The boundaries of provinces can only be altered by the Spanish Parliament,[1] giving rise to the common view that the 17 autonomous communities are subdivided into 50 provinces. In reality, the system is not hierarchical but defined according to jurisdiction (Spanish: competencias).[6]
The body charged with government and administration of a province is the provincial council, but their existence is controversial. As the province is defined as a "local entity" in the Constitution, the Provincial council belongs to the sphere of local government.
Historically, the provinces served mainly as transmission belts for policies enacted in Madrid, as Spain was a highly centralised state for most of its modern history. The provinces were the "building-blocks" from which the autonomous communities were created following processes defined in the 1978 Constitution. Consequently, no province is divided between these communities.
The importance of the provinces has declined since the adoption of the system of autonomous communities in the period of the Spanish transition to democracy. They nevertheless remain electoral districts for national elections.
Provinces are also used as geographical references: for instance in postal addresses and telephone codes. National media will also frequently use the province to disambiguate small towns or communities whose names occur frequently throughout Spain. A small town would normally be identified as being in, say, Valladolid province rather than the autonomous community of Castile and León. In addition, organisations outside Spain use provinces for statistical analysis and policy making and in comparison with other countries including NUTS, OECD, FIPS, CIA World Factbook, ISO 3166-2 and the UN's Second Administrative Level Boundaries data set project (SALB).
Most of the provinces are named after their capital town, with the exceptions of Asturias, Cantabria, the Balearic Islands, La Rioja, and Navarre — which are autonomous communities consisting of a single province — as well as the historically autonomous Álava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa. The names of the provinces of Las Palmas and Castellón are taken from their respective capital cities, but shortened. In almost all cases, the capital of the province is also its biggest settlement, with the exception of the provinces of Pontevedra (Vigo), Cádiz (Jerez), and Asturias (capital is Oviedo, but largest city is Gijón). Only two capitals of autonomous communities —Mérida in Extremadura and Santiago de Compostela in Galicia — are not also the capitals of provinces.
Seven of the autonomous communities comprise no more than one province each: Asturias, the Balearic Islands, Cantabria, La Rioja, Madrid, Murcia, and Navarre. These are sometimes referred to as "uniprovincial" communities. Ceuta, Melilla, and the plazas de soberanía are not part of any province.
A map of Spain's provinces (names are shown in Spanish). Ceuta and Melilla were formerly part of Cádiz and Málaga provinces respectively, but are currently not part of any province.
List of provinces
The table below lists the provinces of Spain. For each, the capital city is given, together with an indication of the autonomous community to which it belongs and a link to a list of municipalities in the province. The names of the provinces and their capitals are ordered alphabetically according to the form in which they appear in the main Wikipedia articles describing them. Unless otherwise indicated, their Spanish-language names are the same; locally valid names in Spain's other co-official languages (Basque, Catalan, which is officially called Valencian in the Valencian Community, Galician) are also indicated where they differ.
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