There’s something about the “historic nationalities” (today’s autonomous regions of the Basque Country and Catalonia) that seems to make them especially fertile seed beds for the arts. Architecture in the Catalan city of Barcelona is synonymous with Antoni Gaudi, whilst the same city was home to the young Pablo Picasso.

But the field in which Basques and Catalonians currently seem to excel is the contemporary art of fashion design. These include the “father” of contemporary Spanish fashion, Cristobal Balenciaga, from Guetaria and Paco Rabanne, from San Sebastian, both in the Basque Country, with a host of others, including Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada, Custo Dalmau, Antonio Miro and Josep Font, all from Barcelona.

The creations of these designers and the international acclaim which they have achieved has put Spanish fashion houses on just as equal a footing as the likes of Paris or Milan.

And Spanish fashion is very big business these days. Some of the successes have become household names, not only in their home country of Spain, but around the world. Celebrity status has been achieved by brothers Custodio and David Dalmau, whose early T-shirt designing business brought their Custo Dalmau label almost overnight success. Another household name is the Zara chain (one of the largest in Spain), which has 2,244 outlets in nearly 60 countries worldwide, ensuring a multi-million pound annual turnover.

The success of the Spanish fashion industry has been fuelled by its overseas sales efforts and successful penetration of foreign markets. To take Zara as an example once again, the company has achieved a rate of growth of a staggering 22% a year since 2000, when it began its overseas marketing in earnest. The family-owned, Catalonian company of Mango operates 760 shops and franchises in 78 countries. Since 1998, when it focused its attention outside Spain, sales have grown by an average of 9 percent a year.

But success stories such as these are at the marketing end of the fashion business – the marketing target of the High Street and moderately-priced clothing, rather than innovative or creative “high fashion”.

And it is in the image-creating, name-building, fashion-as-art context that Spain also excels. With more than 50 fashion schools throughout the country – not just in Catalonia or the Basque Country, but all over, from Galicia to Andalusia – Spanish designers are selling their collections each year both at home and abroad.

They are following in the footsteps of someone who can properly be called the “father” of contemporary Spanish fashion and one of the most respected innovators in the international fashion world, Cristobal Balenciaga. Balenciaga was born in 1895 and moved from his native Basque fishing village under the patronage of the local Marquesa de Casa de Torres to study tailoring in Madrid. With the help of his patron, he found early success and opened branches of his boutique, Eisa, in Madrid, Barcelona and San Sebastian. His designs began to be favoured by the Spanish royal family and by fashion-conscious members of the aristocracy. When the Spanish civil war forced the closure of his boutiques in Spain, Balenciaga moved to Paris and the heady influence of foremost couturiers such as Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli and Mainbocher. His first showing was staged in 1937 and by 1939, even the French press was praising his work as a revolutionizing force in fashion.

Cristobal Balenciaga died in March 1972, when a lifelong client of his offered a striking and memorable epitaph: “Women did not have to be perfect or even beautiful to wear his clothes. His clothes made them beautiful.”

Another founding-father of a school of fashion – that of haute couture – also comes from the Basque Country. Paco Rabanne was born in San Sebastian in 1934 and founded haute couture in the 1960s. In 1966, he announced “12 experimental and unwearable dresses in contemporary materials”, a collection title that sounded more like a manifesto. Rhomboids and metal, clips and soldered material, and black fashion models dancing to the rhythms of Pierre Boulez. Then the collections followed one after another, with leather, metal and fabric tending to become increasingly fluid. The same year saw the creation of “disposable” clothing (paper dresses sold in envelopes) and the following year, the first “body-moulded” clothing.

Both Rabanne and Balenciaga before him, however, achieved their fame in the traditionally more established fashion shows of Paris, rather than their native Spain. Today, though, the primacy of the Parisian stage has been challenged by home-grown Spanish designers who continue to live, work and achieve international acclaim from their studios in Spain.

The names are almost too numerous to mention, but make sure to look out for graduate of Barcelona’s l’Escola d’Art i Tècniques de la Moda, Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada, whose main studio is now in Madrid, but who also has salons in other cities of Spain, Paris (of course) and New York. For high fashion knitwear, the leading Spanish name is Amaya Arzuaga, whose creations are aimed at the key international markets of Japan, the United States and the UK, as well as her home market in Spain. Her knitwear can be seen in such well-known stores as Saks Fifth Avenue, Barneys New York, Neiman Marcus, Charivari and Fred Segal; and in England, Harrods, Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, Whistles.

Probably the leading furrier designer in Spain at the moment is Elena Benarroch, who was born in Tangier. Her first furrier’s was opened in Madrid in 1979.

Barcelona-based Antonio Miro started his career in fashion during the 1970s when he established a shop called Groc, an unconventional fashion store, which catered to innovative and intellectual clientele. In 1986, together with Fernando Zallo and Ignacio Mallet, Antonio Miro launched the design house that bears his name with the purpose of creating a lifestyle brand based on his innovative designs. Miro won the Cristobal Balenciaga Award for Best Spanish Designer as early as 1987, in 2002 he won the Antoni Gaudi Medal for his exemplary work in the fashion industry and the 2002 Best Men’s Designer of the Year by GQ.

The final mention of Barcelona’s designers goes to Josep Font, whose outlet, the Big Boutique, asserts: “Every female fashion fan in Barcelona dreams of owning an outfit designed by local designer Josep Font. Font has been designing his own label for the past 15 years and is starting to gain the recognition he deserves on the world stage”.