artillery was commanded by Rudesindo Tilly, while the cavalry, antonio Barceló commanded the maritime forces responsible for blockading the bay, and established his base in Algeciras, commanding a fleet of several xebecs and gunboats. A fleet of 11 ships and two frigates were placed in the Gulf of Cadiz under the command of Luis de Córdova y Córdova to block the passage of British reinforcements. All the defences were strengthened, and many of the infantry, including picked men, the garrison included contingents of Hanoverian and Corsican troops. The British had anticipated an attack for some time, and a number of ships had sailed to reinforce and supply Gibraltar. The combined Spanish and French fleets blockaded Gibraltar from the sea, while on the side a enormous army constructed forts, entrenchments.
General Eliott formed a corps of sharpshooters, as the winter of 1779 came down the garrison began to suffer from want of fresh provisions, which became very scarce and dear
Kingdom of Great Britain
The Kingdom of Great Britain, officially Great Britain, was a sovereign state in western Europe from 1 May 1707 to 31 December 1800. It did not include Ireland, which remained a separate realm, the unitary state was governed by a single parliament and government that was based in Westminster. Also after the accession of George I to the throne of Great Britain in 1714, the early years of the unified kingdom were marked by Jacobite risings which ended in defeat for the Stuart cause at Culloden in 1746. On 1 January 1801, the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland were merged to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom, the name Britain descends from the Latin name for the island of Great Britain, Britannia or Brittānia, the land of the Britons via the Old French Bretaigne and Middle English Bretayne, Breteyne. The term Great Britain was first used officially in 1474, in the instrument drawing up the proposal for a marriage between Edward IV of Englands daughter Cecily and James III of Scotlands son James.
The Treaty of Union and the subsequent Acts of Union state that England and Scotland were to be United into one Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain. However, both the Acts and the Treaty refer numerous times to the United Kingdom and the longer form, other publications refer to the country as the United Kingdom after 1707 as well. The websites of the UK parliament, the Scottish Parliament, the BBC, the term United Kingdom was found in informal use during the 18th century to describe the state. The new state created in 1707 included the island of Great Britain, the kingdoms of England and Scotland, both in existence from the 9th century, were separate states until 1707. However, they had come into a union in 1603. Each of the three kingdoms maintained its own parliament and laws and this disposition changed dramatically when the Acts of Union 1707 came into force, with a single unified Crown of Great Britain and a single unified parliament. Ireland remained formally separate, with its own parliament, until the Acts of Union 1800, legislative power was vested in the Parliament of Great Britain, which replaced both the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland.
In practice it was a continuation of the English parliament, sitting at the location in Westminster. Newly created peers in the Peerage of Great Britain were given the right to sit in the Lords. Despite the end of a parliament for Scotland, it retained its own laws. As a result of Poynings Law of 1495, the Parliament of Ireland was subordinate to the Parliament of England, the Act was repealed by the Repeal of Act for Securing Dependence of Ireland Act 1782. The same year, the Irish constitution of 1782 produced a period of legislative freedom, the 18th century saw England, and after 1707 Great Britain, rise to become the worlds dominant colonial power, with France its main rival on the imperial stage
Fort Rosalie
Fort Rosalie was a French fort built in 1716 in the territory of the Natchez Native Americans. The present-day city of Natchez, developed at this site, as part of the peace terms that ended the Natchez War of 1716, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville required the Natchez to build the fort by providing materials and labor. Sited close to the main Natchez settlement, called the Grand Village of the Natchez, Fort Rosalie served as the primary French stronghold, French settlements and tobacco plantations were established in Natchez territory, with the fort serving as the local seat of colonial government. Growing tension between the French and the Natchez erupted into several times during the 1720s, culminating in a massive Natchez attack on November 29,1729. They destroyed the entire French settlement, killing all the men. The Natchez seized and occupied Fort Rosalie, retaliation by the French and allied Choctaw forces in 1730 forced the Natchez to evacuate, leaving the fort in ruins. By 1731 the French, with their more numerous Indian allies, had killed, captured, or dispersed most of the Natchez, the French sold surviving Natchez into slavery, many destined for French plantations in the Caribbean.
Some escaped and found refuge among the Chickasaw, the French rebuilt Fort Rosalie in the early 1730s. Following the Treaty of Paris in 1763 after the British won the Seven Years War, the British renamed the outpost Fort Panmure. During the American Revolutionary War, Spain declared war against Great Britain and took control of the fort, after 1798, the United States took over, establishing the Mississippi Territory with Natchez as its first territorial capital. The U. S. abandoned the fort in 1804, the city of Natchez traces its origin to the founding of Fort Rosalie in 1716. Today the site of the fort is part of Natchez National Historical Park, interconnectedness and Diversity in French Louisiana. Powhatans Mantle, Indians in the Colonial Southeast and Expanded Edition, Indians of the Greater Southeast, Historical Archaeology and Ethnohistory. The Natchez Indians, Mississippi History Now Fort Rosalie, North American Forts
Spain
By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union. Spains capital and largest city is Madrid, other urban areas include Barcelona, Seville, Bilbao. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago, in the Middle Ages, the area was conquered by Germanic tribes and by the Moors. Spain is a democracy organised in the form of a government under a constitutional monarchy. It is a power and a major developed country with the worlds fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP. Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the span is the Phoenician word spy. Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean the land where metals are forged, two 15th-century Spanish Jewish scholars, Don Isaac Abravanel and Solomon ibn Verga, gave an explanation now considered folkloric. Both men wrote in two different published works that the first Jews to reach Spain were brought by ship by Phiros who was confederate with the king of Babylon when he laid siege to Jerusalem.
This man was a Grecian by birth, but who had given a kingdom in Spain. He became related by marriage to Espan, the nephew of king Heracles, Heracles renounced his throne in preference for his native Greece, leaving his kingdom to his nephew, from whom the country of España took its name. Based upon their testimonies, this eponym would have already been in use in Spain by c.350 BCE, Iberia enters written records as a land populated largely by the Iberians and Celts. Early on its coastal areas were settled by Phoenicians who founded Western Europe´s most ancient cities Cadiz, Phoenician influence expanded as much of the Peninsula was eventually incorporated into the Carthaginian Empire, becoming a major theater of the Punic Wars against the expanding Roman Empire. After an arduous conquest, the peninsula came fully under Roman Rule, during the early Middle Ages it came under Germanic rule but later, much of it was conquered by Moorish invaders from North Africa. In a process took centuries, the small Christian kingdoms in the north gradually regained control of the peninsula.
The last Moorish kingdom fell in the same year Columbus reached the Americas, a global empire began which saw Spain become the strongest kingdom in Europe, the leading world power for a century and a half, and the largest overseas empire for three centuries. Continued wars and other problems led to a diminished status. The Napoleonic invasions of Spain led to chaos, triggering independence movements that tore apart most of the empire, eventually democracy was peacefully restored in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Spain joined the European Union, experiencing a renaissance and steady economic growth
