Spain

Spain is a country in Europe.

It is next to the Mediterranean Sea. Spain has high mountains and wide, flat land. It has islands too. The capital city is called Madrid.

Spain is in the far southwest of Europe. It shares the Iberian Peninsula with Portugal and covers about 85 percent of it. A peninsula is land with water on most sides, and Spain has the Mediterranean Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the northwest and southwest and the Bay of Biscay to the north.

The middle of Spain is the Meseta, a broad plateau about half a mile above sea level. Spain also includes two groups of islands: the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands in the Atlantic. Almost 50 million people live in Spain, and its capital is Madrid.

Spain lies at the extreme southwest of Europe, occupying about 85 percent of the Iberian Peninsula (Britannica also puts it at five-sixths), with a total area of about 506,000 square kilometers. Beyond the mainland it includes the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean, the volcanic Canary Islands in the Atlantic off northwest Africa, and Ceuta and Melilla, two small enclaves on the coast of northern Morocco that Spain has ruled for centuries.

Most of the mainland is the Meseta Central, a plateau divided by the Central Sierras and ringed by mountain ranges; the northern Meseta averages about 700 meters above sea level. Spain's national statistics institute, INE, counted 49,801,559 residents on 1 July 2026 (a provisional figure, the highest in its records), and about 82 percent of people lived in urban areas in 2024. Spain is a constitutional monarchy: the monarch is head of state and the Cortes Generales, a parliament of two chambers, makes the laws.

Madrid is the biggest city in Spain.

It has many museums. Barcelona is a big city by the sea. A man named Gaudí made buildings there in his own special style. In Granada, an old palace sits on a green hill.

Madrid is Spain's capital and largest city, with about 3.5 million people (2025), and it is the country's center for business and culture. Barcelona, on the Mediterranean coast, is the second-largest city. The architect Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926) built seven famous works in and near Barcelona, including Park Güell and parts of the Sagrada Família church, and they are now a World Heritage Site.

In Granada, the Alhambra fortress and palace stands on a hill above the city. Next to it are the gardens of the Generalife, once the country home of the emirs, Muslim rulers who governed this part of Spain in the 1200s and 1300s.

Madrid, with 3,506,730 people (2025), is Spain's largest city and, as Britannica puts it, its financial and cultural center, as it has been for hundreds of years. Barcelona (1.73 million in 2025), capital of Catalonia, is known for its maritime industry and architecture. UNESCO lists seven works by Antoni Gaudí in or near Barcelona as one World Heritage Site (inscribed in 1984 and extended in 2005), among them Park Güell, Casa Milà, Casa Batlló and his Nativity façade and crypt of the Sagrada Família, for his exceptional contribution to architecture and building technology around 1900.

In Granada, the Alhambra and the Albaicín occupy two adjacent hills and form the medieval part of the city; east of the Alhambra lie the gardens of the Generalife, the country residence of the emirs who ruled this region in the 13th and 14th centuries (World Heritage Site, 1984). Segovia's Roman aqueduct, probably built around 50 CE, still stands on two tiers of arches.

Spain has many mountains.

The Pyrenees mountains are in the north. The tallest mountain of all is on an island. It is a volcano called Teide. Some parts of Spain are very dry.

Mountains ring the central plateau, and the Pyrenees form a long wall along the border with France. In the south, the snowcapped Sierra Nevada rises above the Guadalquivir River valley.

The highest point of all is not on the mainland. Teide, a volcano on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, reaches 3,715 meters. Spain's longest river, the Tagus, flows more than 1,000 kilometers west to the Atlantic. The north is rainy and green, while much of the south and east is hot and dry.

Most of Spain is the Meseta Central, an ancient block of Hercynian rock around which younger sediments were later pushed up into mountains. The Pyrenees stretch about 430 km from the Mediterranean to the Bay of Biscay, peaking at Aneto (3,404 m); the Baetic Cordillera in the south holds the mainland's highest summit, Mulhacén (3,479 m, IGN). Three of Spain's rivers, the Tagus (1,007 km), Ebro (909 km) and Douro (895 km), rank among Europe's longest, and all the major rivers except the Ebro drain to the Atlantic.

The Canary Islands are volcanic. UNESCO describes the Teide-Pico Viejo volcano as the highest peak on Spanish soil; rising about 7,500 m from the ocean floor, it is regarded as the world's third-tallest volcanic structure. Spain's National Geographic Institute (IGN) lists Teide at 3,715 m, although UNESCO and Britannica still give 3,718 m. The climate ranges from the humid, maritime north, from Galicia to northern Catalonia, to Mediterranean and continental conditions elsewhere. Britannica reports that nearly half of Spain is moderately or severely affected by the threat of desertification, especially in the arid east.

Almost 50 million people live in Spain.

Most people speak Spanish. Some people also speak Catalan, Galician or Basque. In many homes, lunch is the big meal of the day. Paella is a rice dish from Valencia.

Almost 50 million people live in Spain, and most of them live in towns and cities. Spanish, called Castilian in Spain, is the official language of the whole country and the language most people speak. In some regions other languages are official too: Catalan, Valencian, Galician and Basque. Basque is not related to any other language in the world.

In many homes, lunch is the main meal of the day, eaten between 2 and 3 in the afternoon, and supper comes late. Cooking changes from region to region: Valencia is the home of paella, a rice dish with seafood, meat and vegetables, and Andalusia is known for gazpacho, a cold tomato soup. Flamenco, a mix of song, dance and guitar, has its heartland in Andalusia in the south.

Spain had 49.8 million residents on 1 July 2026 (INE, provisional), and 81.8 percent of people were urban in 2024. Castilian is the official language of the state; the statutes of 6 of the 17 autonomous communities make another language co-official as well: Catalan (Catalonia and the Balearic Islands), Valencian, Galician and Euskera (Basque). All except Basque are Romance languages descended from Latin; Basque is a language isolate. The Roma, known in Spain as Gitanos, are the country's long-standing ethnic minority, and since the 1980s Spain has received large numbers of immigrants, most of them from other EU countries and Latin America.

Britannica describes a day organized around a late main meal between 2:00 and 3:00 pm and supper around 9:00 to 10:00 pm, with bar snacks called tapas. Regional dishes include Galician seafood, Valencian paella and Andalusian gazpacho. UNESCO inscribed flamenco, which fuses song (cante), dance (baile) and guitar playing (toque), on its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2010; Andalusia is its heartland.