“In Spain, the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world.”

Federico Garcia Lorca, Spanish poet

Introduction

Spain is one of the most underrated countries in Europe. I find that many Americans, especially those who live in the western and southwestern US, have preconceptions of Spain as a sort of European version of Mexico. Wipe that out of your head. There are no shanty towns, big hats, mariachi bands, or spicy foods.

What you’ll find instead is a thoroughly European country, with history, traditions and architecture influenced by the three main cultures that have inhabited the peninsula over the last three millennia: Roman, Jewish and Moorish.

With over 4,000 miles of coastline you expect lots of beaches, but what surprises most first time visitors are the mountains. Spain has one of the highest elevations of any country on the continent, second only to Switzerland.

Just the Facts

  • About 430 miles long, 460 miles wide
  • Area: 195,000 square miles (bigger than California)
  • Population: 40 million people (a little more than California)
  • Capital: Madrid
  • Type of Government: Parliamentary Constitutional Monarchy
  • Chief of State: Felipe VI (since June 2014)
  • Head of Government: Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez (since June 2018)
  • Languages: Castilian, Catalan (Barcelona area, spoken by about 9 million people), Galician (northwestern Spain, spoken by about 3 million people), and Basque (northeastern Spain, spoken by about 500,000 people)
  • Money: Euro (€), here pronounced “EH-ooh-row”

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