How Spain is organised: communities, provinces and municipalities

Spain is made up of 17 autonomous communities (comunidades autónomas) and two autonomous cities, Ceuta and Melilla, in the north of Africa.

• The communities are Andalucía, Aragón, Asturias, the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Cantabria, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, Cataluña, the Comunitat Valenciana, Extremadura, Galicia, Madrid, Murcia, Navarra, the País Vasco and La Rioja.
• Each community has a Statute of Autonomy (Estatuto de Autonomía), which is its basic law and is approved by the Cortes Generales.
• Each has its own parliament, government and president, and its own powers, for example in health, education and social services. Some communities, such as the Basque Country and Navarra, have a special tax system.
• The State keeps the powers that concern everybody: foreign affairs, defence, the nationality and the basic laws.
• The autonomous communities are not independent states: the Constitution declares the indivisible unity of the Spanish nation.

Exam tip: 17 communities + 2 autonomous cities. Both numbers appear in the test.

The communities are divided into provinces. Spain has 50 provinces; the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla are not in a province.

• A province is a group of municipalities. It is governed by a provincial council (Diputación Provincial). In the islands there are island councils instead (cabildos in the Canaries, consells in the Balearic Islands).
• Several communities have only one province: for example Madrid, Murcia, Navarra, Asturias, Cantabria, La Rioja and the Balearic Islands. That is why they are called “uniprovincial”.
• Andalucía is the community with the most provinces (eight), and Castilla y León has nine provinces. Provinces are also used to elect the senators and the deputies.
• Most provinces are named after their capital city, such as Sevilla, Zaragoza or Valencia.

The municipality (municipio) is the smallest and closest level of government. There are more than eight thousand municipalities in Spain.

• Each municipality is governed by an Ayuntamiento (town hall), made up of the mayor (alcalde or alcaldesa) and the councillors (concejales).
• The councillors are elected by the residents in municipal elections every four years, and the councillors elect the mayor.
• The town hall takes care of local things: streets and lighting, rubbish collection, local police, markets, parks, local transport and many social services.
• To register where you live you go to your town hall and ask for the padrón municipal (the register of inhabitants). The padrón is needed for health care, school places and many procedures.

Spanish (castellano) is the official language of the whole State. Other languages are also official in their own communities.

• Catalan is co-official in Cataluña, the Balearic Islands and the Comunitat Valenciana (where it is called valenciano).
• Galician (gallego) is co-official in Galicia, and Basque (euskera) in the País Vasco and in part of Navarra.
• Aranese (aranés), a variety of Occitan, is also official in the Val d’Aran in Cataluña.
• Every Spaniard has the duty to know Castilian, and the right to use it; the other languages are a cultural heritage that must be respected and protected (Article 3).