In 1905, with the help of Alfredo Kindelán, Leonardo Torres Quevedo directed the construction of the first Spanish dirigible in the Army Military Aerostatics Service, created in 1896 and located in Guadalajara.

In 1915 Spain's first seaplane base was opened at Los Alcázares on the Mar Menor in the Murcia region and Alfredo Kindelán was named Military Aeronautics Director, displacing Pedro Vives.

The Catalan Flying School was established in Can Tunis, Barcelona the following year and Getafe Aerodrome became a full-fledged military air base.

Shortly thereafter the Aeronáutica Naval, the air branch of the Spanish Navy, already established through a Royal decree four years earlier, became functional in El Prat, in the same location as present-day Barcelona Airport.

Lieutenant Colonel Kindelán was named Jefe Superior de Aeronáutica, becoming chief-commander of the air force in 1926, at the time when Spanish Morocco was retaken and the Rif War ended.

In 1926 a crew of Spanish aviators, that included Ramón Franco, Julio Ruiz de Alda, Juan Manuel Duran and Pablo Rada, completed the first Trans-Atlantic flight between Spain and South America in January 1926 on the Plus Ultra.

That same year, pilots González Gallarza, Joaquín Loriga Taboada and Rafael Martínez Esteve completed the first flight between Spain and the Philippines, in just one month.

In 1930 the Aeronaval Base in San Javier was established and in the same year a pro-Republican revolt in the Cuatro Vientos military aerodrome near Madrid was quashed.

Captain Cipriano Rodríguez Díaz and Lieutenant Carlos de Haya González flew non-stop to Equatorial Guinea, then a Spanish colonial outpost.

In July 1936, right after the coup, the first German Junkers Ju 52 and Italian Savoia-Marchetti SM.81 arrived to help the rebels and the Fiat CR.32 fighters began operating in the Córdoba front.

These planes helped the rebel army to gain full control of the air, as did the German and Italian expeditionary forces, the Condor Legion and the Aviazione Legionaria.

[8] The Republican tricolor roundel was replaced by red bands for identification purposes, an insignia that had previously been used on Aeronáutica Naval aircraft during the monarchy in the 1920s, before the time of the Republic.

[9][10] Many innovative, and often lethal, aeronautical bombing techniques were tested by Germany's Condor Legion forces on Spanish soil against the areas that remained loyal to the Republican Government with the permission of Generalísimo Franco.

Despite the devastation and the human casualties caused by the bombing of the Basque city of Guernica in 1937, known by the Luftwaffe as Operation Rügen, Hitler insisted that his longterm designs in Spain were peaceful.

Despite Franco's claim that both air forces were equal, and despite the help of foreign pilots, Spanish Republican planes were mostly obsolete and often in a bad state of disrepair.

[15] During the first years after World War II the Spanish Francoist Air Force consisted largely of German and Italian planes and copies of them.

[22] Assisted by USAF F-16s, Spanish Air Force EF-18As dropped laser-guided bombs on Bosnian Serb ammunition depots at Pale, on 25 and 26 May 1994.

[23] The Spanish Air and Space Force is replacing older aircraft in the inventory with newer ones including Eurofighter Typhoon and the recently introduced Airbus A400M Atlas airlifter.

[29] The basic organization of the Air and Space Force is the following: The main operational formation of the SAF is the ala (wing), roughly equivalent to an army brigade.

They are also army regiment equivalents, but unlike the wings they are composite units, in which the operational aircraft, the maintenance and the air base squadrons report directly to the group.

An air force base, which does not house flying units is classified as an Acuartelamiento Aéreo (roughly translated as Air Force Installation in English, one such example is the Acuartelamiento Aéreo Bardenas, supporting the Bardenas Reales training range) and an airfield, which does not house permanently flying units is classified as an Aerodromo Militar (military airfield), such as the Aerodromo Militar de Pollensa.

In addition, the aircraft used by the Spanish Air and Space Force usually carry a code consisting of one or two digits followed by a dash and two numbers, painted on the nose or fuselage.