Regions of Spain
Andalucía: the Autonomous Community
By h.b.
Oct 11, 2007 - 1:24 PM

The autonomous community of Andalucía, with a population of 7,975,672, covers an area of 87,597 square kilometres, and is divided into eight provinces: Almería, Cádiz, Córdoba, Granada, Huelva, Jaén, Málaga, and Sevilla. This last is the regional capital and the seat of the regional government, the Junta de Andalucía.

It is the largest of Spain’s seventeen autonomous communities in terms of population and the second largest in terms of land area, behind Castilla y León. Its land area represents 17.3% of Spanish territory.

The latest official population figures (January 2006 census) for the provinces are: Almería 635,850, Cádiz 1,194,062, Córdoba 788,287, Granada 876,184, Huelva 492,174, Jaén 662,751, Málaga 1,491,287 and Sevilla 1,835,077.

Population density for the region as a whole is 91 inhabitants per square kilometre, with a large part of the population concentrated in coastal areas and the Guadquivir Valley.
Twenty six of Andalucía’s 770 municipalities have a population of more than 50,000 inhabitants, with twelve above 100,000.

Situated at the far south west of the European Union, the region looks onto the meeting point of two seas and two continents: the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, with Africa just 15 kilometres away across the Strait of Gibraltar.
The Sierra Morena acts as a natural boundary for the region’s northern borders with Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha. Portugal lies to the West and the Murcia Region to the East. Cádiz provinces shares a land border with Gibraltar.

Maritime boundaries are the Mediterranean in the East and South, the Strait of Gibraltar and the Atlantic at the region’s south western border, and the Atlantic in the West, making up a total of 917 kilometres of coastline.

Spain’s Constitution approved in December 1931 during the Second Republic gave some of the Spanish regions the right to autonomy for the first time, which came for Cataluña in 1932 and the Basque Country in 1936. Talks were still being held with Andalucía, Aragón and Galicia, however, when the Civil War broke out in 1936.

Andalucía was not to achieve regional autonomy for almost fifty years, with the 1978 Constitution which came with the transition to democracy after Franco’s death in 1975, and which divided the Spain into 17 autonomous communities.

A provisional autonomous government (Junta de Andalucía preautonómica) was created in 1978, led by the PSOE Senator, Plácido Fernández Viagas. Three years later, in December 1981, Andalucía’s Statute of Autonomy was approved, granting the region extensive autonomous powers.

The first elections to the Andaluz parliament were held on 23rd May 1982.
The poll gave a victory to the left, and Rafael Escuredo, who had taken over from Fernández Viagas following his resignation in 1979, was voted in as the first President of the Junta de Andalucía, at the head of PSOE-A, the Partido Socialista Obrero Español deAndalucía.

PSOE have remained at the helm since then, with José Rodríguez de la Borbolla holding the Presidency from 1984 until 1990, and Manuel Chaves González from 27th July 1990 to date. Chaves has been General Secretary of PSOE-A since 1994, and was elected President of PSOE in July 2000.

A reform of the regional Statute was approved in 2007 which, in its preamble, describes Andalucía as a ‘national reality’ within the ‘inseparable unity of the Spanish nation.’
Although turnout was low in the referendum to ratify the document (just 36.2%), it received massive support, with 87.4% of voters placing their vote for ‘yes.’