We know the Iberian Peninsula is the landmass that combines Spain and Portugal, but have you ever wondered where the name comes from? 
The name of the land is irrevocably connected with that of its people, and the Iberians are, in fact, the indigenous people of Spain and Portugal. Reams have been written about the Romans and the Moors who came much later, and even the Carthaginian past in this part of the world is reasonably well documented, but amazingly one almost never hears reference to what are ultimately its indigenous people.
This is in part thanks to a revival in interest in all things Moorish, and to a lesser extent Roman, but also because not as much is known about the mysterious Iberians, a Mediterranean people who spoke a pre-Indo European language that may not have been too far removed from ––modern-day Basque. The Iberians were certainly in contact with their neighbours from the mountainous north of the country, but maintained a shepherding culture of their own defended by warlike chieftains.
The latter could not prevent the incursion of Celts into the Iberian Peninsula from Gaul (modern-day France) in the north. Over time, the Celts poured into the region, eventually blending in with the Iberians and creating a Celtiberian culture. The fact that the Celtic influence was strongest in the north-west (Galicia) remains visible today, but the Celtibros spread across the western half of the Iberian Peninsula all the way to places like Cádiz and Arcos de la Frontera.
Iberian culture
The regions that remained most purely Iberian, the eastern and southern coasts of Spain, later succumbed to the influence of Phoenician and Greek traders, who established ports such as Cartagena and Málaga. Over time, this contact led to the creation of affluent states known as the Tartessian and Turdetanian civilisations, which were roughly located along what is today the Andalusian coastal region. From this point on more is known about Spain’s classical history, but though the Iberians were referred to by the later Romans and many of their relics and burial sites (such as the Dama de Baza) have been found by archaeologists, the Iberian language has yet to be deciphered.
By the time the Romans and Carthaginians (descendants of Phoenician settlers in modern-day Tunisia) fought the Punic Wars on Spanish soil, the Iberians were already an ancient presence in these parts, and they too would resist Roman control for a long time before being absorbed by the language and culture of Rome. When the Germanic Visigoths came some 500 years later, and the Moors another 300 years after that, the Iberians had already largely melted into a Hispano-Roman culture that formed the basis for languages such as Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese. By then, the Iberian language was all but extinct and the civilisation itself a fading memory.
However, as you travel through Andalucía you will come across a lot of surviving evidence of the mysterious ancestral people of the Iberian Peninsula.
Visit the Archaeological Museum in Madrid to view their collection of objects of the Iberians.