Spain

constitutionally Spanish State18, also called Kingdom of Spain, note 1 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, 31 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
Tingitana 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 extension of 505 370 km², 12 making it the fourth largest country on the
continent, after Russia, Ukraine and France. Note 2 With an average altitude of 650
meters above sea level it is one of the most mountainous of Europe. Its population is 47
100 000 inhabitants32 (2020), which by the resolution mentioned above amounts to
approximately 47 649 000 inhabitants.13 The peninsular territory shares land borders with
France and Andorra to the north, with Portugal to the west and with the British territory
of Gibraltar to the south. In its African territories, it shares land and sea borders with
Morocco. Share with France the sovereignty over the island of the Pheasants at the mouth
of the Bidasoa River and five Pyrenean facerías.33

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
».3 In 2012, it was the mother tongue of 82% of Spaniards.34 According to Article 3.2,«
other Spanish languages will also be official in the respective Communities Autonomous
according to its Statutes ».3

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.35 It is also the eighth largest country in the world presence of multinationals.36
37 It has a very high human development index (0.893), according to the 2018 report of
the UN Development Program.15

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.38 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
Reconquista, along with the subsequent annexation of Navarre, when it is possible to
speak of the foundation of Spain, as it was recognized abroad.39 40 41 Already in the
Modern Age, the Spanish monarchs dominated the first overseas global empire, which
covered territories on five continents, note 3 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.19