Regions of Spain
Madrid: the autonomous community
By m.p. - Nov 3, 2007 - 5:14 PM
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The autonomous community of Madrid covers an area of 8,028 sq kms and is the twelfth largest of Spain’s 17 autonomous communities, making up 1.6% of total Spanish territory. It has just one province: Madrid. The Spanish capital is also the capital of the autonomous community and of the province.
More than half the region’s population of 6,008,183 live in the capital, where 3,128,600 people were officially registered in the January 2006 census. As a province, it is the most populous of Spain’s 53 provinces, and ranks third behind Andalucía and Cataluña as an autonomous community.
Lying in the centre of Spain, Madrid borders with just two other regions: Castilla-La Mancha and Castilla y León.
The province of Madrid was formerly included in the region which was known as ‘Castilla La Nueva,’ together with a large part of what is today the autonomous community of Castilla-La Mancha.
The economic disparity between the two areas led to the province being established as a separate community when Spain was divided into autonomous regions under the terms of the 1978 Constitution.
The region’s first Statute of Autonomy was approved on 1st March 1983, and the province was established with the official title of the Comunidad de Madrid – the Community of Madrid.
Joaquín Leguina Herrán led PSOE to victory in the first regional elections held in 1983, remaining as President of Madrid until 1995, when he was defeated by the Partido Popular’s candidate, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, who was later voted in for a second mandate in the 1999 election.
Ruiz-Gallardón stood as the PP candidate for Mayor of Madrid in 2003 – a position which he still holds today – and Esperanza Aguirre Gil de Biedma was returned as the autonomous community’s second Partido Popular President in the regional elections held that year, and the first woman to be elected as President of an autonomous region.
She was returned for a second mandate in 2007, in a victory which saw the Partido Popular gaining 53.3% of the vote and a dramatic increase of ten seats in their absolute majority in the regional parliament, ‘la Asamblea de Madrid’ – the Madrid Assembly.
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