Eleven Iberian Places from Roman Illiturgis to Sant Adria de Besos, in Order of Recorded Events

Illiturgis was an ancient city in Roman Spain on the road from Corduba to Castulo. In the Second Punic War it switched from Rome to Carthage, and in 206 BC Scipio Africanus stormed it in retribution. Only an archaeological site with a Roman cistern survives.

Iluro was a Roman town on the Catalan coast, on the site of present-day Mataro. It was founded in the early decades of the first century BC, recorded by Pliny the Elder as a settlement of Roman citizens, and laid out on a regular grid plan before its urban center gave way to scattered settlement in the sixth and seventh centuries AD.

Amaya is a hilltop village in Burgos province, about 1,000 metres above the Odra valley, with 37 residents in 2024. It was a principal settlement of the Cantabri and was captured by the Visigothic king Liuvigild in 574, a date its page records, before serving as capital of the Duchy of Cantabria.

Madinat al-Zahra was built in the tenth century near Cordoba by the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Rahman III as the administrative capital of the Caliphate of Cordoba, with palaces, gardens and a mosque terraced across a hillside. It was sacked and largely abandoned in civil conflict in the early eleventh century and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Puigcerda was founded in 1178 by King Alfonso I of Aragon to replace Hix as the center of Cerdanya, and it borders the French town of Bourg-Madame. A rail link across the Pyrenees opened in 1929, and the town preserves Romanesque churches from the tenth to fifteenth centuries.

Plasencia was founded as a city in 1186 by King Alfonso VIII of Castile, and its Latin motto, meaning to please God and men, gave it its name. Its diocese was established in 1189, and the city, about 40,000 people on the Jerte River, remains the seat.

Castellon de la Plana is the capital of Castellon province in the Valencian Community, and its page records 1239 as its founding year. The main urban core lies inland, while the detached district of Grau was built around the port, and the city had 174,264 people at the recorded count.

Leganes was founded in 1280 as Legamar under Alfonso X, and in 1627 Philip IV made it an independent town. Spain's first psychiatric asylum opened there in 1851, and its population grew from about 5,000 in the 1950s to 194,084 in 2024 as Madrid expanded around it.

San Cristobal de La Laguna on Tenerife has a recorded founding year of 1496, and it is the former capital of the Canary Islands. Its historic center was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999, and it forms one urban area with neighboring Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory at the southern tip of the peninsula, where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic, and its page dates it to 1704. It covers 6.8 square kilometers under the Rock of Gibraltar and had about 34,000 people, bordered to the north by Spain.

Sant Adria de Besos closes the path with no founding date on its page. It sits at the mouth of the Besos river and is the smallest municipality in Barcelones, 3.8 square kilometers with 39,323 people in 2025, its original riverbank settlement now part of continuous metropolitan Barcelona.