Regions of Spain
Valencia: the Autonomous Community
By m.p. - Nov 8, 2007 - 7:38 AM
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The Comunitat Valenciana (Comunidad Valenciana in Spanish) lies on Spain’s eastern border with the Mediterranean Sea, extending southwards from Cataluña to Murcia. It shares borders to the West of the Region with – from North to South - Aragón, Castilla-La Mancha and Murcia. It covers a total area of 23,255 square kilometres, with the latest population figure from the January 2006 census at 4,806,908.
Valencia is the eighth largest of Spain’s autonomous communities, making up 4.6% of total Spanish territory.
The capital is Valencia City.
Valencia is divided into three provinces: Castelló/Castellón (6,632 sq kms, pop. 559,761) in the North, below that the province of València/Valencia (10,806 sq kms pop. 2,463,592), and Alacant/Alicante in the South (5,817 sq kms pop. 1,783,555.)
Included within the province of Valencia, although outside its borders, is the comarca or district of Rincón de Ademuz, a small enclave which lies between the provinces of Teruel in Aragón, and Cuenca, in Castilla-La Mancha.
The Valencian language (valencià/valenciano) has co-official status in the Valencia region along with Spanish.
Valencia’s first Statute of Autonomy was approved in 1982, under the terms of Spain’s 1978 Constitution. The first election to the regional parliament, the Corts Valencianes, gave a victory to the PSOE party, with Joan Lerma i Blasco as the first elected President of the Generalitat from 1983. He remained in the position until 1995, when Eduardo Zaplana Hernández Soro, who is now spokesman for the opposition Partido Popular in Congress, became President of the Valencia Region, thanks to a pact with Unión Valenciana.
Zaplana was returned with an absolute majority in 1999, but resigned before the end of his term to take up the position of Minister for Employment and Social Affairs with the Partido Popular government in Madrid. He was succeeded in May 2002 by José Luis Olivas Martínez, who had been appointed Vice-President of the Generalitat in 1999.
The Partido Popular held onto the Presidency in the 2003 regional election, when Francisco Enrique Camps Ortiz led the party to victory with an absolute majority, increasing his lead four years later in the 2007 regional election.
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