Murcia (autonomous community)

**Comunidad Autónoma de la**
**Región de Murcia**

Flag	Coat of Arms

Institutional Capital Murcia Legislative Capital Cartagena Area
– Total
– % of Spain Ranked 9th
11 313 km²
2,2% Population
– Total (2005)
– % of Spain
– Density Ranked 10th
1 335 792
3,0%
118,08/km² Demonym
– English
– Spanish
Murcian
murciano/a Statute of Autonomy June 9, 1982 ISO 3166-2MU Parliamentary
representation
– Congress seats
– Senate seats 9
2 President Ramón Luis Valcárcel Siso (PP) Comunidad Autónoma de la Región de Murcia The Autonomous Community of the Region of Murcia (Spanish: Comunidad Autónoma de la Región de Murcia) is one of Spain's seventeen autonomous communities, located in the southeast of the country, between Andalucía and Valencian Community, on the Mediterranean coast.

The autonomous community consists of a single province (region), unlike most autonomous communities, which have multiple provinces. Because of this, the autonomous community and the region are operated as one unit of government. The city of Murcia is the institutional capital of the community and Cartagena is the legislative capital. Another important city is Lorca.

The Region of Murcia is bordered by Andalucía (provinces of Almería and Granada); Castilla-La Mancha (the province of Albacete), which was historically connected to Murcia until 1833; Valencian Community (province of Alicante); and the Mediterranean Sea. The highest mountain is Revolcadores (2015 m).

The community measures 11 313 km² and has a population of 1,2 million, of whom one-third live in the capital.

The region is a major producer of fruits, vegetables, and flowers for Spain and the rest of Europe. Excellent wineries have developed near the towns of Bullas, Yecla, and Jumilla, as well as olive oil near Moratalla. Murcia is mainly a warm region which has made it very suitable for agriculture. However the precipitacions are little and water supplies is a hot subject today since, to the traditional water demand for crops it has added recently a demand of water for the booming touristic developments which take advantage of the mild weather and beaches. Water is supplied by the Segura River or Río Segura (which has been labelled as the most polluted river in Europe) and, ever since the 70's, by the Tajo transvasement a major civil engineering which, under some environmental and sustaintibility restraints, brings water from the Tajo into the Segura; this is currently being heavily contested from the political instances of the autonomous community of Castilla-La Mancha, where it originates.

History

The Carthaginians established a permanent trading depot on the coast at Cartagena, which the Romans called Carthago Nova. For the Carthaginian traders, the mountainous territory was merely the Iberian hinterland of their seacoast empire. Roman Murcia was a part of the province of Hispania Carthaginensis. Under the Moors, who introduced the large-scale irrigation on which Murcian agriculture depends, the province was known as Todmir; it included, according to Idrisi, the 11th century Arab cartographer based in Sicily, the cities of Orihuela, Lorca, Mula and Chinchilla.

The Kingdom of Murcia came into independent existence as a taifa centered on the Moorish city of Murcia after the fall of the Omayyad Caliphate of Córdoba (11th century). Moorish Taifa of Murcia included Albacete and part of Almería as well. After the battle of Sagrajas in 1086 the Almoravid dynasty swallowed up the taifas and reunited Islamic Spain. Ferdinand III of Castile received the submission of the Moorish king of Murcia in 1243. By the usual process, the Muslims were evicted from the cities, and Ferdinand's heir Alfonso X of Castile, for the better governing of a depopulated Murcia, divided the administration of the border kingdom in three regions, entrusted respectively to the concejos de realengo, to the ecclesiastical señores seculares, as a reward for their contributions to the Reconquista and to the Military Orders founded in the 11th century. Alfonso annexed the Taifa of Murcia like King of Murcia and Señorio de Cartagena outright in 1266, and it remained technically a vassal kingdom of Spain until the reforms in the liberal constitution of 1812. Murcia became an autonomous region in 1982.

Language

The Spanish spoken in the region is quite different from other areas of Spain. "Murciano" tends to eliminate many syllable-final consonants and to emphasize regional vocabulary, much of which is derived from old Arabic words. Some Murcian countryfolk still speak a separate dialect, called Panocho, which is virtually unintelligible to speakers of the standard Spanish language. The general intonation and some of the distinctive vocabulary of the Spanish dialect spoken in Murcia shares several traits with the one spoken in the neighbouring province of Almería, in Andalucía.

Transport

External links

Creation of a flag for Murcia, 1979

Region of Murcia | Provinces of Spain | Autonomous communities of Spain | NUTS 2 Statistical Regions of Europe

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Murcia (autonomous community)

History

Language

Transport

See also

External links