Autonomous communities of Spain
From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.
There are seventeen parts of Spain called autonomous communities. Autonomous means it has power over things in that community. Each of these autonomous communities has its own government. These are similar to provinces in Canada or states in the United States of America, for example.
Spain also has fifty smaller parts called provinces. In 1978 these parts came together, making the autonomous communities. Before then, some of these provinces were together but were broken up again. The groups that were together once before are called "historic communities". The governments of these historic communities can do things that the governments of others cannot. In these places some people speak a different language to Spanish.
Seven of the autonomous communities only have one province. See provinces of Spain.
Here is a list of the autonomous communities, with their capital cities (the place where the government has its offices):
- Andalusia (its capital is Seville)
- Aragon (its capital is Zaragoza)
- Asturias (its capital is Oviedo)
- Balearic Islands (its capital is Palma de Mallorca)
- Basque Country (its capital is Vitoria)
- Canary Islands (it has two capitals - Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Santa Cruz de Tenerife)
- Cantabria (its capital is Santander)
- Castile-La Mancha (its capital is Toledo)
- Castile and Leon (its capital is Valladolid)
- Catalonia (its capital is Barcelona)
- Extremadura (its capital is Merida)
- Galicia (its capital is Santiago de Compostela)
- La Rioja (its capital is Logrono)
- Community of Madrid (its capital is Madrid)
- Region of Murcia (its capital is Murcia)
- Navarre (its capital is Pamplona)
- Community of Valencia (its capital is Valencia)
Spain also has two cities on the north coast of Africa. They are Ceuta and Melilla. They are not in any autonomous community. Instead, they are called "autonomous cities". Their governments can do more things than the government of a normal city, but not as many things as the government of an autonomous community.
