COUNTRY AT A GLANCE

Spain, also called the Kingdom of Spain, is a transcontinental country, a member of the European Union, constituted in a social and democratic state of law and whose form of government is the parliamentary monarchy. Its territory, with capital in Madrid, is organized in seventeen autonomous communities, formed in turn by fifty provinces: and two autonomous cities. Spain is located both in southern Western Europe and in northern Africa. In Europe, it occupies most of the Iberian Peninsula, known as peninsular Spain, and the Balearic Islands (in the western Mediterranean Sea); in Africa there are the cities of Ceuta (on the peninsula) and Melilla (on the cape of Tres Forcas), the Canary Islands (in the northeastern Atlantic Ocean), the Chafarinas Islands (Mediterranean Sea), the rock of Vélez de la Gomera (Mediterranean Sea), Alhucemas Islands (Gulf of Alhucemas Islands) and Alboran Island (Alboran Sea). The municipality of Llivia, in the Pyrenees, constitutes an enclave completely surrounded by French territory. Complete the set of territories a series of islands and islets off the peninsular coasts themselves. It has an area of ​​505 370 km² de facto, given that the UN under resolution S / 2002/16132 testifies that the administrative power of Western Sahara is Spain and for which it determines an area of ​​772,000 km². It is the fourth largest country on the continent, after Russia, Ukraine and France. With an average altitude of 650 meters above sea level it is one of the most mountainous countries in Europe. Its population is 47 100 000 inhabitants (2020), which by the resolution mentioned above amounts to approximately 47.649 000. The peninsular territory shares land borders with France and Andorra to the north, with Portugal to the west and with the territory Gibraltar from the south. In its African territories, it shares land and sea borders with Morocco. He shares with France the sovereignty over the island of the Faisanes at the mouth of the Bidasoa River and five Pyrenean facerías. According to the Constitution, and according to its article 3.1, «Spanish is the official Spanish language of the State. All Spaniards have a duty to know it and the right to use it. “In 2012, it was the mother tongue of 82% of Spaniards. According to Article 3.2,” other Spanish languages ​​will also be official in the respective Autonomous Communities of according to its Statutes ». Gross domestic product places the Spanish economy in the thirteenth world position. Spain is a tourist power, as it is the second most visited country in the world, with 82 million tourists in 2017, and the second country in the world in economic income from tourism. It is also the eighth country in the world with the largest presence of multinationals. 37 38 It has a very high human development index (0.893), according to the 2018 report of the UN Development Program. The first confirmed presence of hominids of the genus Homo dates back to 1.2 million years before the present, as evidenced by the discovery of a jaw of a Homo not yet classified in Atapuerca. In the third century BC C., the Roman intervention in the Peninsula took place, which led to a subsequent conquest of what, later, would become Hispania. In the Middle Ages, the area was conquered by different Germanic peoples and Muslims, these coming to have a presence for more than seven centuries. It is not until the s. XV d. C., with the dynastic union of Castile and Aragon and the culmination of the Reconquest, along with the subsequent annexation of Navarre, when one can speak of the foundation of Spain, as was recognized abroad. Already in the Modern Age, the Spanish monarchs dominated the first global overseas empire, which encompassed territories on five continents, leaving a vast cultural and linguistic heritage across the globe. In the early nineteenth century, after successive wars in Latin America, it lost most of its territories in America, increasing this situation with the disaster of 98. During this century, there would also be a war against the French invader, a series of civil wars, a ephemeral republic replaced again by a constitutional monarchy and the process of modernization of the country. In the first third of the twentieth century, a constitutional republic was proclaimed. A failed military coup caused the outbreak of a civil war, whose end gave way to the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, ended with the death of this in 1975, at which time a transition to democracy began, whose climax was the wording , ratification in referendum and promulgation of the 1978 Constitution, which advocates freedom, justice, equality and political pluralism as superior values ​​of the legal system.