Free audiobook

The Bull's Hide

A history of Spain from Phoenician Cádiz and Tartessos to the democracy of today: Iberians and Celtiberians, Hannibal and Rome, the Visigoths, al-Andalus and the Caliphate of Córdoba, El Cid, Isabella and Ferdinand, 1492, Columbus and the conquistadors, the Golden Age, Goya and Napoleon, the Civil War, Franco and the Transition. Every quotation comes from a public-domain translation, and every era's sources are named.

40chapters
7.5hours
3,000years of history

Now playing

Chapter 1

0:000:00

Chapters

    Sources by era

    Quotations come from public-domain translations: Caesar (McDevitte and Bohn, 1869), Gregory of Tours (Brehaut, 1916), Einhard (Turner, 1880), the Song of Roland (Scott Moncrieff, 1919), Joinville (Wedgwood, 1906), Froissart (Berners), the trial of Joan of Arc (Murray, 1902), Commynes (Scoble, 1855), Montaigne (Cotton), Saint-Simon (Bayle St. John, 1857), Rousseau (Cole, 1913) and Hugo (Hapgood, 1887). Every page the research opened is listed under its era.

    Chapters 1 to 5: Iberians, Carthage and Rome
    Chapters 6 to 10: Visigothic Spain
    Chapters 11 to 15: Al-Andalus and the Christian north
    Chapters 16 to 20: Taifas and the Christian kingdoms
    Chapters 21 to 25: The Catholic Monarchs and the New World
    Chapters 26 to 30: The Habsburgs and the Golden Age
    Chapters 31 to 35: The Bourbons, Napoleon and the nineteenth century
    Chapters 36 to 40: Modern Spain

    Narrated by an AI voice. Written and fact-checked with the help of AI tools, from published scholarship, museum records and the ancient texts themselves; where scholars disagree, the book says so. Dates for the earliest Iberian centuries are approximate. Events of 2025 and 2026 are told from news reports available when the book was finished, in October 2026.

    Want to see it? The Spanish history timeline has the people and events in this book, with sources.