History and period dramas

"He, at the same time being a very successful man of the cloth, was also the great politician of his age, really. He was like a chess player, except - it's a very critical game of chess, where if you make the wrong move, it's death, if you make the right move, it's glory. But he served, above all, the king. He loved the king, and the king loved him. But finally, as happened very often in the reign of Henry VIII, things started to go awry." — Sam Neill on Cardinal Thomas Wolsey

The cliché that all Spaniards are dark-haired and olive-skinned

The present-day population of the Iberian Peninsula is the result of thousands of years of mixing among different human groups. Ancient DNA studies show that modern Spaniards and Portuguese mainly descend from three major prehistoric populations: European hunter-gatherers, the first farmers who arrived from Anatolia during the Neolithic period, and peoples from the Eurasian steppes who migrated during the Bronze Age. These genetic foundations were later enriched by contributions from various historical peoples.

The Iberians and Celts formed part of the pre-Roman population of the peninsula. Later came the Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, and, above all, the Romans, whose long presence encouraged extensive mixing with people from across the Mediterranean world.

Subsequently, there were genetic contributions from the Suebi, Vandals, Alans, and Visigoths. However, while these groups had a significant political and cultural impact, their overall genetic influence appears to have been relatively limited because they were small in number compared to the existing Hispano-Roman population.

There were also genetic contributions from North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean during the Muslim conquest of Iberia and the period of Al-Andalus, particularly in the southern and western regions of the peninsula.

Jewish communities were already present in Hispania during the Roman period and continued to flourish under both Visigothic and later medieval rule.

As a result, modern physical traits—such as skin, eye, and hair color—reflect a combination of thousands of years of genetic mixing. There is no single “Spanish look.” Throughout the Iberian Peninsula one can find people with fair or olive skin, brown, hazel, green, or blue eyes, and black, brown, blond, or red hair.