The Romans took the Iberian peninsula slowly — it took them two centuries — and ruled it for six. They called it Hispania. They built roads, aqueducts, the great theatre at Mérida. Two emperors of Rome (Trajan, Hadrian) were born here. When the Western Empire fell in 476 CE, Visigothic kings inherited what was left and ruled badly for two and a half centuries.
In 711 an army of Berbers and Arabs crossed the strait from North Africa and conquered most of the peninsula in seven years. They called it al-Andalus. Córdoba, for three centuries, was the largest city in Western Europe. Twelve short chapters trace the arc: al-Andalus, the slow Reconquista, 1492 (Granada falls, the Jews are expelled, Columbus sails — all in the same year), the Habsburg empire under Charles V and Philip II, the Spanish Golden Age (Cervantes, Velázquez, Lope de Vega), the Inquisition, the long Bourbon decline, the Napoleonic invasion, the loss of empire, the Civil War of 1936–39, Franco's forty years, and the transition to democracy after Franco died in his sleep in 1975.
By December 1978 Spain had a constitution approved by 88% of voters. The transition is still studied internationally as a rare example of a peaceful change of regime.
Each chapter is one century or one event. The vocabulary cycles in clean Spanish-history registers — kingdom, conquest, expulsion, golden age, civil war, transition — and the chronology pulls the reader forward. A2+ readers can follow Spanish history because each chapter is a self-contained story with a beginning, middle, and end.
Late elementary. You can read longer chapters with light support. Past, present, and future tenses are comfortable. Idioms still trip you up.
Yes — every book in the Storica catalog is available in all seven supported languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, and English. Hispania was originally written in English, but you choose your reading language when you start.
A2+. Late elementary. You can read longer chapters with light support. Past, present, and future tenses are comfortable. Idioms still trip you up.
About one month at fifteen minutes a day. The adaptation runs to 25 short chapters — short enough to read before bed, long enough to actually move your level.
No. Storica's adaptation is the version you read. We keep the characters, plot beats, and tone of the original — and rewrite the language to fit the level. If you've read the original before, you'll recognise the story; if you haven't, the adaptation is a complete reading of the book.
Pick up where you left off. There are no streaks, no penalties, and no notifications begging you back. Day 12 is still Day 12 a week later.
Hispania is rated A2+, so we'd suggest starting with one of our A0 or A1 books first if you're brand-new to your target language. Check our shelf at /library/ — the readers there are short, gentle, and built specifically for week one.
Your first 30-day book is free. No card. No streak. Just a passage every morning.
Read it free for 7 days →A small group of readers working through classics in their target language — Kafka in German, Camus in French, Bovary in Spanish. Leave your email and we'll send your invitation.
Use this code in the app for 30% off your first year of Storica Pro.