Spain has no states. Its first-level divisions are 17 autonomous communities (comunidades autónomas) plus 2 autonomous cities, Ceuta and Melilla on the North African coast, for 19 "autonomies" in all. Andalusia is the most populous, with 8,631,862 people in the 2024 annual census of Spain's National Statistics Institute (INE); Castile and León is the largest, at 94,223 km²; and Madrid, the national capital, is also the capital of its own single-province community. Beneath the communities sit 50 provinces, most of them drawn in 1833. This guide goes around the country region by region, giving each community's capital, area and 2024 population.
Every figure below comes from INE's 2024 count as tabulated by Wikipedia. Added together, the 19 autonomies hold about 48.6 million people on roughly 505,600 km² of land.
Galicia to Navarre: Six Communities Along the Atlantic and the Pyrenees
Green, wet northern Spain is split into six communities, and four of them are small. Moving from west to east:
- Galicia: capital Santiago de Compostela; 29,574 km²; 2,705,833 people. It has four provinces: A Coruña, Lugo, Ourense and Pontevedra. Galician is co-official alongside Spanish, and Galicia was one of the three territories that had approved a statute of autonomy under the Second Republic before the Civil War.
- Asturias: capital Oviedo; 10,604 km²; 1,009,599 people. It is a single-province community, and the province itself used to be called Oviedo.
- Cantabria: capital Santander; 5,321 km²; 590,851 people. Also a single province, formerly known as the province of Santander.
- Basque Country: seat of government Vitoria-Gasteiz, which is the capital in practice rather than by any law naming it; 7,234 km²; 2,227,684 people. It has three provinces: Álava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa. At just over 300 people per km² it is among the most densely populated communities.
- Navarre: capital Pamplona; 10,391 km²; 678,333 people. One province.
- La Rioja: capital Logroño; 5,045 km²; 324,184 people. This is the least populous of the 17 communities, although the Balearic Islands are slightly smaller in area.
Two communities in this belt have a fiscal position that no other community shares. The Basque Country and Navarre are the "chartered" (foral) territories. They levy their own taxes and then negotiate a payment to Madrid for common state services. Everywhere else, taxes are collected by or for the central government and then shared out, so these two communities stay outside the fiscal equalisation that applies to the other fifteen. Their statutes, together with Catalonia's, are also the main reason the Spanish model is called asymmetrical: the powers held by a community depend on what its own statute of autonomy took on.
Aragon, Catalonia and the Mediterranean Coast to Murcia
East of the Pyrenean north, five communities cover the Ebro valley and the Mediterranean shore:
- Aragon: capital Zaragoza; 47,719 km²; 1,351,591 people. Three provinces: Huesca, Teruel and Zaragoza. Its density is just 28 people per km², because most of the population lives in and around Zaragoza.
- Catalonia: capital Barcelona; 32,114 km²; 8,012,231 people, the second-largest population in Spain. Four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida and Tarragona. Since 2006 the Aranese form of Occitan has been co-official there, so Catalonia is the only community with three official versions of its name: Cataluña, Catalunya and Catalonha.
- Valencian Community: capital Valencia; 23,255 km²; 5,319,285 people. Three provinces: Alicante, Castellón and Valencia.
- Region of Murcia: capital Murcia; 11,313 km²; 1,568,492 people. One province.
- Balearic Islands: capital Palma, on Mallorca; 4,992 km², the smallest community by area; 1,231,768 people. One province.
Catalonia's self-government started earlier than anyone else's. It was granted limited autonomy in 1914 through the Commonwealth of Catalonia, which was abolished in 1925, and it regained autonomy in 1932 when the Generalitat was restored under the Second Republic. After Franco's death, Prime Minister Adolfo Suárez agreed with Josep Tarradellas, the Generalitat's president in exile, to bring that institution back before the new constitution had even been finished. On 18 December 1979 the Spanish Parliament approved the statutes of autonomy of Catalonia and the Basque Country, the first two of the democratic era.
Madrid, the Two Castiles and Extremadura on the Meseta Central
The interior plateau has four communities. Three of them are among the largest in the country.
- Castile and León: seat Valladolid, again a capital in practice only; 94,223 km², making it the largest community and about 18.6% of Spain; 2,391,682 people. It has nine provinces, more than any other community: Ávila, Burgos, León, Palencia, Salamanca, Segovia, Soria, Valladolid and Zamora. Its density is 25 people per km².
- Castilla–La Mancha: capital Toledo; 79,463 km²; 2,104,433 people. Five provinces: Albacete, Ciudad Real, Cuenca, Guadalajara and Toledo.
- Extremadura: capital Mérida; 41,634 km²; 1,054,681 people. Two provinces: Badajoz and Cáceres.
- Community of Madrid: capital Madrid; 8,028 km²; 7,009,268 people. At roughly 870 people per km² on these figures, it is by far the most densely populated community.
Madrid came close to having no community of its own. Since the provincial reform of 1833, the province of Madrid had been grouped with Guadalajara, Toledo, Cuenca and Ciudad Real in the historical region of New Castile. The original plan therefore put it inside Castilla–La Mancha. The other provinces were wary of being joined to the capital. Other options were discussed, including adding Madrid to Castile and León or turning it into something like a federal district. In the end the Cortes used Article 144 of the constitution, which allows a community to be created "in the national interest". The Community of Madrid was set up in 1983 with the same boundaries as the old province, and it was one of the last communities to be formed.
Andalusia: Eight Provinces and 8.6 Million People
Andalusia takes up the south of the peninsula, from Huelva on the Portuguese border to Almería in the east. Its capital is Seville. It covers 87,268 km², about 17.2% of Spain and second only to Castile and León, and it is the most populous community, with 8,631,862 people in 2024. Its eight provinces are Almería, Cádiz, Córdoba, Granada, Huelva, Jaén, Málaga and Seville. Mulhacén in the Sierra Nevada, in Granada province, rises to 3,479 m and is the highest mountain on the Iberian Peninsula.
Andalusia's route to autonomy changed how the whole system was set up. The 1978 constitution offered two paths. The "fast route" of Article 151 gave full powers right away but required a demanding referendum. The "slow route" of Article 143 began with limited powers for five years. The government party, the UCD, wanted only the three "historical nationalities" (Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia) to receive full powers. After a mass rally, Andalusia held a fast-route referendum anyway. The vote fell short in one of the eight provinces: in Almería, "yes" won the most votes but did not reach half of the electoral roll. Suárez and opposition leader Felipe González then changed the referendum law so that Andalusia could take the fast route regardless. The settlement that followed, nicknamed café para todos ("coffee for all"), gave every region the same set of institutions.
Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla: Spain's Autonomies Beside Africa
The Canary Islands lie in the Atlantic off north-west Africa. They have 7,447 km² and 2,238,754 people, and the capital is shared between Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The archipelago was once a single province. Splitting it into the provinces of Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife is the only major change to Spain's provincial borders since 1833. Tenerife's Teide, at 3,715 m, is the highest point in Spain. The islands keep Western European Time, one hour behind the mainland all year.
Ceuta (18.5 km², 83,179 people) and Melilla (12.3 km², 85,985 people) are the two autonomous cities, both on the African coast and both bordering Morocco. Portugal annexed Ceuta in 1415. It passed to the Spanish crown in 1580 and stayed Spanish after 1640. Until March 1995 it was an ordinary municipality in the province of Cádiz, and that month it received its statute of autonomy. Melilla's statute came in the same year, and the land boundaries around its fortress were fixed by treaties with Morocco between 1859 and 1894. Each city has an elected assembly and a president, but neither has a regional parliament with the full legislative powers of a community. The constitution leaves both cities the option of becoming full autonomous communities. Morocco claims both cities, and Spain administers them.
Why the 1981 Autonomic Pacts Fixed the Number at 17
The constitution never stated how many communities there should be. Article 2 recognises the "nationalities and regions" that make up Spain and guarantees their right to self-government, but it names none of them. It used the 50 existing provinces as building blocks and left provinces to group themselves together. The number was settled politically. On 31 July 1981, Prime Minister Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo and opposition leader Felipe González signed the First Autonomic Pacts, which agreed on 17 autonomous communities and two autonomous cities, each with the same institutions but different powers. All 17 communities had been constituted by 1983. Ceuta and Melilla followed in 1995.
Several features of the resulting map are worth remembering:
- Single-province communities: Asturias, the Balearic Islands, Cantabria, La Rioja, Madrid, Murcia and Navarre each consist of a single province.
- Provinces per community: the numbers run from one up to Castile and León's nine and Andalusia's eight, adding up to 50.
- One-chamber parliaments: the constitution did not require it, but every community chose a unicameral parliament. The communities have legislative and executive branches but no judiciary of their own.
- No federations of communities: Article 145 forbids communities from forming a federation with one another.
- Self-description: nine statutes describe their community as a "nationality": Andalusia, Aragon, the Balearic Islands, the Basque Country, the Canary Islands, Catalonia, Galicia, Navarre and the Valencian Community. The others use "region" or "historical community".
Political scientists outside Spain often describe this arrangement as "a federal system with certain peculiarities". The Constitutional Court calls it the "State of Autonomous Communities" and avoids both "federal" and "unitary". Our guide to the government of Spain explains how the regional parliaments fit alongside the Cortes Generales in Madrid. The capitals of Spain's regions covers the 17 seats of government in more detail, and the largest cities in Spain shows how unevenly those 48.6 million people are spread between Madrid, Barcelona and everywhere else.