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Provinces of Spain
Provinces of Spain
Category	Province
Location	Spain
Found in	Autonomous community
Created by	Royal Decree (30/11/1833)
Created	1833;
Number	50
Populations	95,258–6,458,684
Areas	1,980–21,766 km²
Government	Provincial council;
Subdivisions	Comarca, municipality;

A province in Spain^{[note 1]} is a territorial division defined as a collection of municipalities.^[1]^[2]^[3] The current provinces of Spain correspond by and large to the provinces created under the purview of the 1833 territorial re-organization of Spain, with a similar predecessor from 1822 (during the Trienio Liberal) and an earlier precedent in the 1810 Napoleonic division of Spain into 84 prefectures.^[4] There are many other groupings of municipalities that comprise the local government of Spain.

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).^[5]

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.

Provincial organization

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 town^[6] —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.

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.

Provinces

Province name	Capital	Autonomous community	Lists of municipalities
A Coruña (Galician); La Coruña (Spanish)	A Coruña (Galician); La Coruña (Spanish)	Galicia	Municipalities
Álava (Spanish); Araba (Basque)	Vitoria (Spanish); Gasteiz (Basque)	Basque Country	Municipalities
Albacete	Albacete	Castilla-La Mancha	Municipalities
Alicante (Spanish); Alacant (Valencian)	Alicante; Alacant (Valencian)	Valencian Community	Municipalities
Almería	Almería	Andalusia	Municipalities
Asturias	Oviedo	Asturias	Municipalities
Ávila	Ávila	Castile and León	Municipalities
Badajoz	Badajoz	Extremadura	Municipalities
Balearic Islands (English); Illes Balears (Catalan); Islas Baleares (Spanish)	Palma	Balearic Islands	Municipalities
Barcelona	Barcelona	Catalonia	Municipalities
Biscay (English); Vizcaya (Spanish); Bizkaia (Basque)	Bilbao (Spanish); Bilbo (Basque)	Basque Country	Municipalities
Burgos	Burgos	Castile and León	Municipalities
Cáceres	Cáceres	Extremadura	Municipalities
Cádiz	Cádiz	Andalusia	Municipalities
Cantabria	Santander	Cantabria	Municipalities
Castellón (Spanish); Castelló (Valencian)	Castellón de la Plana; Castelló de la Plana (Valencian)	Valencian Community	Municipalities
Ciudad Real	Ciudad Real	Castilla-La Mancha	Municipalities
Córdoba	Córdoba	Andalusia	Municipalities
Cuenca	Cuenca	Castilla-La Mancha	Municipalities
Guipúzcoa (Spanish); Gipuzkoa (Basque)	San Sebastián (Spanish); Donostia (Basque)	Basque Country	Municipalities
Girona (Catalan); Gerona (Spanish)	Girona (Catalan); Gerona (Spanish)	Catalonia	Municipalities
Granada	Granada	Andalusia	Municipalities
Guadalajara	Guadalajara	Castilla-La Mancha	Municipalities
Huelva	Huelva	Andalusia	Municipalities
Huesca	Huesca (Spanish language)	Aragon	Municipalities
Jaén	Jaén	Andalusia	Municipalities
La Rioja	Logroño	La Rioja	Municipalities
Las Palmas	Las Palmas	Canary Islands	Municipalities
León	León	Castile and León	Municipalities
Lleida (Catalan); Lérida (Spanish)	Lleida (Catalan); Lérida (Spanish)	Catalonia	Municipalities
Lugo	Lugo	Galicia	Municipalities
Madrid	Madrid	Community of Madrid	Municipalities
Málaga	Málaga	Andalusia	Municipalities
Murcia	Murcia	Region of Murcia	Municipalities
Navarre; Navarra (Spanish); Nafarroa (Basque)	Pamplona; Iruña (Basque)	Navarre	Municipalities
Ourense (Galician); Orense (Spanish)	Ourense (Galician); Orense (Spanish)	Galicia	Municipalities
Palencia	Palencia	Castile and León	Municipalities
Pontevedra	Pontevedra	Galicia	Municipalities
Salamanca	Salamanca	Castile and León	Municipalities
Santa Cruz de Tenerife	Santa Cruz de Tenerife	Canary Islands	Municipalities
Segovia	Segovia	Castile and León	Municipalities
Seville; Sevilla (Spanish)	Seville; Sevilla (Spanish)	Andalusia	Municipalities
Soria	Soria	Castile and León	Municipalities
Tarragona	Tarragona	Catalonia	Municipalities
Teruel	Teruel	Aragon	Municipalities
Toledo	Toledo	Castilla-La Mancha	Municipalities
Valencia; València (Valencian)	Valencia; València (Valencian)	Valencian Community	Municipalities
Valladolid	Valladolid	Castile and León	Municipalities
Zamora	Zamora	Castile and León	Municipalities
Zaragoza	Zaragoza	Aragon	Municipalities

Notes

^
- Spanish: provincias, IPA: [pɾoˈβinθjas]; sing. provincia)
- Basque probintziak (IPA: [pɾobints̻iak], sing. probintzia.
- Catalan províncies (IPA: [pɾuˈβinsiəs]), sing. província.
- Galician provincias (IPA: [pɾoˈβinθjɐs]), sing. provincia.

References

^ ^a ^b Spanish Constitution 1978, Article 141(1).
^ Zafra Víctor 2004, p. 102.
^ Local Government Act 1985, Article 31.
^ Canel 1994, pp. 51.
^ MPA, paragraph 1.
^ See Ranked lists of Spanish municipalities.

Bibliography

"The Spanish Constitution" (PDF). Agencia Estatal Boletín Oficial del Estado. 1978. Retrieved 12 June 2019.
"Local Government Act (Organic Law 7/1985)" (in Spanish). Agencia Estatal Boletín Oficial del Estado. 1985. Retrieved 12 June 2019.
Zafra Víctor, Manuel (2004). "Reflexiones sobre el gobierno local" [Reflections on local government] (PDF). Anuario del Gobierno Local (in Spanish) (1). Barcelona: Institut de Dret Públic. ISBN 84-609-5895-7. ISSN 2013-4924. Archived from the original (pdf) on 2016-08-09. Retrieved 9 June 2022.
"Local Government in Spain" (PDF). Ministry of Public Administration. Retrieved 11 June 2022.