| About Girona |
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| The foreign package holiday was more or less invented in Spain, and the country's popularity as a beach destination keeps on growing. Over 40 million (mainly British and German) tourists visit Spain each year, plus some 20 million day trippers. But there is another, more authentic, Spain that begins only a few kilometres from the beaches. This is the traditional Spain of stone-built villages surrounded by olive groves, vineyards, and almond blossom; the upland Spain of the Pyrenees, the Picos de Europa, and the Sierra Nevada; the wild Spain where there are still brown bear, lynx, and bearded vultures; and the desert Spain of Almeria, where spaghetti westerns were filmed. In this large and varied landscape live a people whose origins include the Phoenicians who founded Gadir (Cadiz), the Greeks who built Empuries, the Carthaginians who made their new capital at Cartagena, the Romans who built Cordoba, Merida, and Tarragona, and the Moors who, landing in 711, went on to create the empire of al-Andalus, which lasted until the completion of the Christian reconquest in 1492. |
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