Province (Spain)

The present fifty provinces of Spain are grouped by autonomous communities.

The province is a Spanish administrative demarcation recognized in the current Spanish Constitution and whose origin dates back to the territorial division of Spain in 1833. Currently there are a total of 50 provinces that, together with the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla and the sovereignty squares in North Africa, comprise the entire Spanish territory.

Each province is divided into a variable number of municipalities. Its government and administration is constitutionally attributed to the provincial councils, corporations of a representative nature that are based on municipal corporations. The following provinces are excluded from this administrative organization:

• The provinces corresponding to the uniprovincial Autonomous Communities of Asturias, Cantabria, Region of Murcia, Navarra, La Rioja and Community of Madrid, whose government competes directly with the Autonomous Community.
• The provinces of Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife, of the autonomous community of Canarias, whose government and administration, in the aspects that do not correspond to the autonomous community, is carried out by the island lobbyists.
• The province of the Balearic Islands, whose government and administration, in the aspects that do not correspond to the autonomous community, is carried out by the Island Councils.
• The three provinces of the Basque Country, which the Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Country calls "historical territories", and in which the administration and the government of each one corresponds to the Foral Provincial Council itself, whose presidency is named by the General Boards of the corresponding "historical territory", chosen by universal suffrage by the neighbors of this "historical territory".

History

Provincial Division of 1833

The current provincial division was devised in 1833 by Javier de Burgos on the limits of the old Hispanic kingdoms, based on the egalitarian and centralizing ideals of the New Regime that emerged from the French Revolution. It was officially established as a provincial and regional division of Spain by Royal Decree of November 30. This division is basically still in force, except for small territorial readjustments that occurred mainly in the years immediately following and with the exception of the decree-law promulgated by the board of Directors of Miguel Primo de Rivera on September 21, 1927 by which the Canary Islands are divided into the two current provinces.

The number of provinces increased when the territories that made up the former Spanish West Africa were recognized as such. In 1958 the territories of Río de Oro and Saguia el Hamra were united, creating the province of Spanish Sahara, today Western Sahara. The capital of the province was El Aaiún and it bore the SH automobile license plate. The administration of the province was shared with the neighboring countries of Morocco and Mauritania in 1975 by the Madrid tripartite agreement, but not sovereignty, which —according to international law— would still remain in the hands of Spain. Another territory of Spanish West Africa was also a Spanish province, that of Santa Cruz de la Mar Pequeña later called Ifni, capital Sidi Ifni, occupied by Spain in 1934, and which was granted the status of province in 1958, handing over to the neighboring country of Morocco in 1969. And since 1959 the former region of Spanish Guinea was also two overseas provinces. On the one hand, the island of Fernando Poo (current Bioko), capital Santa Isabel (current Malabo), and on the other the province of Río Muni, in the continental zone, capital Bata, on which the small islands of Elobey also depended. Annobón and Corisco. In 1963 both provinces merged into the Autonomous Regime of Equatorial Guinea, with its own Self-Government Statute (Equatorial Guinea Autonomy Law of 1963), gaining independence in 1968 as the Republic of Equatorial Guinea.

The provinces in the current constitutional framework

Spanish autonomous provinces and communities

The current Spanish Constitution includes the provincial division of the State, and therefore the document that creates them, by establishing that this «is organized territorially in municipalities, in provinces and in the Autonomous Communities that are constituted. All these entities enjoy autonomy for the management of their respective interests» (article 137).

Likewise, article 141.1 of the Spanish Constitution defines the province as the «local entity with its own legal personality, determined by the grouping of municipalities and territorial division for the fulfillment of State activities». By the way, it allows the "alteration" of the current provincial map "through organic law."

The Constitution also uses the provinces as the basis for the establishment of autonomous communities. For example, article 143 establishes that "bordering provinces with common historical, cultural and economic characteristics, island territories and provinces with a historical regional entity may access their self-government and become Autonomous Communities". Thus, in Spain there are autonomous communities that are multiprovincial (that is, that include several provinces) and uniprovincial (that is, that comprise a single province).

Likewise, the province is taken as a constituency for the purposes of general elections to the Congress of Deputies and the Senate, except in the case of insular provinces, in which each island or group of them constitutes a constituency for the purposes of election, corresponding to electing three senators for each of the larger islands (Gran Canaria, Mallorca and Tenerife) and one for each of the remaining islands (Ibiza-Formentera, Menorca, Fuerteventura, La Gomera, El Hierro, Lanzarote and La Palma).. The towns of Ceuta and Melilla each elect two senators.

Administrative organization

Ordinarily, the government and autonomous administration of each province correspond to its provincial council.

However, there are various regimes different from the ordinary one:

• Uniprovincial Autonomous Communities assume the competencies, means and resources that correspond in the ordinary regime to provincial representatives.
• The island autonomous communities (Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands) have island councils or councils.
• In the Basque Country, the foral representatives of the historical territories (i.e., the entities in which, in turn, the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country is divided) assume the competences of the provincial deputies, as well as the others that correspond to them as fornal organs under the Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Country.

Statistical aspects

Since 2003 and for statistical purposes, based on European regulations and established by Eurostat, there are the NUTS units in force in the European Union. The 50 Spanish provinces and the two autonomous cities (Ceuta and Melilla) are classified at NUTS-3 levels.

Name and list of provinces

C L O S BI SS NA HU L GI B T CS PM V A ♪ Z You. CU AB AL GR MA EC ML TF CA SEE H GC M BA CC TO CR SA CO J AV VA ZA VI GS Good. PO LA OR P I do. SO GU Atlantic Ocean Atlantic Ocean Cantabrian Sea Mediterranean Sea France Andorra Morocco Portugal

Provinces of Spain identified according to standard ISO 3166-2

In accordance with the Royal Decree of November 30, 1833 (which established the provincial division), «the provinces will take the name of their respective capitals, except those of Álava, Navarra, Guipúzcoa and Vizcaya, which retain their current names ».

Article 25.2 of Royal Legislative Decree 781/1986, of April 18, approving the revised text of the current legal provisions on local government, states that «only by means of a law approved by the Cortes Generales The name and capital of the provinces can be modified.

On the basis of the above, the Cortes Generales have approved by means of the corresponding law the modification of the denomination of up to 13 Spanish provinces:

• La Rioja: Law 57/1980 amended the official name of the province of Logroño by the traditional province of La Rioja.
• Cantabria: the unique final provision of the Cantabrian Autonomy Statute (Organic Law 8/1981) modifies the denomination of the province of Santander for the province of Cantabria.
• Asturias: Law 1/1983 amended the official name of the Oviedo province by the traditional province of Asturias.
• Gerona and Lérida: Law 2/1992 amended the official name of the provinces of Gerona and Lérida by that of Girona and Lleida (names in Catalan of the same).
• Balearic Islands: Law 13/1997 amended the official name of the province of the Balearic Islands for the Illes Balears (name in Catalan of the province).
• The Coruña and Orense: Law 2/1998 amended the official denomination of the provinces of La Coruña and Orense for that of Coruña and Ourense (name in Galician of them).
• Alicante, Castellón and Valencia: Law 25/1999 declared co-officials such denominations in Castilian as those of Alacant, Castelló and València in Valencia, according to the Statute of Autonomy of the Valencian Community (Organic Law 5/1982).
• Álava, Guipúzcoa and Vizcaya: Law 19/2011 changed the official denomination of the provinces of Álava, Guipúzcoa and Vizcaya by that of Arab/Alava, Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia (name in euskera—little in the case of Álava—of those provinces).

Table of provinces

The following table lists the 50 Spanish provinces, their capital, the autonomous community to which they belong and the list of all their municipalities.

The cities of Ceuta and Melilla are not integrated into the provincial organization, but constituted as autonomous cities, in accordance with their own statutes of autonomy.

Demographics

• 

  Population density in the Spanish provinces in 1857

• 

  Population density in the Spanish provinces in 2007

• 

  Population growth in the Spanish provinces during the centuryXX.

• 

  Population growth in the Spanish provinces between 1981 and 2005

Old Spanish provinces

• Spain
  • Betanzos Province
  • Bierzo Province
  • Calatayud Province
  • Province of Cartagena
  • Chinchilla Province
  • Province of Játiva
  • Province of La Mancha
  • Province of Mondoñedo
  • Province of Sanlúcar de Barrameda
  • Province of Santiago de Compostela
  • Toro Province
  • Trujillo Province
  • Tuy Province
• Spanish Provinces in Africa:
  • Sahara Province
  • Province of the Canary Islands
  • Ifni Province
  • Gulf of Guinea Province, disaggregated by:
    • Fernando Poo Province
    • Rio Muni Province
• Spanish provinces in América