Spain is a country of the European Union and is made up of 50 provinces and 2 autonomous cities: Ceuta and Melilla. But to arrive at this number, it is necessary to take into account all the Autonomous Communities in the country, which are 17, and how many provinces there are in each one to arrive at a total sum of how many provinces Spain has. To begin with, it would be necessary to know what a province is and what it is a subnational State entity, that is, a territory within a State such as Spain in this case, and that it has laws encompassed within that State.
It was the Romans who began the division of Spain into provinces and the name was given because in Latin it comes from pro, which is for, and from vincia, which is victory, and the territories occupied by the Romans outside the Italian Peninsula were thus called. In Spain, in addition to provinces, they were also called corregimientos, because the person in charge of them was a corregidor; Later, with the Bourbons, they came to be called quartermasters because a quartermaster was in charge of them and this category of province reached the territories below the empires. For what they have been evolving and increasing the number of provinces that existed.
The Spanish provincial division began in 1833 by the politician Javier de Burgos, but it was not until 1978 with the Spanish Constitution, when the provinces were recognized as we know them today. The only notable change occurred in 1927 when Miguel Primo de Rivera decided to divide the Canary Islands into two provinces and for other Spanish provinces to leave because they were no longer part of Spanish territory and were also in Africa. There are 50 and although many do not know if Ceuta and Melilla are provinces or not, the answer is no, they are autonomous cities, so it would be wrong to say that there are 52 provinces in Spain.
The Community that brings together the most provinces is Castilla y León with 9, followed by Andalusia with 8, with several single provinces such as Madrid, Murcia, La Rioja, Navarra and Asturias. Here we show you how many provinces Spain has and within which Autonomous Community they are so that you do not have any doubts and are clear in which part of the Iberian Peninsula they are located.
Starting from the northwest we have the Community of Galicia that has four provinces that are A Coruña, Then, Orense and Pontevedra. On your right is Asturias, which is uniprovincial, like a few other Spanish Communities, such as Cantabria, which is on your right. Following in the line is the Basque Country, which in turn has three provinces that are, Vizcaya, Guipúzcoa and Álava; then there is Navarra, which is once again single-province like La Rioja, which is just below; to the right is the Community of Aragon, which has three provinces: Huesca, Zaragoza and Teruel; and to finish with the north we have Catalonia that has four provinces that are Barcelona, Tarragona, Lleida and Gerona.
Bordering the Valencian coast we have Valencia, Alicante and Castellón de la Plana, which are the three provinces of the Valencian Community. Just below is another single province that is Murcia. If we continue along the coast we have the second Community with the largest number of provinces, Andalusia, and it has 8: Huelva, Cádiz, Málaga, Granada, Almería, Jaén, Córdoba and Seville.
If we go up towards the center of the Peninsula we have Extremadura, which has the provinces of Cáceres and Badajoz; to your right is the capital of Spain, which is Madrid and which is uniprovincial; and further to its right is one of the castillas, that of La Mancha with five provinces that are Toledo, Ciudad Real, Guadalajara, Cuenca and Albacete. And to finish with the Iberian Peninsula we have the other Castilla, Castilla y León with nine provinces, which is the largest in territory and in number of provinces: Burgos, Soria, Segovia, Ávila, Zamora, Valladolid, Palencia, León and Salamanca.
Now we have to move to the islands that in Spain there are two, the Balearic Islands that have the province of Baleares and the Canary Islands with two provinces, Las Palmas and Santa Cruz.
Therefore, in summary, we have 17 provinces: Galicia (4), Asturias (1), Cantabria (1), Basque Country (3), Navarra (1), La Rioja (1), Aragón (3), Catalonia ( 4), Valencia (3), Murcia (1), Andalusia (8), Extremadura (2), Madrid (1), Castilla la Mancha (5) and Castilla y León (9). Plus the two islands: the Balearic Islands (1) and the Canary Islands (2). And to these 17 provinces we must add the two autonomous cities that are Ceuta and Melilla.
If we add up, in total we get that in Spain there are 50 provinces. In alphabetical order they would be: Álava Albacete, Alicante, Almería, Asturias, Ávila, Badajoz, Barcelona, Burgos, Cáceres, Cádiz, Cantabria, Castellón, Ciudad Real, Córdoba, La Coruña, Cuenca, Gerona, Granada, Guadalajara, Guipúzcoa, Huelva, Huesca, Balearic Islands, Jaén, León, Lérida, Lugo, Madrid, Málaga, Murcia, Navarra, Ourense, Palencia, Las Palmas, Pontevedra, La Rioja, Salamanca, Segovia, Seville, Soria, Tarragona, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Teruel, Toledo, Valencia, Valladolid, Vizcaya, Zamora and Zaragoza.
The provinces with the largest population are Madrid, which is the capital, and Barcelona, which is considered the second capital. In addition to the fact that in the coastal provinces there is usually a greater population movement, especially in summer, since the inhabitants of the interior look for the beach to get away from their typical environment. Although not all the coastal provinces add a large number of tourists, mainly the south and the Valencian community, since the waters of the Cantabrian Sea, which would bathe the Communities of Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, the Basque Country and Navarra, are quite icy in all times of the year.
Tips
- If you have to study the Spanish provinces, first learn a number and that is 50. They are the provinces that have to come out when you study them, neither more nor less, and if this number does not result, it means that you did something wrong.
- To learn them, start at one of the ends, either north, south, east or west, to follow an order and not get lost. When you look at an Autonomous Community, write down how many provinces it has, because even if you don’t know their names at the time, you are aware of which one you are missing or which ones you need to memorize better.
- A trick to memorize them better is to print a silent map, that is, the outline of Spain and the provincial divisions are drawn, but they do not have the name on them. Start placing the ones you know and so you will know which ones you have to pay more attention to.
- If you like to travel there is no better way to study. And it is that if you have been to Galicia it is easier for you to know that it has four provinces. Traveling brings knowledge and even if you don’t know the name of the province at the moment, you know the number.
- It is basic general knowledge, so it would be good if you took a geography book, an atlas, or opened the Internet and began to review the provinces that Spain has.
- The best thing is that you learn the provinces by Communities, so you don’t place a province in the wrong one. Keep in mind that some Communities are uniprovincial, which means that it is itself the province, such as Madrid, Asturias, La Rioja or Murcia.