Only Karl Martell, king of the Frankish Empire, which at that time included present French and German territories, was able to stop the Moorish advance from Spain into south-west France with the Battle of Tours.

His younger sister Joanna married in 1497 the Habsburg Philip I of Castile (1478-1506), who was also a son of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, also Duke of Burgundy.

Francis I of France and Henry VIII of England also applied for Maximilian's succession, and finally Friedrich von Sachsen, and Karl's brother Ferdinand was at times as a candidate in the conversation.

[4] This led to the signing of the Treaty of Madrid in 1526, in which France relinquished its claims in northern Italy, Karl hoped to be able to persuade Franz to fight together against the Ottomans and against the Lutherans.

When Charles V put down the government in 1556, Spain lost the Austrian possessions of the House of Habsburg and the imperial crown, but retained the Netherlands, the Franche-Comté, the Duchy of Milan, and the kingdoms of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia.

Venice and Spain sent a common fleet into the eastern Mediterranean, which defeated the Turks in the Battle of Lepanto on 7 October 1571.

The [Prussian] king committed himself for all future, never to give his consent again, if the Hohenzollern should come back to their candidature" - as that of Otto edited by Bismarck and thus deliberately pointed Emser Depesche, led to the German-French War.

A side effect of the German defeat was that Germany failed as a rival of Spain in the struggle for colonial possessions in Morocco.

It was at the initiative of the king who wanted to exterminate the Rif Kabyles, Dirk Sasse: French, British and Germans in the Rifkrieg 1921–1926.

After the July 1936 attempt at a coup d'état in Spain led to the start of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy sided with the rebels and supplied them with money, munitions and manpower, including the intervention of the Condor Legion.

Famous personalities like George Orwell and the later Social Democrat Member of Parliament Peter Blachstein fought in the POUM militia units.

Some Spaniards were extradited to Franco by the Gestapo, others, such as the former head of government Francisco Largo Caballero, were deported to various German concentration camps.

Franco unquestionably had sympathy for the regimes in Italy and Germany, but in practice, the solidarity with his alleged ideological allies was limited.

In a letter dated 6 February 1941, Hitler told Franco "that we three men, the Duce, you and me, are bound together by the hardest compulsion of history that is possible, and that thus we in this historical analysis ought to obey as the supreme commandment the realization that in such difficult times, not so much an apparently wise caution as the bold heart, rather, can save nations.

[14] His condolences finally consisted in sending the 'División Azul' 'to the Eastern Front, 47,000 Falangist volunteers under General Agustín Muñoz Grandes, but which he withdrew in 1943 after the Battle of Stalingrad there again.

[citation needed] In addition, Franco provided Germany, inter alia, submarine bases and news material.

[citation needed] Hitler was dissatisfied with Franco's policy and in July 1942, in a small circle, began to consider "finding a suitable personality for the settlement of the Spanish political situation."

He particularly thought of General Muñoz Grandes and said that the Blue Division might "play a crucial role in the settlement of the current Pfaff system.

"[15] In December 1943, Franco issued his position to the German ambassador saying that "the attitude of the Spanish government towards Bolshevism and Communism would not change, and that this struggle would continue at home and abroad, as well as against Judaism and Freemasonry "[16] More about the repression of Jews in the early Franco period see Bernd Rother:[17] Of these Sephards, some had descendants of 1492 displaced Jews in the 1920s who can accept Spanish citizenship.

At the latest since 1944, Franco had been informed in detail about the extermination of the Jews in KZ Auschwitz and it turns out that he knew the exact extent of the annihilation.

In 1943, this idea became common knowledge, so that by the time the Second World War came to a close, Spain was well advanced on the path of transition from a partially mobilized, semi-fascist state to a Catholic, corporate and increasingly demobilized authoritarian regime.

He declared Spain neutral this year and, in exchange for allied oil supplies, largely cushioned Germany's material and non-material support.

After the war, Spain was stationed on one of the so-called ratlines, the escape routes of the dignitaries of both the Nazi regime itself and its ideological allies - often for the purpose of traveling to South America.

After the victory of the western democracies, the Spanish dictatorship was naturally isolated, which would, however, be defused by the looming Cold War for Franco.

The Spanish isolation could only be completely broken after Franco's death in 1975 and the subsequent democratization under King Juan Carlos I. Spain joined the NATO in 1982; The Federal Republic of Germany belonged to the Atlantic Pact since 1955.

Prime Minister Zapatero withdrew the troops from Iraq by July 2004, but he soon added to the military contingent in Afghanistan in view of the relations with the US damaged by the withdrawal until November 2013 34 Spaniards died.

[21] On 30 August 2022, in the wake of a visit of Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez to Germany and with the looming context of the ongoing energy crisis, German chancellor Olaf Scholz lent support to the construction of a gas pipeline (the so-called MidCat) connecting Spain (and Portugal) to France and the rest of the European mainland.