Segovia
Segovia is a city in the autonomous region of Castile and León, Spain. The city is famous for its historic buildings including the three main landmarks: its midtown Roman aqueduct, its cathedral, the castle, an influence for Walt Disney's Cinderella Castle; the city center of Segovia was declared World Heritage by the Unesco in 1985. It is the capital of Province of Segovia; the name of Segovia is of Celtiberian origin. Although the historians linked the old name of the city to Segobriga, the recent discovery of the original Roman city in the Spanish village of Saelices discarded this possibility; the name of "Segovia" is mentioned by Livy in the context of the Sertorian War. Under the Romans and Berbers, the city was called Šiqūbiyyah respectively. Segovia is located on the plains of Old Castile, near the Spanish capital, Madrid. Segovia is one of nine provinces that make up the autonomous region of León. Burgos and Valladolid lie to the north, Ávila to the west, Madrid to the south, Soria to the east.
The altitude of the province varies from 750 metres in the extreme northwest to a maximum of 2,430 m at Peñalara peak in the Sierra de Guadarrama. The town lies on the main route of the Camino de Santiago de Madrid; the climate is hot-summer Mediterranean near the boundaries of Csb and BSk, resulting from the high altitude and the distance from the coast. The average annual temperature is 12.42 °C, with an average low in January of 0.3 °C and an average high in July of 29.7 °C. The annual precipitation range from 400 to 500 mm per year in the lower plains, can reach above 1000 mm right in the nearby mountainous area of Sierra de Guadarrama, as rainfall and snowfall is more frequent up the mountains. Decent showers coming from summer thunderstorms help the mountainous area of the province to be rainier than average than most of the central Spanish plateau, which gives the area lush vegetation. All of this make the province a damp corner in the context of the region; the predominant forms of vegetation in the mountainous areas include pine, oak and juniper.
Aside from the main city, there are a number of other villages within the municipality of Segovia. Fuentemilanos Hontoria Madrona Revenga, established in 1983 as a "minor local entity", a category of sub-municipal entities in Spain. Zamarramala Torredondo Perogordo The first recorded mention of a settlement in what is today Segovia was a Celtic possession. Control passed into the hands of the Romans; the city is a possible site of the battle in 75 BCE where Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius was victorious over Quintus Sertorius and Hirtuleius. Hirtuleius died in the fighting. During the Roman period the settlement belonged to one of numerous contemporary Latin convents, it is believed. After the conquest of Toledo by Alfonso VI of León and Castile, the son of King Alfonso VI, Segovia was resettled with Christians from the north of the Iberian peninsula and beyond the Pyrenees, providing it with a significant sphere of influence whose boundaries crossed the Sierra de Guadarrama and the Tagus. Segovia's position on trading routes made it an important centre of trade in wool and textiles.
The end of the Middle Ages saw something of a golden age for Segovia, with a growing Jewish population and the creation of a foundation for a powerful cloth industry. Several splendid works of Gothic architecture were completed during this period. Notably, Isabella I was proclaimed queen of Castile in the church of San Miguel de Segovia on December 13, 1474. Like most Castilian textile centres, Segovia joined the Revolt of the Comuneros under the command of Juan Bravo. Despite the defeat of the Communities, the city's resultant economic boom continued into the sixteenth century, its population rising to 27,000 in 1594; as well as all the cities of Castile, Segovia entered a period of decline. Only a century in 1694, the population had been reduced to only 8,000 inhabitants. In the early eighteenth century, Segovia attempted to revitalize its textile industry, with little success. In the second half of the century, Charles III made another attempt to revive the region's commerce. However, the lack of competitiveness of production caused the crown withdraw its sponsorship in 1779.
In 1764, the Royal School of Artillery, the first military academy in Spain, was opened. This academy remains present in the city today. In 1808, Segovia was sacked by French troops during the War of Independence. During the First Carlist War, troops under the command of Don Carlos unsuccessfully attacked the city. During the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, Segovia experienced a demographic recovery, the result of relative economic stability; the population growth experienced during the nineteenth century accelerated beginning around 1920: 16,013 inhabitants that year, 33,360 in 1960, 53,237 in 1981. Since the 1980s growth has slowed markedly: 55,586 in 2004 and 56,047 in 2007. In 1985 the old city of Segovia and its Aqueduct were declared World Heritage Sites by UNESCO; the old city contains a multitude of historic buildings both civil and religious, including a large number of buildings of Jewish origin, notably within the old Jewish Quarter. One of the most important Jewish sites is the Jewish cemetery, El Pinarillo.
Among the most important monuments in the city are: The Aqueduct of Segovia, located in Plaza del Azoguejo
Antonio Machado
Antonio Machado, in full Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz, was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation of'98. His work modernist, evolved towards an intimate form of symbolism with romantic traits, which itself matured towards a style characterised by both an engagement with humanity on one side and an Taoist contemplation of existence on the other, a synthesis that according to Machado echoed the most ancient popular wisdom. In Gerardo Diego's words, Machado "spoke in verse and lived in poetry." Machado was born in Spain one year after his brother Manuel. The family moved to Madrid in 1883 and both brothers enrolled in the Institución Libre de Enseñanza. During these years, with the encouragement of his teachers, Antonio discovered his passion for literature. While completing his Bachillerato in Madrid, economic difficulties forced him to take several jobs including working as an actor. In 1899 he and his brother traveled to Paris to work as translators for a French publisher.
During these months in Paris he came into contact with the great French Symbolist poets Jean Moréas, Paul Fort and Paul Verlaine, with other contemporary literary figures, including Rubén Darío and Oscar Wilde. These encounters cemented Machado's decision to dedicate himself to poetry. In 1901 he had his first poems published in the literary journal'Electra', his first book of poetry was published in 1903 with the title Soledades. Over the next few years he amended the collection, removing some and adding many more, in 1907 the definitive collection was published with the title Soledades. Galerías. Otros Poemas. In the same year Machado was offered the job of Professor of French at the school in Soria. Here he met Leonor Izquierdo, daughter of the owners of the boarding house Machado was staying in, they were married in 1909: he was 34. Early in 1911 the couple went to live in Paris where Machado read more French literature and studied philosophy. In the summer, Leonor was diagnosed with advanced tuberculosis and they returned to Spain.
On 1 August 1912 Leonor died, just a few weeks after the publication of Campos de Castilla. Machado was devastated and left Soria, the city that had inspired the poetry of Campos, never to return, he went to live in Baeza, where he stayed until 1919. Here he wrote a series of poems dealing with the death of Leonor which were added to a new edition of Campos de Castilla published in 1916 along with the first edition of Nuevas canciones. While his earlier poems are in an ornate, Modernist style, with the publication of "Campos de Castilla" he showed an evolution toward greater simplicity, a characteristic, to distinguish his poetry from on. Between 1919 and 1931 Machado was Professor of French in Segovia, he moved here to be nearer to Madrid. The brothers would meet at weekends to work together on a number of plays, the performances of which earned them great popularity, it was here that Antonio had a secret affair with Pilar de Valderrama, a married woman with three children, to whom he would refer in his work by the name Guiomar.
In 1932 he was given the post of professor at the "Instituto Calderón de la Barca" in Madrid. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936, Machado was in Madrid; the war was to separate him forever from his brother Manuel, trapped in the Nationalist zone, from Valderrama, in Portugal. Machado was evacuated with his elderly mother and uncle to Valencia, to Barcelona in 1938; as Franco closed in on the last Republican strongholds, they were obliged to move across the French border to Collioure. It was here, on 22 February 1939. In his pocket was found his last poem, "Estos días azules y este sol de infancia". Machado is buried in Collioure. On his way to Collioure in December 1938 he wrote “For the strategists, for the politicians, for the historians, all this will be clear: we lost the war, but at a human level I am not so sure: we won. Machado's evolution has strong links to larger European trends in the same period, he turned away from the hermetic esthetic principles of post-symbolism and cultivated the dynamic openness of social realism.
Like such French æsthetes as Verlaine, Machado began with a fin de siècle contemplation of his sensory world, portraying it through memory and the impressions of his private consciousness. And like his conscious colleagues of the Generation of 1898, he emerged from his solitude to contemplate Spain's historical landscape with a sympathetic yet unindulgent eye, his poetic work begins with the publication of Soledades in 1903. In this short volume many personal links which will characterize his work are noticeable. In Soledades, Galerías. Otros poemas, published in 1907, his voice becomes his own and influences 20th Century poets Octavio Paz, Derek Walcott, Giannina Braschi who writes about Machado's impact in her Spanglish classic Yo-Yo Boing!. The most typical feature of his personality is the antipathetic sorrowful tone that can be felt when he describes real things or common themes of the time, for example abandoned gardens, old parks or fountains: places which he approaches via memory or dreams.
After Machado's experience with the introspective poetry of his first period, he withdrew from the spectacle of his conflictive personality and undertook to witness the general battle of the "two Spains", each one struggling to gain the ascendancy. In 1912 he published "Campos de Castilla", a collection of poems lyricising the
Álava
Álava or Araba Araba/Álava, is a province of Spain and a historical territory of the Basque Country, heir of the ancient Lordship of Álava, former medieval Catholic bishopric and now Latin titular see. Its capital city, Vitoria-Gasteiz, is the seat of the political main institutions of the autonomous community, it borders the Basque provinces of Biscay and Gipuzkoa to the north, the community of La Rioja to the south, the province of Burgos to the west and the community of Navarre to the east. The Enclave of Treviño, surrounded by Alavese territory, is however part of the province of Burgos, thus belonging to the autonomous community of Castile and León, not Álava, it is the largest of the three provinces in the Basque Autonomous Community in geographical terms, with 2,963 km2, but the least populated with 328,868 inhabitants. Built around the Roman mansion Alba located on the road ab Asturica Burdigalam, it has sometimes been argued the name may stem from that landmark. However, according to the Royal Academy of the Basque Language, the origin may be another: The name is first found on Muslim chronicles of the 8th century referring to the Alavese Plains, laua in old Basque with the Arab article added, developing into Spanish Álava and Basque Araba.
The province numbers 51 municipalities, a population of 315,525 inhabitants in an area of 3,037 km2, with an average of 104.50 inhabitants/km2. The vast majority of the population clusters in the capital city of Álava, Vitoria-Gasteiz, which serves as the capital of the Autonomous Community, but the remainder of the territory is sparsely inhabited with population nuclei distributed into seven counties: Añana. Álava is an inland territory and features a transitional climate between the humid, Atlantic neighbouring northern provinces and the dry and warmer lands south of the Ebro River. According to the relief and landscape characteristics, the territory is divided into five main zones: The Gorbea Foothills: Green hilly landscape; the Valleys: Low valleys, sparsely populated. The Plains: Heartland of Álava comprising Vitoria and Salvatierra-Agurain, with a central urban area and crop landscape prevailing around and bounded south and north by the Basque Mountains; the Alavese Mountains: Higher forest lands.
The Alavese Rioja: Oriented to the south on the left bank of the Ebro River, perfect for vineyards. Ayala: The area clustering around the Nervión River, with Amurrio and Laudio as its major towns; the region shows close bonds with an industrial landscape. Unlike Biscay and Gipuzkoa, but for Ayala and Aramaio, the waters of Álava pour into the Ebro and hence to the Mediterranean by means of two main waterways, i.e. the Zadorra and Bayas Rivers. In addition, the Zadorra Reservoir System harvests a big quantity of waters that supply not only the capital city but other major Basque towns and cities too, like Bilbao. While in 1950 agriculture and farming shaped the landscape of the territory, the trend shifted during the 60s and 70s on the grounds of a growing industrial activity in the Alavese Plains, with the main focus lying on the industrial estates of Vitoria-Gasteiz and, to a lesser extent, Salvatierra-Agurain and Araia. At the turn of the century, only 2% of the working Alavese people was in agriculture, while 60% was in the tertiary sector and 32% in manufacturing.
Industry associated with iron and metal developed earlier in the Atlantic area much in tune with Bilbao's economic dynamics, with droves of people flocking to and clustering in Amurrio and Laudio, which have since become the third and second main towns of Álava. List of rulers: Eylo, up to 866 Rodrigo c. 867–870, count of Castile Vela Jiménez 870–c. 887 Munio Velaz c. 887–c. 921 Álvaro Herraméliz c. 921–931 count of Cerezo and Lantarón Fernán González 931–970 count of Castile, Álava feudatary of Castile until 1030 García Fernández 970–995 Munio González 1030–1043 Fortunio Íñiguez 1043–1046 Munio Muñoz 1046–1060, Álava feudatary of Navarre, 1046–1085 Sancho Maceratiz 1046–1060 Ramiro 1060–1075 Marcelo 1075–1085 Lope Íñiguez 1085–?, Álava feudatary of Castile until 1123 Lope Díaz the White?–1093 Lope González 1093–1099 Lope Sánchez 1099–1114 Diego López I 1114–1123 Ladrón Íñiguez 1123–1158, Álava feudatary of Navarre until 1199 Vela Ladrón 1158–1175 Juan Velaz 1175–1181 Diego López II 1181–1187 Íñigo de Oriz 1187–1199 Diego López de Haro I 1199–1214, Álava feudatary of Castile until personal union of 1332 Lope Diaz de Haro I 1214–1240 Nuño González de Lara 1240–1252 Diego López de Haro II 1252–1274 Fernando de la Cerda 1274–1280 Lope Díaz II de Haro 1280–1288 Juan Alonso de Haro 1288–1310 Diego López de Salcedo 1310–1332The title is attributed to the Castilian kings after 1332.
The Arab invasion of the Ebro valley in the 8th century, many Christians of the Diocese of Calahorra sought refuge in areas further north free of Arab rule. The diocese called Álava or Armentaria was established in 870 on terrirory split off from the Diocese of Calahorra. From until the 11th century the names of several bishops of this see are recorded, the best known being the last, Fortún, who in 1072 went to Rome to argue before Pope Alexander II in defence of the Mozarabic Rite, which King Alfonso VI of León and Castile had decree
Cantabria
Cantabria is an autonomous community in northern Spain with Santander as its capital city. It is recognized as a historic community and is bordered on the east by the Basque Autonomous Community, on the south by Castile and León, on the west by the Principality of Asturias, on the north by the Cantabrian Sea. Cantabria belongs to Green Spain, the name given to the strip of land between the Bay of Biscay and the Cantabrian Mountains, so called because of its lush vegetation, due to the wet and moderate oceanic climate; the climate is influenced by Atlantic Ocean winds trapped by the mountains. The most significant site for cave paintings is that in the cave of Altamira, dating from about 37,000 BC and declared, along with nine other Cantabrian caves, as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO; the modern Province of Cantabria was constituted on 28 July 1778 at Reocín. The Organic Law of the Autonomy Statute of Cantabria was approved on 30 December 1981, giving the region its own institutions of self-government.
Numerous authors, including Isidore of Seville, Julio Caro Baroja, Aureliano Fernández Guerra and Adolf Schulten, have explored the etymology of the name Cantabria, yet its origins remain uncertain. It is claimed that the root cant- comes from Celtic for "rock" or "stone", while -abr was a common suffix used in Celtic regions. Thus, Cantabrian could mean "people who live in the rocks" or "highlanders", a reference to the steep and mountainous territory of Cantabria; the name Cantabria could be related to the Celtic root "kant" or "cant" meaning edge or rim thus "coastal district," or "corner-land", "land on the edge" thus having the same probable derivation as the name of the English county of Kent. Cantabria is coastal region, with important natural resources, it has two distinct areas: Coast. A coastal strip of low and rolling valleys some 10 kilometres in width, the altitude of which does not rise above 500 metres, which meets the ocean in a line of abrupt cliffs broken by river estuaries, forming rias and beaches.
Santander Bay is the most prominent indentation in the coastline. To the south, the coastal strip rises to meet the mountains. Mountains; this is a long barrier made up of abruptly rising mountains parallel to the sea, which are part of the Cantabrian Mountains. The mountains are made of limestone with karst topography, occupy most of Cantabria's area, they form deep valleys running north-south. The torrential rivers are fast flowing and of great eroding power, so the slopes are steep; the valleys define different natural regions, delimited physically by the intervening mountain ranges: Liébana, Saja-Nansa, Pas-Pisueña, Miera, Asón-Gándara, Campoo. To the'mountain' region belongs the Escudo Range, a mountain range of 600 to 1,000 metres high that covers 15 or 20 km in a parallel line to the coast in the West part of Cantabria. Towards the south are higher mountains, the tops of which form the watershed between the drainage basins of the Rivers Ebro and the rivers that flow into the Bay of Biscay.
These peaks exceed 1,500 m from the Pass of San Glorio in the west to the Pass of Los Tornos in the eastern part: Peña Labra, Castro Valnera and the mountain passes of Sejos, El Escudo and La Sía. The great limestone masses of Picos de Europa stand out in the southwest of the region: most of their summits exceed 2,500 m, their topography is shaped by the former presence of glaciers. Due to the gulf stream, Cantabria, as well as the rest of "Green Spain", has a much more temperate climate than might be expected for its latitude, comparable to that of Oregon; the region has a humid oceanic climate, with mild winters. Annual precipitation is higher in the mountains; the mean temperature is about 14 °C. Snow is frequent in higher zones of Cantabria between the months of March; some zones of Picos de Europa, over 2,500 metres high, have an alpine climate with snow persisting year round. The driest months are August; the mountainous relief of Cantabria has a dominant effect on local microclimate in Cantabria.
It is the main cause of the peculiar meteorologic situations like the so-called "suradas", due to the foehn effect: the southerly wind coming down from the mountains blows and dry, increasing the temperature closer to the coast. This causes a decrease in air humidity and rainfall; these conditions are more frequent in autumn and winter, the temperatures are higher than 20 °C. Fires are helped by this type of wind: one example is the fire that destroyed part of the city of Santander in the winter of 1941. In these specific cases in the southern part of the mountain range the dry adiabatic gradient produces different conditions to the rest of the region: the wind there is fresher and more humid, there is more rain; the rivers of Cantabria are short and rapid, descending steeply because the sea is so close to their source in the Cantabrian Mountains. They flow perpendicular except for the Ebro, they generally flow year round due to constant rainfall. The rate of flow is modest compared to the other rivers of the Iberian peninsula.
The rapidness of their waters, caused by their steep descents, gives them great erosive power, creating the narrow V-shaped valleys characteristic of Green Spain. Th
Castile and León
Castile and León (UK:, US:. It was constituted in 1983, although it existed for the first time during the First Spanish Republic in the 19th century. León first appeared as a Kingdom in 910, whilst the Kingdom of Castile gained an independent identity in 1065 and was intermittently held in personal union with León before merging with it in 1230. Though the kings of Castile and León continued to take the title King of León as the superior title, to use a lion as part of their standard, power in fact became centralized in Castile, as exemplified by the Leonese language's replacement by Spanish; the Kingdom of León and the Kingdom of Castile kept different parliaments, different flags, different coin and different laws until the Modern Era, when Spain, like other European states, centralized governmental power in 1833. The autonomous community of Castile and León is the result of the union in 1983 of nine provinces: the three that, after the territorial division of 1833, were part of the Region of León and six attached to the Old Castile, except in the latter case the provinces of Santander and Logroño.
It is the largest autonomous community in Spain and the third largest region of the European Union, covering an area of 94,223 square kilometres with an official population of around 2.5 million. From the beginning of the federalist debate in Spain in the 19th century during the First Spanish Republic there were projects of autonomy for a Castile and León region, as the project of Castilian Mancomunity, Bases de Segovia, Castilian Provincial League or Castilian Federal Pact, but including current Cantabria and La Rioja. Same project that continued to exist during the Second Spanish Republic and, carried out after the Constitution of 1978, but without Cantabria and La Rioja that, although it was considered to include them formed uniprovincial autonomies, its Statute of Autonomy declares in its preamble: The Autonomous Community of Castile and León arises from the modern union of the historical territories that composed and gave name to the old crowns of León and Castile. Eleven hundred years ago, the Kingdom of León was constituted, from which that of Castile and Galicia were dislodged as kingdoms throughout the 9th century, and, in 1143, that of Portugal.
During these two centuries the monarchs who held the government of these lands attained the dignity of emperors, as attested by the terms of Alfonso VI and Alfonso VII. In Castile and León, more than 60% of all of Spain's heritage sites are found. All of which translate into: 8 World Heritage sites 1800 classified cultural heritage assets, 112 historic sites, 400 museums, more than 500 castles, of which 16 are considered of high historical value, 12 cathedrals, 1 concathedral, the largest concentration of Romanesque art in the world. With 8 World Heritage sites, Castile and León is the region of the world with more cultural assets distinguished by the highest protection figure granted by UNESCO, ahead of the Italian regions of Tuscany and Lombardy, both with 6 sites; the Montes de Valsaín mountains and the Béjar and Francia mountain ranges, in the Sistema Central, the valleys of Laciana, Omaña y Luna and the Picos de Europa and Los Ancares, in the Cantabrian Mountains, the Iberian Plateau, in the border area with Portugal, have been declared biosphere reserve by UNESCO, which recognizes the geopark of La Lora with this figure of protection.
In addition, Castile and León is related to two of the records of the Memory of the World Programme of UNESCO which are the Decreta of the Cortes of León of 1188, curia regia considered the birthplace of worldwide parliamentarism by the institution itself, the Treaty of Tordesillas. The Index of development of social services reflects that the community has one of the best social services in the country, positioning itself as the third autonomy that offers the best benefits to its citizens, after the Basque Country and Navarre, its education, according to the Programme for International Student Assessment report of 2015, leads the scores in reading and sciences with a score comparable to that of the ten best countries in the study.23 April is designated Castile and León Day, commemorating the defeat of the comuneros at the Battle of Villalar during the Revolt of the Comuneros, in 1521. The Statute of Autonomy of Castile and León, reformed for the last time in 2007, establishes in the sixth article of its preliminary title the symbols of the community's exclusive identity.
These are: the coat of the flag, the banner and the anthem. Its legal protection is the same as that corresponding to the symbols of the State -whose outrages are classified as crime in article 543 of the Penal Code-. In the articulated statuary, the coat of arms is defined as follows: The coat of arms of Castile and León is a stamped shield by open royal crown, barracked in cross; the first and fourth quartering: in the field of gules, a merloned golden castle of three merlons, drafted of sable and rinse of azure. The second and third quartering: in a silver field, a rampant lion of purple, lingued and armed with gules, crowned with gold; the flag is described as follows: The flag of Castile and León is quartered and contains the symbols of Castile and León, as described in the previous section. The flag will fly in all the centres and official acts of the Community, to the right of the Spanish flag. Following the same wording, the banner is constituted by the shield quartered on a traditional crimson background.
The Statute expresses: "The anthem and the other sym
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a region in Northern Europe, with strong historical and linguistic ties. The term Scandinavia in local usage covers the three kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden; the majority national languages of these three, belong to the Scandinavian dialect continuum, are mutually intelligible North Germanic languages. In English usage, Scandinavia sometimes refers to the Scandinavian Peninsula, or to the broader region including Finland and Iceland, always known locally as the Nordic countries. While part of the Nordic countries, the remote Norwegian islands of Svalbard and Jan Mayen are not in Scandinavia, nor is Greenland, a constituent country within the Kingdom of Denmark; the Faroe Islands are sometimes included. The name Scandinavia referred to the former Danish, now Swedish, region of Scania. Scandinavia and Scandinavian entered usage in the late 18th century, being introduced by the early linguistic and cultural Scandinavist movement; the majority of the population of Scandinavia are descended from several North Germanic tribes who inhabited the southern part of Scandinavia and spoke a Germanic language that evolved into Old Norse.
Icelanders and the Faroese are to a significant extent descended from the Norse and are therefore seen as Scandinavian. Finland is populated by Finns, with a minority of 5% of Swedish speakers. A small minority of Sami people live in the extreme north of Scandinavia; the Danish and Swedish languages form a dialect continuum and are known as the Scandinavian languages—all of which are considered mutually intelligible with one another. Faroese and Icelandic, sometimes referred to as insular Scandinavian languages, are intelligible in continental Scandinavian languages only to a limited extent. Finnish and Meänkieli are related to each other and more distantly to the Sami languages, but are unrelated to the Scandinavian languages. Apart from these, German and Romani are recognized minority languages in parts of Scandinavia. "Scandinavia" refers to Denmark and Sweden. Some sources argue for the inclusion of the Faroe Islands and Iceland, though that broader region is known by the countries concerned as Norden, or the Nordic countries.
The use of "Scandinavia" as a convenient general term for Denmark and Sweden is recent. According to some historians, it was adopted and introduced in the eighteenth century, at a time when the ideas about a common heritage started to appear and develop into early literary and linguistic Scandinavism. Before this time, the term "Scandinavia" was familiar to classical scholars through Pliny the Elder's writings and was used vaguely for Scania and the southern region of the peninsula; as a political term, Scandinavia was first used by students agitating for pan-Scandinavianism in the 1830s. The popular usage of the term in Sweden and Norway as a unifying concept became established in the nineteenth century through poems such as Hans Christian Andersen's "I am a Scandinavian" of 1839. After a visit to Sweden, Andersen became a supporter of early political Scandinavism. In a letter describing the poem to a friend, he wrote: "All at once I understood how related the Swedes, the Danes and the Norwegians are, with this feeling I wrote the poem after my return:'We are one people, we are called Scandinavians!'".
The clearest example of the use of Scandinavia is Finland, based on the fact that most of modern-day Finland was part of the Swedish kingdom for hundreds of years, thus to much of the world associating Finland with all of Scandinavia. However, the creation of a Finnish identity is unique in the region in that it was formed in relation to two different imperial models, the Swedish and the Russian, as described by the University of Jyväskylä based editorial board of the Finnish journal Yearbook of Political Thought and Conceptual History. Various promotional agencies of the Nordic countries in the United States serve to promote market and tourism interests in the region. Today, the five Nordic heads of state act as the organization's patrons and according to the official statement by the organization its mission is "to promote the Nordic region as a whole while increasing the visibility of Denmark, Iceland and Sweden in New York City and the United States"; the official tourist boards of Scandinavia sometimes cooperate under one umbrella, such as the Scandinavian Tourist Board.
The cooperation was introduced for the Asian market in 1986, when the Swedish national tourist board joined the Danish national tourist board to coordinate intergovernmental promotion of the two countries. Norway's government entered one year later. All five Nordic governments participate in the joint promotional efforts in the United States through the Scandinavian Tourist Board of North America. While the term "Scandinavia" is used for Denmark and Sweden, the term "Nordic countries" is used unambiguously for Denmark, Sweden and Iceland, including their associated territories. Scandinavia can thus be considered a subset of the Nordic countries. Furthermore, the term Fennoscandia refers to Scandinavia and Karelia, excluding Denmark and overseas territories, but the usage of this term is restricted to geology when speaking of the Fennoscandian Shield. In addition to the mainland Scandinavian countries of: Denmark Norway (constitutional monarchy with a parliament
Province of Cuenca
Cuenca is one of the five provinces of the autonomous community of Castilla-La Mancha. It is cover over 17.141 square km. It has a population of 203.841 inhabitants- the least populated of its autonomous community. Its capital city is Cuenca and the province is compounded of 238 municipalities; the province is bordered by the provinces of Valencia, Ciudad Real, Madrid and Teruel. The northeastern side of the province is in the mountainous Sistema Ibérico area. 211,375 people live in the province. Its capital is Cuenca, some 52,980 people. There are 238 municipalities in Cuenca. Other populous towns and municipalities include Tarancón, San Clemente, Quintanar del Rey, Villanueva de la Jara, Motilla del Palancar, Mota del Cuervo, La Almarcha and Las Pedroñeras. In 1851 Cuenca lost Requena-Utiel to the neighbouring Valencia Province with which it was developing commercial ties. Requena-Utiel remained Spanish-speaking, while the loss of its most dynamic region left the province of Cuenca underdeveloped economically
Castile and León
listen)) is a province of central/northern Spain, in the southern part of the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is bordered by the province of Burgos in the north, Soria in the northeast, Guadalajara in the east, Madrid in the south, Ávila in the west and southwest, and Valladolid in the northwest; the average temperature ranges from 10 °C to 20 °C.[1]
Media related to Province of Segovia at Wikimedia Commons
