Spanish evolved from Vulgar Latin, with major influences from Arabic in vocabulary during the Andalusian period and minor surviving influences from Basque and Celtiberian, as well as Germanic languages via the Visigoths. Spanish developed along the remote cross road strips among the Alava, Cantabria, Burgos, Soria and La Rioja provinces of Northern Spain (see Glosas Emilianenses), as a strongly innovative and differing variant from its nearest cousin, Leonese, with a higher degree of Basque influence in these regions (see Iberian Romance languages). Typical features of Spanish diachronical phonology include lenition (Latin , Spanish ), palatalization (Latin , Spanish , and Latin , Spanish ) and diphthongation (stem-changing) of short "e" and "o" from Vulgar Latin (Latin , Spanish ; Latin , Spanish ). Similar phenomena can be found in other Romance languages as well.

During the , this northern dialect from Cantabria was carried south, and remains a minority language in the northern coastal Morocco.

The first Latin-to-Spanish grammar () was written in Salamanca, Spain, in 1492, by Elio Antonio de Nebrija. When it was presented to Isabel de Castilla, she asked, "What do I want a work like this for, if I already know the language?", to which he replied, "Your highness, the language is the instrument of the Empire." 

From the 16th century onwards, the language was taken to the Americas and the Spanish East Indies via Spanish colonization.

In the 20th century, Spanish was introduced to Equatorial Guinea and the Western Sahara, and in areas of the United States that had not been part of the Spanish Empire, such as in Spanish Harlem, in New York City. For details on borrowed words and other external influences upon Spanish, see Influences on the Spanish language.

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