Download or read book A History of Spain & Portugal written by William Christopher Atkinson and published by [Harmondsworth, Middlesex ; Baltimore] : Penguin Books. This book was released on 1960 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Attempts to show as a whole the Peninsula made up of Spain and Portugal, with the slow unfolding of a pattern of society and an attitude to life still subtly distinct from those north of the Pyrenees. The successive occupations of Roman, Visigoth and Muslim span between them more than a thousand years. The Peninsula's great contribution to the modern age was the opening up of the New World in the west by Spain, and of new routes to the east by Portugal. Over the last century and a half the history of both peoples provides a case-study in the esential relativity of forms of government.