A right understanding both of the past history of Spain and of its social and political condition to-day is made still more difficult by the claim made by Castile, with Madrid as the capital, to speak for Spain as a whole. Most histories of Spain are written from the Castilian point of view, and foreign writers naturally go to the capital in search of their material. But this procedure leaves out of sight the very important distinctions between the different parts of Spain, and especially those between the Castilian and the Aragonese of the centre and north, and the Andalusian, Valencian, and Murcian of the south. Setting aside Cataluña and the Basque Provinces, with a population in round numbers of 2,500,000, the rest of Spain north of the Sierra Morena has a population of 9,000,000, while the three ancient southern kingdoms, Valencia, Murcia, and Andalusia, have between them a population of 6,000,000. The distinctive characteristics of these provinces, which contain about a third of the total inhabitants of the country, are left unnoticed by Castilian writers and those who follow them, or, if the southerners are mentioned at all, it is usually with some expression of contempt. This applies especially to the Andalusian, who is always spoken of as lazy and incompetent, without ambition, content to sit in the sun and smoke a cigarette, a windbag who talks everlastingly and does nothing, and generally a negligible quantity in Spanish politics, and a person unworthy of serious consideration in Madrid. The ingrained orientalism of the south is at the root of the hostility with which it is regarded by Castile and the north. Andalusia and Valencia were under Moslem rule for some 500 years--Granada for nearly 750--and this long occupation and colonisation has left an indelible impress on the race, language, customs, and modes of thought of the south. On the other hand, the Arab invasion of the north was soon driven back beyond the Sierra de Guadarrama, and even in New Castile and Estremadura, north of the Guadiana, their occupation was more in the nature of a military tenure than a colonisation, and, such as it was, came to an end 160 years before the Christians were able to win any footing in the southern provinces. There is, therefore, comparatively little Eastern blood in the veins of the Castilian, while in those of the southerner the Arabic strain is at least as strong as the European.