Reino de España Kingdom of Spain
 Location of Spain (dark green) | Spain Spain (Spanish: España (help·info), IPA: [es'paɲa]) or the Kingdom of Spain (Reino de España), is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish mainland is bordered to the south and east almost entirely by the Mediterranean Sea (except for a tiny land boundary with Gibraltar); to the north by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; and to the west by the Atlantic Ocean and Portugal. Spanish territory also includes the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean off the African coast, and two autonomous cities in North Africa, Ceuta and Melilla, that border Morocco. With an area of 504,030 km², Spain is the second largest country in Western Europe (behind France) and with an average altitude of 650 m, the second highest country in Europe (behind Switzerland).  Spain is a constitutional monarchy organised as a parliamentary democracy, and has been a member of the European Union since 1986. It is a developed country with the eighth largest economy in the world and fifth largest in the EU, based on nominal GDP.Spain is politically organized into 17 Autonomous Communities (comunidades autónomas) and 2 autonomous cities (ciudades autónomas) - Ceuta and Melilla. Administratively Spain also comprises fifty provinces. Seven autonomous communities are composed of only one province: Asturias, Balearic Islands, Cantabria, La Rioja, Madrid, Murcia, and Navarre. Languages "Castilian", most commonly known in the English language as "Spanish" (though called both español and castellano in Spanish) is the official language in all Spain. Nonetheless, other languages, proper to its constituent communities, have been declared co-official with Spanish in the territories in which they are spoken, namely:
Spain's legacy: a map of the Hispanophone world.Asturian (asturianu), though not official, is "protected" in Asturias. There are also some other surviving Romance minority languages such as Astur-Leonese, Leonese, Extremaduran, Cantabrian, Aragonese, and others. Unlike Aranese, Basque, Catalan/Valencian and Galician, these do not have any official status because of their very small number of speakers, lack of both a historic written tradition and self-awareness as a language which has resulted in a lack of popular demand for their recognition in the regions in which they are spoken. In the tourist areas of the Mediterranean coast and the islands, English and German are widely spoken by tourists, foreign residents, and tourism workers. The following networks operate in Spain:
|
