dictatorship under Francisco Franco lasting until 1975. In the aftermath of World War 2, the series of multilateral agreements and institutions configuring what it is known today as Western Europe were made apart from Francoist Spain. The 1953 military agreements with the United States entailed the acceptance of unprecedented conditions vis-à-vis the (peacetime) military installment of a foreign power on Spanish soil. Spain joined the UN in 1955 and the IMF in 1958. In the last rales of the dictator, the mismanaged decolonisation of Spanish Sahara ensued with the Moroccan invasion of the territory in 1975 and the purported partition of it between Morocco and Mauritania, spawning a protracted conflict pitting the Sahrawi national liberation Polisario Front against Morocco and (briefly) Mauritania lasting to this day. Spain joined NATO (1982) and entered the European Communities (1986). On a wide range of issues, Spain often prefers to coordinate its efforts with its EU partners through the European political cooperation mechanisms. In addition to being represented via EU membership, Spain is a permanently invited guest to all G20 summits. History In 218 BC the Romans invaded the Iberian peninsula, which later became the Roman province of Hispania. The Romans introduced the Latin language, the ancestor of both modern-day Spanish and Italian. The Iberian peninsula remained under Roman rule for over 600 years, until the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. In the Early modern period, until the 18th century, southern and insular Italy came under Spanish control, having been previously a domain of the Crown of Aragon. Charles V Charles V (1500–1558) inherited vast lands across Western Europe and the Americas, and expanded them by frequent wars. Among other domains he was King of Spain from 1516, and Holy Roman Emperor and Archduke of Austria from 1519. As head of the rising House of Habsburg during the first half of the 16th century, his dominions in Europe extending from Germany to northern Italy with direct rule over the Austrian hereditary lands and the Burgundian Low Countries, and a unified Spain with its southern Italian kingdoms of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia. His great enemy on land was France, on the Mediterranean Sea it was the Ottoman Empire, which at times was allied with France. England and the Papacy were sometimes part of the coalition against him. Much of his attention focused on wars in Italy. At the Diet of Augsburg (1547) he secured