El Salvador

El Salvador is a country in Central America.

It is small, with many volcanoes. The Pacific Ocean is on one side. The capital city is San Salvador.

El Salvador is in Central America, the narrow strip of land between Mexico and South America. It is the smallest country on the mainland there, and the only one with no coast on the Caribbean Sea: its only coast faces the Pacific Ocean.

In 2024 the national census counted 6,029,976 people, so El Salvador is also the most crowded country in Central America. Spanish is the official language, and the capital is San Salvador. El Salvador uses the U.S. dollar as its money.

Britannica calls El Salvador the smallest and most densely populated country in Central America, a land of quickly shifting terrain of volcanoes, fertile valleys and Pacific shores. Its whole territory lies on the western side of the isthmus, so it alone in Central America lacks a Caribbean coast.

The VII Population Census of 2024, presented by the Central Reserve Bank (BCR), counted 6,029,976 people, 52.8% of them women, an increase of about 5% (285,863 people) over the 5,744,113 of 2007. The department of San Salvador holds 29.4% of the population. The U.S. dollar has been legal tender since January 1, 2001. El Salvador is a republic with a 60-seat Legislative Assembly; Nayib Bukele is president.

San Salvador is the biggest city.

It sits in a valley near a volcano. Santa Ana has a grand old theater. Long ago, ash covered a farming village called Joya de Cerén.

Most Salvadorans live in the valleys between the volcanoes, where the soil is rich. San Salvador, the capital, has grown so much that it now runs all the way from Nueva San Salvador to Lake Ilopango, and about one in four Salvadorans lives in this big city area.

Santa Ana is the busy center of the west; the photo shows its theater beside its cathedral. San Miguel, in the east, sits on the slope of the San Miguel volcano. Near San Salvador lies Joya de Cerén, a farming village buried by a volcano's ash around the year 600.

More than three-fourths of Salvadorans live in the intermontane basins of the central highlands, where Indigenous communities farmed corn, beans and squash for millennia; ruins at Chalchuapa, Sihuatán and Cara Sucia are their legacy. Spanish colonial towns grew there too, and the San Salvador conurbation now stretches from Nueva San Salvador to Lake Ilopango and holds about one-fourth of the population. Santa Ana is the commercial center of the west, and San Miguel mixes colonial and modern architecture on its volcano's slope.

UNESCO's Joya de Cerén (inscribed 1993) was a pre-Hispanic farming community buried by an eruption of the Laguna Caldera volcano about AD 600. Like Pompeii and Herculaneum, its exceptionally preserved remains show the daily life of Central American farmers of the time. Most of these cities have suffered one or more destructive earthquakes.

A long line of volcanoes crosses the country.

Some of them are still active. Heavy rain falls from May to October. The rest of the year is dry.

El Salvador lies on the Central American volcanic arc, one of the most active volcano zones in the Americas. About 20 volcanoes march across the middle of the country from west to east, from Izalco to Conchagua. Between them are high valleys with soil made from ash and lava, perfect for crops.

The weather is warm rather than hot in the highlands. Heavy rains called temporales fall from May to October, and November to April is dry. Pine-oak and cloud forests grow in the high mountains, dry tropical forest lower down, and mangroves line parts of the coast.

The central highlands carry a west-east line of 20 volcanic cones, some active: Izalco (1,965 m), San Salvador (1,960 m), San Miguel (2,130 m) and Conchagua (1,243 m) in the far east. Between them, basins at 1,000–1,500 m have fertile soils of volcanic ash, lava and alluvium. North of them the Lempa River drains a broad interior plain, and an older, eroded volcanic range runs along the northern border, where steep slopes, forest clearance and overused soils have badly degraded the land. Cerro El Pital, about 2,730 m (Wikidata), is the highest point.

The climate is tropical, moderated by elevation. San Salvador, at 682 m, ranges from a mean of about 17 °C in January to 34 °C maximum in March. The Pacific lowlands receive about 1,700 mm of rain a year, falling mostly in the May–October temporales. Vegetation runs from pine-oak and cloud forests to tropical dry forest and coastal mangroves; the maquilishuat is the national tree and the izote the national flower.

Monkeys, deer and armadillos live here.

Crocodiles rest in coastal wetlands. Sea turtles lay eggs on the beaches. Hundreds of kinds of birds fly here.

Even though El Salvador is small, it has monkeys, deer, armadillos, coyotes, reptiles, amphibians and hundreds of kinds of birds. American crocodiles live in some coastal wetlands and river mouths, and sea turtles nest on parts of the Pacific coast.

People have cut down a lot of forest over the centuries for farms and cities. National parks and protected areas now help keep homes for wild animals.

Britannica lists monkeys, deer, armadillos, coyotes, reptiles, amphibians and hundreds of bird species; American crocodiles live in some coastal wetlands and estuaries, and sea turtles nest on parts of the Pacific coast. El Salvador also lies inside the IUCN-mapped native ranges of the green and hawksbill sea turtles, the ocelot, puma, raccoon and resplendent quetzal, while the scarlet macaw and harpy eagle are mapped as historical, no longer present.

Centuries of deforestation, agricultural expansion and urbanization have shrunk natural habitats, which makes the remaining national parks and protected areas important for conserving biodiversity. The photos on this page were taken in other countries.

About six million people live in El Salvador.

Most people speak Spanish. Many live in cities. Some families have relatives in other countries.

Most Salvadorans have both Indigenous and Spanish ancestors. Long ago, many Indigenous languages were spoken, such as Nahuatl in the center, but today Spanish is the language almost everyone uses. Nearly three out of four people live in towns and cities.

For more than a century, coffee grown on the volcano slopes was the country's main product. Today many people work in services and factories. Many Salvadorans have moved to other countries, especially the United States, and the money they send home to their families is important.

Almost nine-tenths of Salvadorans are mestizo; the rest include Indigenous peoples (among them the Izalco and the Pancho of Panchimalco), people of European ancestry and small other groups. Nahuatl and Poton were the main precolonial languages; Spanish became official, and a government effort to preserve Nahuatl did not succeed. About half the population is Roman Catholic, which has special recognition in the constitution, and by the 2010s more than one-third were Protestant.

From the 19th century the highland basins were ideal for coffee, the base of the economy. During the civil war about one-fifth of the population is estimated to have left, in roughly equal numbers for neighboring countries and the United States, and most have not returned. Britannica describes today's economy as driven largely by services, manufacturing and remittances from Salvadorans abroad.