Romans go home!

 

Do you want a wood>  Of course you do.  We will be passing the Balsa de Pulguer and it gets 4.2 stars for its natural wonders.  Six years ago Javier said ‘Artificial lake with 2 small land beaches...quite muddy waters but refreshing visit if you are sweating somewhere around Tudela area…’   More recently it appears to be neglected  Maryline said ‘Dirty.. Too disappointed.. It's a shame not to use this place, a few improvements would be great 👍 The small parking lot is under the pines (be careful with the vans) But frankly we don't want to swim there at all 😱’  Six months ago Audrey reckoned ‘  Very nice place, we took the tour with the dog, it's magnificent. The tour is a little over 3km. The beach is a bit dirty, the water is clear and warm. Ideal for a picnic, relaxing day. The parking lot is not very suitable for vans, full of fairly low pine trees everywhere and we don't really understand where we can park.’

Wit nothing more but wide open spaces I expect you are wondering, so how did Roman Spain stop being so,  

In 406 diverse Germanic chaps crossed the Rhine.. After three years of general wrong doing  and wandering about northern and western Gaul, the Germanic Buri, Suevi and Vandals, together with the Sarmatian Alans moved into Iberia in the autumn of  409 at the request of Gerontius, a Roman usurper. The Suevi established a kingdom in Gallaecia in what is today modern Galicia and northern Portugal. The Alans' allies, the Hasdingi Vandals, also established a kingdom in another part of Gallaecia. The Alans established a kingdom in Lusitania – modern Alentejo and Algarve.  The Silingi Vandals briefly occupied parts of South Iberia in the province of Baetica.

In an effort to retrieve the region, the Western Roman emperor, Honorius [he who told the Britons to go sort themselves out in 410], promised the Visigoths a home in southwest Gaul if they destroyed the invaders in Spain. They all but wiped out the Silingi and Alans. The Roman attempt under General Castorius to dislodge the Vandals from Cordoba failed in 422.

The Vandals and Alans crossed over to North Africa in 429, Their departure allowed the Romans to recover 90% of the Iberian peninsula until 439. After the departure of the Vandals only the Sueves remained in a northwest corner of the peninsula. Roman rule which had survived in the eastern quadrant was restored over most of Iberia until the Sueves occupied Mérida in 439, a move which coincides to the Vandal occupation of Carthage late the same year. Rome made attempts to restore control in 446 and 458. Success was temporary.

After the death of emperor Majorian in 461 Roman authority collapsed except in Tarraconensis the northeastern corner of the peninsula. The Visigoths,, whose kingdom was located in southwest Gaul, took the province when they occupied Tarragona in 472.  In 484 the Visigoths established Toledo as the capital of their kingdom. Successive Visigothic kings ruled Hispania as patricians who held imperial commissions to govern in the name of the Roman emperor. In 585 the Visigoths conquered the Suebic Kingdom of Galicia, and thus controlled almost all of Hispania

As a postscript, a century later, taking advantage of a struggle for the throne between the Visigothic kings Agila and Athanagild, the Byzantine emperor Justinian I sent an army under the command of Liberius to take back the peninsula from the Visigoths. This short-lived reconquest recovered only a small strip of land along the Mediterranean coast roughly corresponding to the ancient province of Baetica, known as Spania.

Tomorrow.  More open expanses.