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Location: West Europe
Area: 505,992 km²
Inhabitants: 43,06 million
Capital city: Madrid
Currency: Euro
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Spain, officially the Kingdom of Spain (Spanish: Reino de España, unofficially in Catalan: Regne d'Espanya; Basque: Espainiako Erresuma; Galician: Reino de España; Asturian: Reinu d'España; Occitan: Regne d'Espanha), is a European constitutional monarchy. It is the largest of the three sovereign nations that make up the Iberian Peninsula—the others are Portugal and Andorra—located in Southern Europe. To the west and |
to the south of Galicia, Spain borders Portugal. To the south, it borders Gibraltar and, through its cities in North Africa (Ceuta and Melilla), Morocco. To the northeast, along the Pyrenees mountain range, it borders France and the tiny principality of Andorra. It also includes the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea, the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean and a number of uninhabited islands on the Mediterranean side of the strait of Gibraltar, known as Plazas de soberanía, such as the Chafarine islands, the isle of Alborán, the "rocks" (peñones) of Vélez and Alhucemas, and the tiny Isla Perejil. In the northeast along the Pyrenees, a small exclave town called Llívia in Catalonia is surrounded by French territory.
The name Spain comes from the Latin name Hispania, an evolution of the Phoenician name i-shaphan-im "island of the rock hyrax", possibly referring to rabbits (cf. Heb shephardhi "Spanish").
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