Place:Castilla y León, Spain

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Castile and León is an autonomous community in northwestern Spain.

It was created in 1983, eight years after the end of the Francoist regime, by the merging of the provinces of the historic region of León: León, Zamora and Salamanca with those of Castilla La Vieja (Old Castile): Ávila, Burgos, Palencia, Segovia, Soria and Valladolid. Up-until-then Castilian provinces of Santander and Logroño opted out of this merging and succeeded in creating the new Autonomous Communities of Cantabria and La Rioja respectively.

Castile and León is the largest autonomous community in Spain in terms of area, covering 94,222 km². It is however sparsely populated, with a population density below 30/km². While a capital has not been explicitly declared, the seats of the executive and legislative powers are set in Valladolid by law and for all purposes that city (also the most populated municipality) serves as de facto regional capital.

Castile and León is a landlocked region, bordered by Portugal as well as by the Spanish autonomous communities of Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, the Basque Country, La Rioja, Aragon, Castilla–La Mancha, the Community of Madrid and Extremadura. Chiefly comprising the northern half of the Inner Plateau, it is surrounded by mountain barriers (the Cantabrian Mountains to the North, the Sistema Central to the South and the Sistema Ibérico to the East) and it is drained by the Douro River, flowing west toward the Atlantic Ocean.

The region contains eleven World Heritage Sites, and it's, along the region of Lombardia, the region with most UNESCO World Heritage Sites. UNESCO recognizes the Cortes of León of 1188 as the cradle of worldwide parliamentarism.

History and Politics

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

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