Country information

General overview

• Area: 506, 000 km²
• Population: 47,190,493 hab
• Capital: Madrid
• Principal urban areas and number of inhabitants: Madrid (3, 265, 038), Barcelona (1, 615, 448), Valencia (798, 033), Seville (703, 021), Saragossa (674, 725), Malaga (568, 030), Murcia (442, 203) (INE - Spanish National Statistics Office, 2011)
• Official language and other recognised languages: Castilian (and Catalan, Basque, Galician)
• Regions: 17 autonomous communities (Andalusia, Aragon, Principality of Asturias, Balearic Islands, Canary Islands, Cantabria, Castile - Leon, Castile-La Mancha, Catalonia, Extremadura, Galicia, La Rioja, Madrid, Murcia, Navarre, Basque Country, Valencia) and two autonomous cities (Ceuta and Melilla).
• Religious situation: The religious landscape in Spain has changed substantially in the last decades, mainly due to the secularisation of the population and
  the increasing and more visible presence of religious minorities linked mainly to the arrival of migration fluxes. While nominally the
  majority (70,4%) of the population continues to self-identify as
  Catholic, the number of people belonging to religious minorities
  (2,6%) or who have no religion or are atheist (24,8%) has raised
  considerably (Survey data, CIS, 2013). According to data of the
  places of worship of minority religions, 57,5% belong to Protestant
  churches, 31,4% to Muslim communities and 11% to Jehovah’s
  Witnesses Kingdom’s Halls (Observatorio del Pluralismo Religioso,
  2013)

D 8 January 2014