A country in the southwest corner of Europe, sharing the Iberian Peninsula with Portugal, with France across the Pyrenees mountains to the north. Its capital is Madrid, and the Balearic Islands (Mallorca, Ibiza) in the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa belong to it too. Population is roughly 47 million. Write it with a capital S; the adjective and the people are 'Spanish', and one person is 'a Spaniard' — a slightly formal word that many speakers avoid in favour of 'a Spanish man/woman'. The language is Spanish, but that is only part of the picture: Catalonia has Catalan, the Basque Country has Basque (a language related to no other in Europe), and Galicia has Galician, and these are official in their own regions. People from those regions may not describe themselves as Spanish first, and this is a live political question, so it is worth being careful rather than assuming. The south, Andalusia, was ruled by Muslim kingdoms for centuries, and you can still see it in the buildings, the music and the language. Spain was also the centre of a huge empire, which is why Spanish is spoken across most of Latin America. In English, note the phrase 'castles in Spain' — a daydream that will never be built.