Andalusia

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Andalusia
Andalucía
—  Autonomous Community  —
Comunidad Autónoma de Andalucía
Autonomous Community of Andalusia

Flag
Coat of arms
Motto: Andalucía por sí, para España y la humanidad[1]
(English: Andalusia for itself, for Spain and Humankind)
Map of Andalusia
Coordinates: 5°59′W / 37.383°N 5.983°W / 37.383; -5.983Coordinates: 5°59′W / 37.383°N 5.983°W / 37.383; -5.983
Country Spain
Capital Seville
Government
 - President José Antonio Griñán (PSOE)
Area (17.2% of Spain; Ranked 2nd)
 - Total 87,268 km² (33,694.4 sq mi)
Population (2009)[2]
 - Total 8,285,692
 - Density 94.9/km² (245.9/sq mi)
 - Pop. rank 1st
 - Percent 17.84% of Spain
ISO 3166-2 AN
Anthem "La bandera blanca y verde"
Official languages Spanish (Andalusian)
Statute of Autonomy December 30, 1981,
2002 (statute revised),
2007 (revised again)[3]
Parliament Cortes Generales
Congress seats 62 of 350
Senate seats 40 of 259
Website www.juntadeandalucia.es

Andalusia (Spanish: Andalucía) is an autonomous community of Spain, considered as an historical nationality.[4] It is the most populous (8,285,692 inhabitants in 2009)[5] and the second largest, in terms of land area, of the seventeen autonomous communities of the Kingdom of Spain. Its capital and largest city is Seville (Spanish: Sevilla). The region is divided into eight provinces: Huelva, Seville, Cádiz, Córdoba, Málaga, Jaén, Granada and Almería.

Andalusia is in the south of the Iberian peninsula, immediately south of the autonomous communities of Extremadura and Castile-La Mancha; west of the autonomous community of Murcia and the Mediterranean Sea; east of Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean; and north of the Mediterranean Sea, the Strait of Gibraltar, which separates Spain from Morocco, and the Atlantic Ocean. The small British overseas territory of Gibraltar shares a three-quarter-mile land border with the Andalusian province of Cádiz at the eastern end of the Strait of Gibraltar.

Andalusia has three major geographic subregions. In the north, the mountainous Sierra Morena separates Andalusia from the plains of Extremadura and Castile-La Mancha on Spain's Meseta Central. South of that, one can distinguish Upper Andalusia—generally the Baetic Cordillera—from Lower Andalusia—the Baetic Depression of the valley of the Guadalquivir.

The name Andalusia traces back to the Arabic language Al-Andalus and Andalusia was the center of power in medieval Muslim-dominated Iberia. Besides Muslim or "Moorish" influences, the region's history and culture have been influenced by the earlier Iberians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Roman Empire, Vandals, Visigoths—all of whom preceded the Muslims—and, of course, the Castilian and other Christian North Iberian nationalities who conquered the area in the latter phases of the Reconquista.

Since the Industrial Revolution, Andalusia has been an economically poor region in comparison with the rest of Spain and the European Union at large. Agriculture and the service sectors predominate in the economy. The region has, however, a rich culture and a strong cultural identity. Many cultural phenomena that are seen internationally as distinctively Spanish—for example, flamenco, bullfighting, and certain Moorish-influenced architectural styles—are largely or entirely Andalusian in origin.

The name Andalucía

The Spanish toponym (place name) Andalucía (immediate source of the English Andalusia) was introduced into the Spanish language in the 13th century under the form el Andalucía.[6] (That el does not indicate masculine grammatical gender; Spanish avoids using the feminine article la before words beginning with the a sound.) This was a Castilianization of Al-Andalusiya, the adjectival form of the Arabic language al-Andalus, the name of the Iberian territories under the Muslim rule from 711 to 1492. The etymology of al-Andalus is itself somewhat controversial (see al-Andalus), but it entered the Arabic language even before such time as this area came under Muslim rule.

Like the Arabic term al-Andalus, in historical contexts the Spanish term Andalucía or the English term Andalusia do not necessarily refer to the exact territory designated by these terms today. Initially, the term referred exclusively to territories under Muslim control; later, it was applied to some of the last Iberian Islamic territories to be conquered, though not always to exactly the same ones.[7] In the Estoria de España (also known as the Primera Crónica General) of Alfonso X of Castile, written in the second half of the 13th century, the term Andalucía is used with three different meanings:

1. As a literal translation of the Arabic al-Ándalus when Arabic texts are quoted.
2. To designate the territories the Christians had conquered by that time in the Guadalquivir valley and in the Kingdoms of Granada and Murcia. In a document from 1253, Alfonso X styled himself Rey de Castilla, León y de toda Andalucía ("King of Castile, León and all of Andalusia").
3. To designate the territories the Christians had conquered by that time in the Guadalquivir valley (the Kingdoms of Jaén, Córdoba and Seville) but not the Kingdom of Granada. This was the most common significance in the Late Middle Ages and Early modern period.[8]

From an administrative point of view, Granada remained separate for many years even after the completion of the Reconquista[8] due, above all, to its emblematic character as the last territory conquered, and as the seat of the important Real Chancillería de Granada, a court of last resort. Still, the reconquest and repopulation of Granada was accomplished largely by people from the three existing Christian kingdoms of Andalusia, and Granada came to be considered a fourth kingdom of Andalusia.[9] The often-used expression "Four Kingdoms of Andalusia" dates back in Spanish at least to the mid-18th century.[10][11]

Symbols

The Andalusian coat of arms shows the figure of a young Hercules and two lions between the two pillars of Hercules that tradition situates on either side of the Strait of Gibraltar. An inscription below, superimposed on an image of the flag of Andalusia reads Andalucía por sí, para España y la Humanidad ("Andalusia by herself, for Spain and Humanity"). Over the two columns is a semicircular arch in the colors of the flag of Andalusia, with the Latin words Dominator Hercules Fundator superimposed.[1]

The official flag of Andalusia consists of three equal horizontal stripes, colored green, white, and green respectively;[12] the Andalusian coat of arms is superimposed on the central stripe. Its design was overseen by Blas Infante[13] and approved in the Assembly of Ronda (a 1918 gathering of Andalusian nationalists at Ronda). The green symbolizes hope and union, and the white symbolizes peace and dialogue. Blas Infante considered these to have been the colors most used in regional symbols throughout the region's history. According to him, the green came in particular from the standard of the Umayyad Caliphate and represented the call for a gathering of the populace. The white symbolized pardon in the Almohad dynasty, interpreted in European heraldry as parliament or peace. Other writers have justified the colors differently, with some Andalusian nationalists referring to them as the Arbonaida, meaning white-and-green in Mozarabic, a Romance language that was spoken in the region in Muslim times.