File:Spain and Portugal (MODIS 2015-11-01).jpg

English: The autumn skies were clear over the Iberian Peninsula in late October 2015. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard NASA�s Aqua satellite captured this true-color image as it flew over the region on October 22.

The Iberian Peninsula is made up of Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar and Andorra. Spain covers 550,840 sq. km, or about 85% of the peninsula while the second largest country, Portugal, at 91,630 sq. km makes up 15%. The tiny Principality of Andorra, which sits between Spain and France and, in this image, is covered by cloud owns 4,992 sq. km of ground and the even tinier British Territory of Gibraltar comes in at only 7 sq. km. Gibraltar sits at the southern tip of Spain near where the narrow Strait of Gibraltar meets the Mediterranean Sea. The North Atlantic Ocean sits on the west and northwest of the Peninsula.

Although ancient roman geographers describe the shape of the peninsula as resembling a stretched ox-hide �extending in length from west to east, its fore-parts toward the east, and in breadth from north to south�, the view from space lends more toward the more frequently used modern description of �pentagonal�.

The major geographic feature is the Meseta, the high plateau that sits in central Spain. The high, wind-blown plateau makes up over 40% of the country and has an average altitude of 650 m. It is bordered on the north by the mountains of the Cordillera Cantabrica, to the south by the Sierra Morena and it is divided by the Sierra and Guadarrama and Sierra de Gredos. The northern part of the Meseta is known as a rich agricultural area, while the southern Meseta is home to Madrid, the capital of and largest city in Spain.