The history of art in Spain begins at the back of a cave. In the Upper Palaeolithic, the hunters who lived along the northern coast painted and engraved bison, horses, deer and abstract signs on cave walls, creating one of the world's greatest collections of prehistoric art.
Altamira and the Cantabrian caves
The cave of Altamira, near Santillana del Mar in Cantabria, was discovered in 1868 and its paintings were recognised in 1879 by Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola and his daughter Maria. For years scholars refused to believe that prehistoric people could have made such refined works: only in the early twentieth century was their authenticity accepted. The famous polychrome ceiling, with bison painted in red and black using the natural relief of the rock, dates from about 14,000-15,000 years ago, while other parts of the cave are much older. To protect it, the original cave is almost always closed; visitors see a faithful replica, the Neocueva, in the museum next door.
Altamira is part of a UNESCO site including seventeen painted caves in Cantabria, Asturias and the Basque Country, among them El Castillo and Las Monedas at Puente Viesgo, Tito Bustillo at Ribadesella, Covalanas, Ekain and Santimamiñe. Some can still be visited in small groups. In El Castillo some hand stencils and red discs have been dated to over 40,000 years ago, among the oldest known artistic expressions.
Open-air art and Levantine art
Not all Palaeolithic art is hidden in caves. At Siega Verde, near Ciudad Rodrigo, hundreds of animal figures are engraved on open-air rocks along the Águeda river, as in the nearby Côa valley in Portugal, with which it forms a single UNESCO site.
Later, after the end of the last ice age, Levantine rock art developed along the Mediterranean coast, a UNESCO site with hundreds of painted shelters from Catalonia to Andalusia. Here the protagonists are human beings: small figures of hunters with bows, dance scenes, honey gatherers and warriors, painted with great liveliness under rock overhangs, as at Valltorta (Castellón), Cogul (Lleida) or Minateda (Albacete).
Megaliths and Bronze Age cultures
With the Neolithic and the age of metals came great stone monuments. At Antequera, near Málaga, the Menga and Viera dolmens and the El Romeral tholos, together with the Peña de los Enamorados and El Torcal, form a UNESCO site: Menga, built almost 6,000 years ago, is one of Europe's largest dolmens. At Los Millares, near Almería, stood a fortified Copper Age settlement, and the El Argar culture dominated the south-east in the Bronze Age.
In the Balearic Islands, especially Menorca, the Talayotic culture left stone towers (talaiots), enclosures with great T-shaped stones (taules) and burial chambers shaped like upturned boats (navetas), recognised as a UNESCO site in 2023.
The Iberians
In the first millennium BC the Iberian culture produced an original sculpture influenced by the Greeks and Phoenicians. Its masterpiece is the Lady of Elche, a female stone bust with elaborate ornaments found in 1897 near Elche and now in the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid, together with the Lady of Baza. The story continues with the ancient art of the Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans.