Spain & Portugal Map 1956 Mid-Century Times Atlas Print - Madrid, Lisbon, Barcelona, Palma, Porto

John Bartholomew and Son of London produced this Spain and Portugal for The Times Atlas of the World, Mid-Century Edition, published with Houghton Mifflin of Boston, and the catalog dates the map to 1956 within a volume published in 1959. The double-page sheet measures 62 by 49 centimeters at a scale of 1:2,500,000 and is in full color, with relief shown by gradient tints and spot heights, depth by gradient tints and soundings, and the prime meridian at Greenwich. The Times Atlas was issued in five volumes between 1955 and 1959, with 122 colored double-page sheets and an index of over 200,000 names. The catalog description names Madrid, Lisbon and Barcelona, the Balearic Islands, the Pyrenees, the Tagus and the Ebro.

In 1956 Spain was governed by General Franco and Portugal by Prime Minister Salazar, so that two long-lived dictatorships shared the peninsula in the years just after the Second World War. Madrid, Lisbon and Barcelona were its leading cities, and the Balearic Islands, where mass tourism would soon begin, appear in the Mediterranean. The Pyrenees separate the peninsula from France, while the Tagus and the Ebro are its two great rivers. The soundings that show the depth of the surrounding seas reflect the atlas's attention to the oceans, and the roads and railways record the infrastructure of the period.

A collector of mid-century British cartography, a reader of postwar European history, or a family with roots in Spain or Portugal will find a clean and contemporary gift here. TheMapVault's Pergamon sheet of 1964 is the Polish counterpart at the same scale of 1:2,500,000, whereas this Bartholomew sheet of 1956 shows the peninsula in the gradient tints of a British house, printed by William Clowes and Son. Like every print in the collection, it ships unframed and is available in a full range of sizes, from a compact desk piece to a large-format statement print.