In Spain, the tooth fairy isn’t a fairy — it’s a mouse named Ratoncito Pérez. According to the story, the mouse would frequently run away from home and collect teeth from children. The character was introduced in 1877, but it became a popular tradition after 1894, when writer Luis Coloma told the story to King Alfonso XIII.

Every year on the last Wednesday in August, residents of Buñol, Spain, hurl tomatoes at each other in a festival called La Tomatina. The festival started in 1945, when a man in this small Valencian town began throwing tomatoes at a group of teenagers who had knocked him over. La Tomatina now attracts thousands of tourists, and participants throw hundreds of thousands of pounds of tomatoes each year.

1992 was the first year Team USA sent a team full of NBA players to the Olympics, and that so-called “Dream Team” may be the most dominant basketball team ever assembled. The team brought together Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Charles Barkley, among others. The Dream Team beat other teams at the Olympics by an average of 43.8 points per game on their way to gold.

The Spanish soccer team that won the nation its first World Cup in 2012 was led by eight Barcelona players, from one of the greatest club dynasties in soccer history. However, Real Madrid has been the most successful team in the world’s biggest club tournament, the UEFA Champions League. As of 2022, Real Madrid has won 14 titles, twice as many as second-place AC Milan.

The world’s most famous running of the bulls takes place every year in Pamplona, the birthplace of the martyr St. Fermin. The festival of St. Fermin takes place each year over nine days, from July 6 to 14, and the running of the bulls has been a tradition since the 12th century. The modern-day bull run, known as the “encierro,” lasts only about two and a half minutes.

Casa Botín has been serving diners in Madrid since 1725, which makes it the world’s longest-running restaurant, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. The restaurant’s suckling pig dish appeared in the final pages of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises,” and it remains on the menu today. Botín serves traditional Spanish fare but was founded by a Frenchman named Jean Botin.

Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes’ masterpiece — published in 1605 with the full title “El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote De La Mancha” — is considered groundbreaking because of the variety of characters represented in the story, and the nuance of his social commentary. Cervantes published the novel in two parts, both written in the same era when Shakespeare was writing his plays.

In 1519, explorer Ferdinand Magellan led a fleet of Spanish ships west, intending to find a quicker route to the Spice Islands. The expedition traveled from Spain to Brazil and south to Patagonia, where one of the five ships was lost to mutiny. In April 1521, Magellan was killed in battle with the Philippines. In September 1522, the commander of the final remaining ship reached Spain to complete the voyage.

“La Marcha Real” is one of the rare national anthems that is completely instrumental. The only other countries with lyric-less anthems are San Marino, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo. The anthem was adopted in 1770, making it one of the world’s oldest, but not quite as old as “Wilhelmus” of the Netherlands, which debuted in 1568.

The Glorious Revolution of 1868 removed Queen Isabella from power and began to move Spain toward a democracy, but the monarch remains a part of Spanish life. Officially, the nation is a constitutional monarchy; while there is a monarch as a figurehead, their powers are explicitly written out and limited by law. Felipe VI has been king of Spain since 2014.

Spain produces three times more olive oil than Italy, and the country is responsible for almost half of olive oil production worldwide. Some olive oil marketed as being a “product of Italy” is actually a blend with exported Spanish olives. Spain’s southern region of Andalusia is responsible for approximately 20% of worldwide olive production on its own.

Spain’s small city of Ceuta is located across the Strait of Gibraltar from the Spanish mainland, making Spain the only European country to share a land border with Africa. Ceuta borders Morocco, and the city has officially been a part of Spain since 1668, when the Treaty of Lisbon passed the city from Portuguese to Spanish rule.

There are five official languages of Spain, but the most prominent one is Castilian, the official name for the standard form of Spanish spoken around the world. The language originated in central Spain, and it is the only language that every region of Spain uses regularly. Other regional languages spoken in Spain include Catalan, Galician, Basque, and Aranese (the latter of which has only about 3,000 native speakers left).

In the 1930s, Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to work as a war correspondent, joining the Spanish Second Republic as they fought against the fascists during the Spanish Civil War. One of Hemingway’s most famous novels, 1940’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” was inspired by this formative period.

Spain borders both France and Portugal, as well as two of the smallest principalities in Europe: Gibraltar to the south and Andorra to the north. Andorra is the 16th-smallest country in the world by land area, measuring 180 square miles. It’s also the world’s 11th-smallest country by population, with about 77,000 residents. A drive from the west side of Andorra to the east covers about 24 miles.

Spain’s most famous surrealist painter, Salvador Dalí was known to self-induce a state of paranoia to dig into his subconscious for inspiration. His 1931 masterpiece “The Persistence of Memory” features three melting clocks, as well as ants signifying death, which appeared repeatedly in Dali’s work. Melting clocks also appeared in his 1976 painting “The Stillness of Time.”

Worldwide, there are 1.1 billion native speakers of Mandarin Chinese. In comparison, Spanish has approximately 471 million native speakers, about 100 million more than English. Spanish is a far-reaching language, spoken in countries in Europe, North America, and South America. Spanish is also spoken in some Asian nations like the Philippines.

Stretching nearly 280 miles from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, the Pyrenees form a natural border between Spain (to the southwest) and France (to the northeast). The Spanish side of the mountain range has the highest peaks, with the tallest, Pico de Aneto, reaching over 11,100 feet above sea level.

Spain’s capital, Madrid, also happens to be its largest city. Home to 3.2 million people, Madrid has a population that is about twice as big as that of the next largest city in Spain, Barcelona. Madrid has been the capital of Spain since the 1500s, and it is the third-largest city in the European Union, behind London and Berlin.

In Spain, some stores and businesses close between the hours of 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. for the traditional afternoon “siesta” (nap), though it’s less common in larger cities. The tradition began with farmers, who would nap in the afternoon to get out of the sun during the hottest hours of the day. “Siesta” comes from the Latin word for “sixth hour,” referring to the sixth hour after sunrise.