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Region of Murcia

Coordinates: 38°00′N 1°30′W / 38.000°N 1.500°W / 38.000; -1.500
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Template:Autonomous community The Autonomous Community of the Region of Murcia (Spanish: Comunidad Autónoma de la Región de Murcia) is one of Spain's seventeen autonomous communities, located in the southeast of the country, between Andalucía and Valencian Community, on the Mediterranean coast.

The autonomous community consists of a single province (region), unlike most autonomous communities, which have several provinces within the same region. Because of this, the autonomous community and the province are operated as one unit of government. The city of Murcia is the capital of the Region, and seat of government organs, except for the parliament (Regional Assembly), which is in Cartagena

See also List of municipalities in Murcia.

The Region of Murcia is bordered by Andalucía (the provinces of Almería and Granada); Castilla-La Mancha (the province of Albacete), which was historically connected to Murcia until 1833; the Valencian Community (province of Alicante); and the Mediterranean Sea. The highest mountain is Revolcadores (2015 m).

The community measures 11,313 km² and has a population of 1.2 million, of whom one-third live in the capital.

The region is a major producer of fruits, vegetables, and flowers for Spain and the rest of Europe. Excellent wineries have developed near the towns of Bullas, Yecla, and Jumilla, as well as olive oil near Moratalla. Murcia is mainly a warm region which has made it very suitable for agriculture. However the precipitacion level is low and water supply is a hot subject today since, in addition to the traditional water demand for crops, there is now also a demand of water for the booming tourist developments which take advantage of the mild weather and beaches. Water is supplied by the Segura River or Río Segura and, ever since the 70's, by the Tajo transvasement, a major civil engineering which, under some environmental and sustaintibility restraints, brings water from the Tajo into the Segura.

Geography

Relief

The region is located in the eastern part of the Cordilleras Béticas mountains and it is influenced by their orthography. These mountain ranges are divided as well in the Prebética, Subbética and Penibética mountain ranges (from north to the south).

Traditionally it has been considered that the peak of Revolcadores, pertaining to the bulk of the same name, was the highest point in the Region of Murcia, with 2,027 meters of height; but in measurements of the most recent maps of the SNIG (National Service of Geographic Information of Spain), Revolcadores appears with a height of 1,999 m, and there is a mountain slightly further north of a similar altitude which is more elevated Los Obispos (The Bishops), with an altitude of 2,015 m.

Approximately 27% of the Murcian territory can be described as mountainous, 38% as intramountainous depressions and running valleys, and the remaining 35% as flat lands and plateaux.

Climatology

The Region of Murcia enjoys a Mediterranean climate of semi-arid type, with mild winters (an average of 11C in December and January) and warm summers (where the daily maximum regularly exceeds 40ºC). The average annual temperature is 18ºC.

With little precipitation of about 300 to 350 mm per year, the region has between 120 and 150 days in the year where the sky is totally clear. April and October are the months with the most precipitation, there being frequent heavy downpours in a single day.

The distance to the sea and the relief causes thermal difference between the coast and the interior, mainly in winter. While on the coast the temperature rarely descends below 10º, in the interior regions it does not usually rise above 6º and the precipitation level is higher (up to 600 mm).

The city of Murcia holds the record temperature of the 20th century in Spain. It reached 47.2° on July 4, 1994. The winter of 2005 was the coldest in a long time, with snow even falling on the Murcian coast. [1].

Hydrography

Rivers

The hydrographic network of the region is made up of the Segura river and its affluents:

  • Mundo river (which is born in Albacete), it is the one that contributes to the Segura with the greatest volume.
  • Alhárabe river and its affluent, the Benamor.
  • Mula river.
  • Guadalentín, Sangonera or Reguerón river (which is born upper before Lorca).

Due to the water supplying incapacity of the Segura river basin, contributions to this river basin are made, originated from the basin of the Tajo river, by means of the Tajo-Segura trasvasement.

Seas

The greatest natural lake of Spain can be found in the region: the Mar Menor (Small Sea) lagoon. It is a salt water lagoon, adjacent to the Mediterranean Sea. Its special ecological and natural characteristics make the Mar Menor a unique natural place and the largest saltwater lake of Europe. With a semicircular shape, it is separated from the Mediterranean Sea by a sand strip 22 km in length and between 100 and 1200 m wide, known as La Manga del Mar Menor (the Sleeve of the Small Sea). The lagoon has been designated by THe United Nations as a Specially Protected Zone of Importance for the Mediterranean. Its coastal perimeter accounts for 73 km of coast in which beaches follow one another with crystal clear shallow water (the maximum depth does not exceed7 m). The lake has an area of 170 square kilometers

editor may erase my english corrections

History

The Carthaginians established a permanent trading port on the coast at Cartagena, which the Romans called Carthago Nova. For the Carthaginian traders, the mountainous territory was merely the Iberian hinterland of their seacoast empire. During The Roman period Murcia did not exist but its actual borders could have been inside of the province of Hispania Carthaginensis. Under the Moors, who introduced the large-scale irrigation on which Murcian agriculture depends, the province was known as Todmir; it included, according to Idrisi, the 11th century Arab cartographer based in Sicily, the cities of Orihuela, Lorca, Mula and Chinchilla, Spain.

The Kingdom of Murcia became independent as a taifa centered on the Moorish city of Murcia after the fall of the Omayyad Caliphate of Córdoba (11th century). Moorish Taifa of Murcia included Albacete and part of Almería as well. After the battle of Sagrajas in 1086 the Almoravid dynasty swallowed up the taifas and reunited Islamic Spain. Ferdinand III of Castile received the submission of the Moorish king of Murcia in 1243. In the usual way, the Muslims were evicted from the cities, and Ferdinand's heir Alfonso X of Castile, who benefitted from rulen over a largely depopulated Murcia, divided the border kingdom in three regions for administrative purposes, entrusted respectively to the concejos de realengo, to the ecclesiastical señores seculares, as a reward for their contributions to the Reconquista and to the Military Orders founded in the 11th century. Alfonso annexed the Taifa of Murcia as King of Murcia and Señorio de Cartagena outright in 1266, and it remained technically a vassal kingdom of Spain until the reforms in the liberal constitution of 1812. Murcia became an autonomous region in 1982.

The Castilian conquest of Murcia was significant because it gave the former access to the Mediterranean for the first time and ended the expansion of the Kingdom of Aragon which had been moving south along the coast.

Demography

The Region of Murcia has a population of 1,335,792 inhabitants (INE 2005, National Statistic Institute of Spain), of which almost a third (30.7%) live in the municipality of Murcia. It makes up 3.0% of the Spanish population. In addition, after Ceuta and Melilla, Murcia has the highest vegetative growth (5.52 by thousand inhabitants) and also the highest birth rate of the country.

  • Birth rate (2004): 13.00 per 1,000
  • Mortality rate (2004): 7.48 per 1,000
  • Life expectancy (2002):
    • Men: 76.01 years
    • Women: 82.00 years

In the 1991-2005 period the Murcian population grew at by 26.06%, as opposed to the national average of 11.85%. 12.35% of the inhabitants are of foreign origin, according to the INE 2005 census, which is 4% more than the Spanish average. The most notable groups of immigrants are Ecuadorians (33.71% of the total of foreigners), Moroccans (27.13%), Britons (5.95%), Bolivians (4.57%) and Colombians (3.95%).

Municipalities

Municipalities in Region of Murcia
  • Main article: List of municipalities in Murcia

Language

The Spanish spoken in the region is quite different from other areas of Spain. Murciano dialect tends to eliminate many syllable-final consonants and to emphasize regional vocabulary, much of which is derived from Aragonese and old Arabic words. The general intonation and some of the distinctive vocabulary of the Spanish dialect spoken in Murcia share several traits with the one spoken in the neighbouring province of Almería, in Andalucía and the Vega Baja del Segura in the Alicante province.

Catalan is spoken in a small area of the Region known as El Carche in Spanish and El Carxe in Catalan. Many murcianos also speak english as Murcia is part of the european community.

What to do

In the Region of Murcia, visitors can engage in activities related to:

  • Cultural heritage (monuments, museums and exhibitions, theatres, visitor centres).
  • Nature (natural areas, beaches, footpaths, caves).
  • Health and beauty (thermal spas, thalassotherapy centres, spas).
  • Routes and excursions (tourist routes, guided visits, excursions by sea).
  • Sport (charter nautic, yacht facilities, golf courses, adventure tourism companies, sports federations).
  • Gastronomy (restaurants, foods of the region, recipes).
  • Leisure (film showtimes, casinos, bullrings, weekly markets, shopping centers).
  • Handicrafts (craft centres, traditional markets).
  • Religious tourism and Language tourism[2]
  • Regional festivities and Cultural activities.

For the stay, one can choose between hotels, apartments, alojamientos rurales (rural facilities), and camp sites.

Transport

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Región de Murcia.

38°00′N 1°30′W / 38.000°N 1.500°W / 38.000; -1.500

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