Autonomous communities of Spain
In Spain, an autonomous community is a first-level political and administrative division, created in accordance with the Spanish constitution of 1978, with the aim of guaranteeing limited autonomy of the nationalities and regions that make up Spain. Spain is not a federation, but a decentralized unitary state. While sovereignty is vested in the nation as a whole, represented in the central institutions of government, the nation has, in variable degrees, devolved power to the communities, which, in turn, exercise their right to self-government within the limits set forth in the constitution and their autonomous statutes; each community has its own set of devolved powers. Some scholars have referred to the resulting system as a federal system in all but name, or a "federation without federalism". There are 17 autonomous communities and two autonomous cities that are collectively known as "autonomies"; the two autonomous cities have the right to become autonomous communities, but neither has yet exercised it.
This unique framework of territorial administration is known as the "State of Autonomies". The autonomous communities are governed according to the constitution and their own organic laws known as Statutes of Autonomy, which contain all the competences that they assume. Since devolution was intended to be asymmetrical in nature, the scope of competences vary for each community, but all have the same parliamentary structure. Spain is a diverse country made up of several different regions with varying economic and social structures, as well as different languages and historical and cultural traditions. While the entire Spanish territory was united under one crown in 1479 this was not a process of national homogenization or amalgamation; the constituent territories—be it crowns, principalities or dominions—retained much of their former institutional existence, including limited legislative, judicial or fiscal autonomy. These territories exhibited a variety of local customs, laws and currencies until the mid nineteenth century.
From the 18th century onwards, the Bourbon kings and the government tried to establish a more centralized regime. Leading figures of the Spanish Enlightenment advocated for the building of a Spanish nation beyond the internal territorial boundaries; this culminated in 1833, when Spain was divided into 49 provinces, which served as transmission belts for policies developed in Madrid. However, unlike in other European countries such as France, where regional languages were spoken in rural areas or less developed regions, two important regional languages of Spain were spoken in some of the most industrialized areas, moreover, enjoyed higher levels of prosperity, in addition to having their own cultures and historical consciousness; these were Catalonia. This gave rise to peripheral nationalisms along with Spanish nationalism; therefore and social changes that had produced a national cultural unification in France had the opposite effect in Spain. As such, Spanish history since the late 19th century has been shaped by a dialectical struggle between Spanish nationalism and peripheral nationalisms in Catalonia and the Basque Country, to a lesser degree in Galicia.
In a response to Catalan demands, limited autonomy was granted to Catalonia in 1914, only to be abolished in 1923. It was granted again in 1932 during the Second Spanish Republic, when the Generalitat, Catalonia's mediaeval institution of government, was restored; the constitution of 1931 envisaged a territorial division for all Spain in "autonomous regions", never attained—only Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia had approved "Statutes of Autonomy"—the process being thwarted by the Spanish Civil War that broke out in 1936, the victory of the rebel Nationalist forces under Francisco Franco. During General Franco's dictatorial regime, centralism was most forcefully enforced as a way of preserving the "unity of the Spanish nation". Peripheral nationalism, along with communism and atheism were regarded by his regime as the main threats, his attempts to fight separatism with heavy-handed but sporadic repression, his severe suppression of language and regional identities backfired: the demands for democracy became intertwined with demands for the recognition of a pluralistic vision of the Spanish nationhood.
When Franco died in 1975, Spain entered into a phase of transition towards democracy. The most difficult task of the newly democratically elected Cortes Generales in 1977 acting as a Constituent Assembly was to transition from a unitary centralized state into a decentralized state in a way that would satisfy the demands of the peripheral nationalists; the Prime Minister of Spain, Adolfo Suárez, met with Josep Tarradellas, president of the Generalitat of Catalonia in exile. An agreement was made so that the Generalitat would be restored and limited competencies would be transferred while the constitution was still being written. Shortly after, the government allowed the creation of "assemblies of members of parliament" integrated by deputies and senators of the different territories of Spain, so that they could constitute "pre-autonomic regimes" for their regions as well; the Fathers of the Constitution had to strike a balance between the opposing views of Spain—on the one hand, the centralist view inherited from Franco's regime, on the other hand federalism and a pluralistic view of Spain as a "nation of nations".
Peripheral nationalist
Alkiza
Alkiza is a village located in the province of Gipuzkoa, in the autonomous community of Basque Country, in the north of Spain. In 2014 Alkiza had a total population of 373. Media related to Alkiza at Wikimedia Commons Official Website Information available in Spanish and Basque. ALKIZA in the Bernardo Estornés Lasa - Auñamendi Encyclopedia Information available in Spanish
Queen Fabiola of Belgium
Queen Fabiola of Belgium was Queen of the Belgians from her marriage to King Baudouin in 1960 until his death in 1993. The couple had no children, so the Crown passed to her husband's younger brother, King Albert II. Fabiola de Mora y Aragón was born in Madrid, Spain, at the Palacio Zurbano, the main residence of the Marqués de Casa Riera, she was the sixth of seven children of Don Gonzalo de Mora y Fernández y Riera y del Olmo, 4th Marqués de Casa Riera, 2nd Count of Mora, his wife, Doña Blanca de Aragón y Carrillo de Albornoz y Barroeta-Aldamar y Elío, daughter of the 6th Marchioness of Casa Torres and Viscountess of Baiguer. Her godmother was Queen Victoria Eugenia of Spain, her brother was Jaime de Mora y Aragón. Before her marriage she published an album of 12 fairy tales, one of which would get its own pavilion in the Efteling theme park in 1966. On 15 December 1960, Fabiola married Baudouin, King of the Belgians since the abdication of his father, Leopold III, in 1951. At the marriage ceremony in the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula, she wore a 1926 Art Deco tiara, a gift of the Belgian state to her husband's mother, Astrid of Sweden, upon her marriage to Leopold III.
Her dress of satin and ermine was designed by the couturier Cristóbal Balenciaga. Fabiola was a hospital nurse at the time of her engagement. On the occasion of her marriage, Spanish bakers set out to honour Fabiola and created a type of bread, "la fabiola", still made in Palencia; the explorer Guido Derom named the Queen Fabiola Mountains – a newly discovered range of Antarctic mountains – in her honour in 1961. She has several varieties of ornamental plants named after her; the royal couple had no children, as the Queen's five pregnancies ended in miscarriage in 1961, 1962, 1963, 1966 and 1968. Fabiola spoke about her miscarriages in 2008:'You know, I myself lost five children. You learn something from that experience. I had problems with all my pregnancies, but you know, in the end I think life is beautiful'. Baudouin died in late July 1993 and was succeeded by his younger brother, Albert II. Fabiola moved out of the Royal Castle of Laeken to the more modest Stuyvenberg Castle and reduced her public appearances so as not to overshadow her sister-in-law, Queen Paola.
Admired for her devout Roman Catholicism and involvement in social causes those related to mental health, children's issues and women's issues, Queen Fabiola received the 2001 Ceres Medal, in recognition of her work to promote rural women in developing countries. The medal was given by the Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, she was honorary president of the King Baudouin Foundation. In July 2009, the Belgian press published news of anonymous death threats she received stating she would be shot with a crossbow, she responded to the threats during Belgian National Day celebrations by waving an apple to the crowd in a reference to the William Tell folk tale. Subsequent threats by an individual said to have a similar signature to the July 2009 threat-writer were received again in January 2010. In January 2013, the Socialist Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo criticised Queen Fabiola for her plans to set up a private foundation, seen by the public as inheritance tax evasion. Queen Fabiola denied the charges in a rare public statement: "I have never had the intention of depositing funds I received from the public purse with my foundation.
All the monies that I receive from the civil list go on expenditure on my household. The lion's share goes on salaries." According to official sources, Queen Fabiola was fluent in French, English and Italian, in addition to her native Spanish. Queen Fabiola was hospitalised for 15 days with pneumonia beginning 16 January 2009, with her condition described as "serious", she subsequently began attending public functions the following May. Queen Fabiola had been in poor health for years, suffering from osteoporosis, as well as having never recovered from a lung inflammation she had in 2009. On the evening of 5 December 2014, the Royal Palace announced that Queen Fabiola had died at Stuyvenberg Castle; the federal government declared a period of national mourning from Saturday 6 December to Friday 12 December, the day when the funeral of Queen Fabiola took place at the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula in Brussels; the Royal Family, members of the government and the Lord Speaker received the coffin at the Royal Palace on 10 December where it was placed in the grand antechamber, where it was decorated with flowers and attended by an honour guard of generals, members of the King's Royal Military household.
Godfried Cardinal Danneels, Metropolitan Archbishop-emeritus of Mechelen-Brussels, celebrated the Requiem Mass. Members of several royal families around the world including the Empress of Japan, Queen of Denmark and Queen of Sweden, King of Norway accompanied by his sister Princess Astrid, King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain, Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands, Sovereign Prince of Liechtenstein, Empress Farah of Iran and Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of Thailand, attended the funeral. No members of the British Royal Family or the Monegasque Princely Family attended the funeral, leading to criticism by both Belgian and international press. 11 June 1928 – 15 December 1960: D
Telephone numbers in Spain
The Spanish telephone numbering plan is the allocation of telephone numbers in Spain. It is regulated by Comisión del Mercado de las Telecomunicaciones. Spain changed to a closed telephone numbering plan in 1998; the trunk prefix was'9', but this was incorporated into the subscriber's number, so that a nine-digit number was used for all calls, e.g.: xx xx xx nxx xxx xxx +34 nxx xxx xxx Mobiles changed: they are now prefixed with the digit'6' or'7': 909 xxx xxx +34 09 xxx xxx +34 6xx xxx xxx +34 7yx xxx xxx New numbering ranges have since been introduced: 10xx Carrier selection codes 5xx xxx xxx Personal Numbering 8xx xxx xxx Geographic expansion 800 xxx xxx Freephone 900 xxx xxx Freephone 80x xxx xxx Shared-cost 90x xxx xxx Shared-cost Spain's international access code changed from 07 to 00, but this did not affect dialing arrangements for calls to Gibraltar, in which the domestic prefix 9567 was used instead of the international code 350, e.g.: 9567 xxxxx +350 xxxxx +34 9567 xxxxx This arrangement was discontinued on 10 February 2007 when Spain adopted the international 00350 prefix for all calls to Gibraltar, thereby bringing end to a dispute between Gibraltar and Spain.
Mobile phone numbers begin with 6 or 7, followed by 8 digits, where y can be 1 to 9, not 0. Note, numbers starting with 70 are personal numbers which can be re-directed to any other number by the personal owner. Since the blocks of mobile phone numbers are allocated according to demand from the service providers, there is not a unique service provider indicated by the three digit numbering group. In October 2009, new legislation was approved to grant the allocation of up to 80,000,000 new numbers beginning with number 7 to supplement the existing group beginning with number 6. Personal numbers are used as redirection IDs; the owner of a personal number may request, for example, any call to its personal number to be redirected to any other number it wants. Personal numbers begin followed by 8 digits. Numbers starting with 2, 3, 4, 5, 99 are reserved. Numbers starting with 0 and 1 are used for prefixes. Numbers starting with 80 and 90 are used for premium rates, toll free, internet access numbers.
803, 806, 807 prefixes are used for premium rate calls, where the caller pays a fixed amount of money per minute. 905 numbers are supposed to be used for voting systems. Calls have a limited duration, are charged a fixed rate per call, they are used in TV shows as a substitutive of 80 numbers, both for image reasons and because operators are not obliged to block them on a user request, as 80 numbers are. 800 and 900 numbers are freephone numbers in Spain. They are available from landlines but not from mobiles. 901 and 902 numbers are Non Geographic Numbers. These have been introduced by the call centres of large multinational European businesses. Unlike other normal Spanish phone numbers beginning 910 onwards, 901 and 902 numbers are always excluded from inclusive call bundles on Spanish landlines and mobiles. 902 numbers are extremely expensive to call from Spanish mobiles. 901 and 902 numbers are premium rated if calling Spain from overseas and low cost international call carriers to Spain refuse to connect calls to 901 and 902 numbers.
Spanish Numbering plan from CMT/Spanish Communications Regulator Operator codes assigned to each network - Due to portability it can change - Registration Needed Real Decreto 2296/2004, de 10 de diciembre Resolución de 30 de junio de 2005, de la Secretaría de Estado de Telecomunicaciones y para la Sociedad de la Información por la que se atribuyen recursos públicos de numeración al servicio telefónico fijo disponible al público y a los servicios vocales nómadas, y se adjudican determinados indicativos provinciales
France
France the French Republic, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean, it is bordered by Belgium and Germany to the northeast and Italy to the east, Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic and Indian oceans; the country's 18 integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres and a total population of 67.3 million. France, a sovereign state, is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nice. During the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by a Celtic people. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, holding it until the arrival of Germanic Franks in 476, who formed the Kingdom of Francia.
The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned Francia into Middle Francia and West Francia. West Francia which became the Kingdom of France in 987 emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages following its victory in the Hundred Years' War. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a global colonial empire was established, which by the 20th century would become the second largest in the world; the 16th century was dominated by religious civil wars between Protestants. France became Europe's dominant cultural and military power in the 17th century under Louis XIV. In the late 18th century, the French Revolution overthrew the absolute monarchy, established one of modern history's earliest republics, saw the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day. In the 19th century, Napoleon established the First French Empire, his subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a tumultuous succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870.
France was a major participant in World War I, from which it emerged victorious, was one of the Allies in World War II, but came under occupation by the Axis powers in 1940. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and dissolved in the course of the Algerian War; the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, remains today. Algeria and nearly all the other colonies became independent in the 1960s and retained close economic and military connections with France. France has long been a global centre of art and philosophy, it hosts the world's fourth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the leading tourist destination, receiving around 83 million foreign visitors annually. France is a developed country with the world's sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP, tenth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of aggregate household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, human development.
France is considered a great power in global affairs, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a leading member state of the European Union and the Eurozone, a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, La Francophonie. Applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name "France" comes from the Latin "Francia", or "country of the Franks". Modern France is still named today "Francia" in Italian and Spanish, "Frankreich" in German and "Frankrijk" in Dutch, all of which have more or less the same historical meaning. There are various theories as to the origin of the name Frank. Following the precedents of Edward Gibbon and Jacob Grimm, the name of the Franks has been linked with the word frank in English, it has been suggested that the meaning of "free" was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation.
Another theory is that it is derived from the Proto-Germanic word frankon, which translates as javelin or lance as the throwing axe of the Franks was known as a francisca. However, it has been determined that these weapons were named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around; the oldest traces of human life in what is now France date from 1.8 million years ago. Over the ensuing millennia, Humans were confronted by a harsh and variable climate, marked by several glacial eras. Early hominids led a nomadic hunter-gatherer life. France has a large number of decorated caves from the upper Palaeolithic era, including one of the most famous and best preserved, Lascaux. At the end of the last glacial period, the climate became milder. After strong demographic and agricultural development between the 4th and 3rd millennia, metallurgy appeared at the end of the 3rd millennium working gold and bronze, iron. France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic period, including the exceptiona
Gipuzkoa
Gipuzkoa is a province of Spain and a historical territory of the autonomous community of the Basque Country. Its capital city is Donostia-San Sebastián. Gipuzkoa shares borders with the French department of Pyrénées-Atlantiques at the northeast, with the province and autonomous community of Navarre at east, Biscay at west, Álava at southwest and the Bay of Biscay to its north, it is located in the Bay of Biscay. It has 66 kilometres of coast land. With a total area of 1,980 square kilometres, Gipuzkoa is the smallest province of Spain; the province has 89 municipalities and a population of 720,592 inhabitants, from which more than half live in the Donostia-San Sebastián metropolitan area. Apart from the capital, other important cities are Irun, Zarautz, Mondragón, Hondarribia, Oñati, Tolosa and Pasaia; the oceanic climate gives the province an intense green colour with little thermic oscillation. Gipuzkoa is the province of the Basque Country where the Basque language is most extensively used: 49.1% of the population spoke Basque in 2006.
The first recorded name of the province was Ipuscoa in a document from the year 1025. During the following years, in various documents, several similar names appear, such as Ipuzcoa, Ipuçcha, among others; the full etymology the word Gipuzkoa has not been ascertained, but links have been made with the Basque word Giputz, containing the root ip-, related to the word ipar and ipuin. According to this, ipuzko might refer to something "to the north" or "in the north". Gipuzkoa is the Basque spelling recommended by the Royal Academy of the Basque language, it is used in official documents in that language; the Basque spelling is mandatory in official texts from the various Spanish public administrations in documents written in Spanish. It is the spelling most used by the Spanish-language media in the Basque Country, it is the spelling used in the Basque version of the Spanish constitution and in the Basque version of the Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Country. Gipuzkoa is the only official spelling approved for the historical territory by the Juntas Generales of the province.
Guipúzcoa is the spelling in Spanish, it has been determined by the Association of Spanish Language Academies as being the only correct use outside official Spanish documents, where the use of the Basque spelling is mandatory. It is the Spanish spelling used in the Spanish version of the Constitution and in the Spanish version of the Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Country. At 1,980 km2 Gipuzkoa is the smallest province in Spain; the province has 88 municipalities and 709,607 inhabitants, a quarter of whom live in the capital, San Sebastián. Other important towns are Irun, Zarautz, Arrasate, Oñati with an old university, Tolosa, the provincial capital for a short time, Pasaia, the main port and Hondarribia, an old fort town across from the French Atlantic coast. Gipuzkoa is hilly and green linking mountain and sea, populated with numerous urban nuclei that dot the whole territory; the conspicuous presence of hills and rugged terrain has added to a special leaning towards hiking and mountains on the part of Gipuzkoans.
Some mountains have an emblematic or iconic significance in the local tradition, their summits being topped with crosses and mountaineer postboxes. In addition, pilgrimages which have lost their former religious zeal and taken on a more secular slant are sometimes held to their summits; some renowned mountains are Aiako Harria, Txindoki and Izarraitz, amongst others. The Aralar Natural Park is a conservation area on the border of Gipuzkoa and Navarre in the Aralar Range; the rivers of Gipuzkoa are distinctly different from other Bay of Biscay rivers. They arise in the hilly Basque inland landscape, flow in a south- north direction, forming close, narrow valleys before joining the ocean; the rivers extend for a short length with only a small fluctuation in the volume of water thanks to the stable rainfall all year round, they show an abrupt drop between origin and mouth as far as the length of the river is concerned. From west to east the rivers are the Deba, Oria, Urumea and Bidasoa. Except for a narrow strip extending east from the hamlet Otzaurte and the tunnel of San Adrian, the province drains its waters to the Atlantic basin.
The region's communication layout is in step with its geographical features, with the main lines of infrastructure along a north -south axis up to recent times along the rivers heading to the ocean. Accordingly, the inland Way of St. James, i.e. the Tunnel Route penetrated the province via Irun and turned south-west along the Oria River towards the provincial limits at the tunnel of San Adrian. This stretch was in operation up to 1765. A minor St. James route crossed Gipuzkoa east to west along the coast; the main road cutting through Gipuzkoa follows that layout, i.e. the N-1 E-5 from Irun to Donostia and on to Altsasu all along the Oria River for the most part. The major Irun-Madrid railway runs close to the river up to its origin on the slopes of Aizkorri at train stop Otzaurte in Zegama. By 1973 engineering works for the Bilbao-Behobia A-8 E-70 motorway had been completed, with the new road cutting across the valleys east to west and turning into the main axis between Donostia and Bilbao, beside
Italy
Italy the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe. Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Austria and the enclaved microstates San Marino and Vatican City. Italy covers an area of 301,340 km2 and has a temperate seasonal and Mediterranean climate. With around 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth-most populous EU member state and the most populous country in Southern Europe. Due to its central geographic location in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, Italy has been home to a myriad of peoples and cultures. In addition to the various ancient peoples dispersed throughout modern-day Italy, the most famous of which being the Indo-European Italics who gave the peninsula its name, beginning from the classical era and Carthaginians founded colonies in insular Italy and Genoa, Greeks established settlements in the so-called Magna Graecia, while Etruscans and Celts inhabited central and northern Italy respectively; the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom in the 8th century BC, which became a republic with a government of the Senate and the People.
The Roman Republic conquered and assimilated its neighbours on the peninsula, in some cases through the establishment of federations, the Republic expanded and conquered parts of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. By the first century BC, the Roman Empire emerged as the dominant power in the Mediterranean Basin and became the leading cultural and religious centre of Western civilisation, inaugurating the Pax Romana, a period of more than 200 years during which Italy's technology, economy and literature flourished. Italy remained the metropole of the Roman Empire; the legacy of the Roman Empire endured its fall and can be observed in the global distribution of culture, governments and the Latin script. During the Early Middle Ages, Italy endured sociopolitical collapse and barbarian invasions, but by the 11th century, numerous rival city-states and maritime republics in the northern and central regions of Italy, rose to great prosperity through shipping and banking, laying the groundwork for modern capitalism.
These independent statelets served as Europe's main trading hubs with Asia and the Near East enjoying a greater degree of democracy than the larger feudal monarchies that were consolidating throughout Europe. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science and art. Italian culture flourished, producing famous scholars and polymaths such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Machiavelli. During the Middle Ages, Italian explorers such as Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, John Cabot and Giovanni da Verrazzano discovered new routes to the Far East and the New World, helping to usher in the European Age of Discovery. Italy's commercial and political power waned with the opening of trade routes that bypassed the Mediterranean. Centuries of infighting between the Italian city-states, such as the Italian Wars of the 15th and 16th centuries, left the region fragmented, it was subsequently conquered and further divided by European powers such as France and Austria.
By the mid-19th century, rising Italian nationalism and calls for independence from foreign control led to a period of revolutionary political upheaval. After centuries of foreign domination and political division, Italy was entirely unified in 1871, establishing the Kingdom of Italy as a great power. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, Italy industrialised, namely in the north, acquired a colonial empire, while the south remained impoverished and excluded from industrialisation, fuelling a large and influential diaspora. Despite being one of the main victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil, leading to the rise of a fascist dictatorship in 1922. Participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in military defeat, economic destruction and the Italian Civil War. Following the liberation of Italy and the rise of the resistance, the country abolished the monarchy, reinstated democracy, enjoyed a prolonged economic boom and, despite periods of sociopolitical turmoil became a developed country.
Today, Italy is considered to be one of the world's most culturally and economically advanced countries, with the sixth-largest worldwide national wealth. Its advanced economy ranks eighth-largest in the world and third in the Eurozone by nominal GDP. Italy owns the third-largest central bank gold reserve, it has a high level of human development, it stands among the top countries for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military and diplomatic affairs. Italy is a founding and leading member of the European Union and a member of numerous international institutions, including the UN, NATO, the OECD, the OSCE, the WTO, the G7, the G20, the Union for the Mediterranean, the Council of Europe, Uniting for Consensus, the Schengen Area and many more; as a reflection
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Cardano al Campo, Italy
Pontarlier, France
Hagunia, Western Sahara
