Provinces of Spain#Provinces

{{Main|History of the territorial organization of Spain}}

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The layout of Spain's provinces closely follows the pattern of the territorial division of the country carried out in 1833. The only major change of provincial borders since that time has been the division of the Province of Canary Islands into the provinces of Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

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 processed 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 Álava, Asturias, Biscay, Cantabria, Gipuzkoa, the Balearic Islands, La Rioja, and Navarre, and a name reduction in Las Palmas and Castellón— and biggest townSee Ranked lists of Spanish municipalities. —with the exception of Pontevedra (Vigo), Asturias (Gijón) and Cádiz (Jerez). 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.

File:Provinces of Spain.svg

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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• {{cite web |title=The Spanish Constitution |url=https://www.boe.es/legislacion/documentos/ConstitucionINGLES.pdf |publisher=Agencia Estatal Boletín Oficial del Estado |access-date=12 June 2019 |language=English |date=1978|ref={{harvid|Spanish Constitution|1978}}}}
• {{cite web|title=Local Government Act (Organic Law 7/1985)|url=https://www.boe.es/eli/es/l/1985/04/02/7/con |publisher=Agencia Estatal Boletín Oficial del Estado |access-date=12 June 2019 |year=1985|language=Spanish|ref={{harvid|Local Government Act|1985}}}}
• {{cite journal |title=Reflexiones sobre el gobierno local |trans-title=Reflections on local government |language=Spanish |first=Manuel |last=Zafra Víctor |journal=Anuario del Gobierno Local |issn=2013-4924 |issue=1 |year=2004 |isbn=84-609-5895-7 |accessdate=9 June 2022 |location=Barcelona |publisher=Institut de Dret Públic |format=pdf |url=http://repositorio.gobiernolocal.es/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10873/519/097-114 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20160809071942/http://repositorio.gobiernolocal.es/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10873/519/097-114%20Zafra.pdf |archivedate=2016-08-09}}
• {{cite web |title=Local Government in Spain |url=https://www.hacienda.gob.es/Documentacion/Publico/SGT/CATALOGO_SEFP/223_Regimen-Local-ING-INTERNET.pdf|publisher=Ministry of Public Administration |access-date=11 June 2022 |language=English|ref={{harvid|MPA|}}}}

• Political divisions of Spain
• Local government in Spain
• Autonomous communities of Spain
• Comarcas of Spain
• ISO 3166-2:ES
• List of provincial flags of Spain
• Ranked lists of Spanish provinces
• Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces

{{Commons category|Provinces of Spain}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20160306051250/http://www.maps.data-spain.com/spain/political_provinces.html Maps of the provinces of Spain]
• [http://www.ine.es/daco/daco42/codmun/codmun07/07codmunmapa.htm List of municipalities of Spain listed by province] from the Spanish [http://www.ine.es/ INE] (National Statistics Institute) {{in lang|es}}

{{Articles on second-level administrative divisions of European countries}}

{{Provinces of Spain}}

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Spain 2

Provinces

Spain

Category:Subdivisions of Spain