Región de Murcia

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Comunidad Autónoma de la Región de Murcia

Flag Coat of arms
Capital	Murcia
Official language(s)	Spanish;
Area  – Total  – % of Spain	Ranked 9th  11,313 km²  2.2%
Population  – Total (2005)  – % of Spain  – Density	Ranked 10th  1,335,792  3.0%  118.08/km²
Demonym  – English  – Spanish	Murcian  murciano/a
Statute of Autonomy	June 9, 1982
Parliamentary representation  – Congress seats  – Senate seats	9  2
President	Ramón Luis Valcárcel Siso (PP)
ISO 3166-2	MU
Comunidad Autónoma de la Región de Murcia

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 multiple provinces. Because of this, the autonomous community and the region are operated as one unit of government. The city of Murcia is the capital of the community.

See also List of municipalities in Murcia.

The Region of Murcia is bordered by Andalucía (provinces of Almería and Granada); Castilla-La Mancha (the province of Albacete), which was historically connected to Murcia until 1833; 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 precipitacions are little and water supplies is a hot subject today since, to the traditional water demand for crops it has added recently a demand of water for the booming touristic developments which take advantage of the mild weather and beaches. Water is supplied by the Segura River or Río Segura (which has been labelled as the most polluted river in Europe) 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.

Contents 1 Geography 1.1 Relief 1.2 Climatology 1.3 Hydrography 1.3.1 Rivers 1.3.2 Seas 2 History 3 Demography 4 Language 5 What to do 6 Transport 7 See also 8 External links

[edit] Geography

[edit] Relief

The region is located in the eastern part of the Cordilleras Béticas mountains and it is influenced by their orography. 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 the measurements of the last maps of the SNIG (National Service of Geographic Information of Spain), Revolcadores appears with 1,999 m, and it is a peak of the same bulk, slightly more northern, the most elevated: Los Obispos (The Bishops), with 2,015 m of altitude.

Approximately 27% of the Murcian territory corresponds to mountainous reliefs, 38% to intramountainous depressions and running valleys, and the remaining 35% to plains and high plateaus.

[edit] Climatology

The Region of Murcia enjoys a Mediterranean climate of semi-arid type, with smooth winters (11ºC of average in December and January) and warm summers (with more than 40ºC). The average annual temperature is 18ºC.

With little precipitations 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 more precipitations, being frequent water whirlwinds in a single day.

The distance to the sea and the relief causes thermal difference between the coast and the interior, mainly in winter. Whereas in the coast the temperatures rarely descend under 10º, in the interior regions it usually does not exceed 6º and the precipitations are greater (up to 600 mm).

The city of Murcia has the record of temperature of the 20th century in Spain. There were 47,2° in July 4, 1994. The winter of 2005 was the coldest in a long time, reaching even to snow in the Murcian coast [1].

[edit] Hydrography

[edit] Rivers

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

• Río Mundo river (which is born in Albacete), it is the one that contributes to the Segura with the greatest volume.
• Río Alhárabe river and its affluent, the Benamor.
• Río Mula river.
• Río 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.

[edit] Seas

The greater natural lake of Spain can be found in the region: the Mar Menor (Smaller Sea) lagoon. It is a salt water lagoon, located next to the Mediterranean Sea. Its special ecological and natural characteristics make the Mar Menor a unique natural place and the greater salt water lake of Europe. With a semicircular form, it is separated from the Mediterranean Sea by a sand strip of 22 km in length and between 100 and 1200 m of width, denominated La Manga del Mar Menor (the Sleeve of the Smaller Sea). The lagoon has been designated by United Nations as a Specially Protected Zone of Importance for the Mediterranean. In its coastal perimeter it accounts with 73 km of coast in which beaches follow one another with transparent water and little depth (the maximum depth is not superior to 7 m), and with 170 km² of surface.

[edit] History

The Carthaginians established a permanent trading depot 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. Roman Murcia was a part 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.

The Kingdom of Murcia came into independent existence 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. By the usual process, the Muslims were evicted from the cities, and Ferdinand's heir Alfonso X of Castile, for the better governing of a depopulated Murcia, divided the administration of the border kingdom in three regions, 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 like 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 that kingdom 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.

[edit] 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 represents the 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 a +26.06%, as opposed to the +11.85% at which the national set grew. A 12.35% of their inhabitants are of foreign nationality, according to the INE 2005 census, which is four points over the Spanish average. The most important immigrants colonies are the Ecuadorian (33.71% of the total of foreigners), the Moroccan (27.13%), the Briton (5.95%), the Bolivian (4.57%) and the Colombian (3.95%).

[edit] Language

The Spanish spoken in the region is quite different from other areas of Spain. Murciano dialect (or Panocho) 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 shares several traits with the one spoken in the neighbouring province of Almería, in Andalucía and the Vega Baja del Segura in the Alicante province.

[edit] What to do

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

• Cultural heritage (monuments, museums and exhibitions, theatres, visitor centers).
• 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
• Regional festivities and Cultural activities.

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

[edit] Transport

• San Javier–Murcia Airport.
• El Altet–Alicante Airport, although outside Murcia, is also used to arrive.
• Cartagena Seaport.

[edit] See also

• Category:Municipalities in Murcia
• List of municipalities in Murcia
• The City of Murcia, which is the capital of the Autonomous Community of Murcia (do not confuse them).

edit	Municipalities in Murcia
Abanilla | Abarán | Águilas | Albudeite | Alcantarilla | Los Alcázares | Aledo | Alguazas | Alhama de Murcia | Archena | Beniel | Blanca | Bullas | Calasparra | Campos del Río | Caravaca de la Cruz | Cartagena | Cehegín | Ceutí | Cieza | Fortuna | Fuente Álamo de Murcia | Jumilla | Librilla | Lorca | Lorquí | Mazarrón | Molina de Segura | Moratalla | Mula | Murcia | Ojós | Pliego |Puerto Lumbreras | Ricote | San Javier | San Pedro del Pinatar | Santomera | Torre-Pacheco | Las Torres de Cotillas | Totana | Ulea | La Unión | Villanueva del Río Segura | Yecla

[edit] External links

• Official Tourism Site of Murcia, Spain
• (Spanish) Comunidad Autónoma de la Región de Murcia (the Autonomous Community of Murcia)
• (Spanish) La Opinión - local newspaper
• (Spanish) La Verdad - local newspaper
• University of Murcia - public university
• (Spanish) Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena - public university
• (Spanish) Universidad Católica San Antonio - private university
• (Spanish) Murcianicos.com - resource directory