During the Second Punic War in 218 BC, the Roman army landed at its ally city of Empúries. Once the war was over, the Romans remained in the Iberian peninsula and set about cultivating and exploiting it. In order to do this they established a territorial structure (the province) and imposed a system of taxation. There were various uprisings by the indigenous peoples at the beginning of the second century BC but they were all quashed.
The Romanisation of the territory began and the indigenous societies slowly adapted to the new culture. Numerous colonists from the Italian peninsula and the Hellenistic Mediterranean settled in the Iberian peninsula. The foundations were laid for the Hispano-Roman society. The Latin civilisation took root and left an indelible mark.
