Santander Cathedral

The Santander fire of 1941 was a natural disaster that occurred in the Spanish city of Santander during the early morning hours of February 15 to February 16, 1941. Occurring decades after the explosion of the steamship Cabo Machichaco (1893), it is considered the most devastating fire in the history of the city. The fire destroyed a large part of the historic center of the city, including the cathedral, and caused a great change in the urban structure of Santander. Most of the damage was material, as thousands of families lost their homes and businesses. There was one fatality, a firefighter from Madrid, and more than a hundred people were injured. The fire is popularly known as the Andalusian fire because, curiously, it started on Cadiz Street and the flames were stopped at Seville Street.

Santander (UK: SAN-tən-DAIR, -⁠tan-, US: SAHN-tahn-DAIR, Spanish: [santanˈdeɾ]) is the capital of the autonomous community of Cantabria, Spain. It has a population of 172,000 (2017). It is a port city located in the northern coast of the Iberian Peninsula, facing the Cantabrian Sea. It is believed to have been a port since ancient times, due to its favourable location, and is documented as far back as the 11th century. Much of the medieval city was lost in the Great Fire of 1941. Today, its remaining old town, beach and other attractions are popular with tourists and other visitors and its economy is mainly service based. The port is still very active and a regular ferry service operates to the United Kingdom. Fish and seafood dominate the local cuisine. Santander notably houses the headquarters of multinational bank Banco Santander, which was founded there. The city has a mild climate typical of the Spanish northern coastline with frequent rainfall and stable temperatures. Cold snaps and heat waves are very rare.

The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Santander, Cantabria, Spain.

Kostka College Santander, Cantabria, Spain, was founded by the Society of Jesus in 1960 and gradually grew to include pre-primary through baccalaureate. It is named for the young Jesuit saint Stanislaus Kostka. It began offering the baccalaureate under the name Institute Jose Maria Pereda, but in 1968 it began expanding its offerings and took its present name.Kostka is the first organization in Cantabria and only eleventh educational institution in Spain to receive the silver seal according to the EFQM Excellence Model for organizational excellence. The evaluation was done by Bureau Veritas.

Santander railway station, also known as Santander ADIF to distinguish it from the Santander Feve station, is the main railway station of the Spanish city of Santander, Cantabria. It opened in 1858 and served over 3 million passengers in 2018. The station is actually a complex of two stations, one serving Renfe Iberian-gauge railways, and another adjacent serving FEVE metre-gauge services to Bilbao-Abando and Oviedo.

The Museo de Arte Moderno y Contemporáneo de Santander y Cantabria (also known as MAS) is an art museum in Santander, Spain. Today the museum specializes in modern and contemporary art.

The Parliament of Cantabria, is the unicameral legislature of the Autonomous Community of Cantabria. It consists of 35 members called "deputies" which are freely elected by the citizens of the region. The Parliament convenes at the Saint Raphael Hospital, an 18th century building in the City of Santander rehabilitated in the 1980s to house the Regional Assembly. Prior to 1998, the Parliament was called Regional Assembly of Cantabria. Following the 2023 Cantabrian regional election, the People's Party has the plurality of seats and is the governing party.

Cantabria Central Library (Spanish: Biblioteca Central de Cantabria) is a library in the city of Santander, in Cantabria, Spain. It was known as the State Public Library of the city of Santander, although on March 23, 1999, it was declared by decree as the Cantabria Central Library of Cantabria.

The Bay of Santander is both a comarca of Cantabria and the largest estuary on the North coast of Spain, with an extension of 22.42 km2 (9 km long and 5 km wide). Due to the influence of Santander and its metropolitan area, nearly half of the population of the autonomous community of Cantabria is gathered around it, which makes the anthropic pressure on this area of water quite notable. The entrance to the bay is lined by the Sardinero beaches, where the Isle of Mouro with its lighthouse can be found. The access to its interior is through a narrow channel of water between the Magdalena Peninsula, near to which are the Isle of the Tower and Horadada Island; and the sandbanks of the El Puntal, a long series of beaches and dunes that protect the tranquil inner waters of the bay. The morphology of the bay has suffered important changes in the last centuries. It is estimated that more than 50% of the original extension has been filled up, drying up a large amount of marsh area for grasslands, to expand the Port of Santander, and to create new industrial and residential areas. At the moment, work is going on to recover the seaside ecosystem in some areas of high ecological value.

The Battle of Santander was fought in the War in the North campaign of the Spanish Civil War during the summer of 1937. Santander's fall on 26 August assured the Nationalist conquest of the province of Santander, now Cantabria. The battle devastated the Republic's "Army of the North"; 60,000 soldiers were captured by the Nationalists.

University of Cantabria (UC) (Spanish: Universidad de Cantabria), is a public university located in Santander, Torrelavega and Comillas in Cantabria, Spain. It was founded in 1972 and is organized in 15 schools and colleges. It was selected as Campus of International Excellence by the Government of Spain in 2009. The UC is part, as a founding member, of the Group 9 of Spanish Universities (G9), created in 1997 with the aim of promoting collaboration between academic institutions. It is also integrated into the European alliance of universities EUNICE (European University for Customized Education). The University of Cantabria first appeared in the Academic Ranking of World Universities in 2013 in the range of 151-200 best universities in the world in the field of Physics. Since 2018, it has been present as an institution among the top 1,000 universities in the Shanghai Ranking, in addition to several of its specialized thematic categories.

The University of Cantabria School of Civil Engineering is an engineering school of the University of Cantabria. The school ranks 5th in Spain in the civil engineering schools' ranking by El Mundo just behind the schools of the Technical University of Madrid, the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the University of Castile-La Mancha. It is the second oldest civil engineering school in Spain, behind the school of the Technical University of Madrid.