The autonomous communities (, singular: ) are the first-level administrative divisions of Spain, created in accordance with the Spanish Constitution of 1978, with the aim of guaranteeing limited autonomy to the nationalities and regions that make up Spain.

There are 17 autonomous communities and two autonomous cities (Ceuta and Melilla) that are collectively known as "autonomies". The two autonomous cities have the right to become autonomous communities.

The autonomous communities exercise their right to self-government within the limits set forth in the constitution and organic laws known as Statutes of Autonomy, which broadly define the powers that they assume.

Each statute sets out the devolved powers () for each community; typically those communities with stronger local nationalism have more powers, and this type of devolution has been called asymmetrical which is on the whole seen as advantageous, able to respond to diversity.

Despite the Constitution not setting a mandatory legislative chamber framework, all autonomous communities have chosen unicameralism. All such governments have legislative and executive branches of government but not judicial.

Decentralisation model

The Spanish model is generally considered by foreign political scientists and scholars as "a federal system with certain peculiarities". However it is also described as a decentralised unitary country. While sovereignty is vested in the nation as a whole, represented in the central institutions of government, the nation has, to varying degrees, devolved power to the communities.

This unique framework of territorial administration has been labeled by the Constitutional Court as the "State of Autonomous Communities", to avoid implying either a unitary or federal model. paragraph 2-4 Some scholars have referred to the resulting system as a federal system in all but name, or a "federation without federalism".

List of autonomous communities Most autonomous communities are officially referred to by either their Spanish name (which is the case for the majority of them) or the name in the community's co-official language (as in the Valencian Community and the Balearic Islands). In the Basque Country, Navarre and Galicia, both forms are used. Since 2006, the Aranese standard of Occitan is also a co-official language in Catalonia, making it the only autonomous community whose name has three official variants (Spanish: Cataluña, Catalan: Catalunya, Occitan: Catalonha).

Flag Autonomouscommunity Capital President Legislature Governmentcoalition Senateseats Area(km2) Pop.(2024) Density(/km2) GRP per capita(€; 2023) Status Andalusia Seville Juan Manuel Moreno (PP) Parliament PP and Vox 41 (9 RA, 32 DE) 87,268 (17.2%) 8,631,862 96 23,218 Nationality Aragon Zaragoza Jorge Azcón (PP) Cortes PP and Vox 14 (2 RA, 12 DE) 47,719 (9.4%) 1,351,591 28 34,658 Nationality Asturias Oviedo Adrián Barbón (PSOE) General Junta FSA–PSOE, CxAst 6 (2 RA, 4 DE) 10,604 (2.1%) 1,009,599 96 28,130 Historicalcommunity Balearic Islands Palma Marga Prohens (PP) Parliament PP 7 (2 RA, 5 DE) 4,992 (1%) 1,231,768 230 34,381 Nationality Basque Country Vitoria-Gasteiz(de facto) Imanol Pradales (PNV) Parliament PNV, PSE-EE (PSOE) 15 (3 RA, 12 DE) 7,234 (1.4%) 2,227,684 305 39,547 Nationality Canary Islands Las Palmas,Santa Cruz Fernando Clavijo Batlle (CC) Parliament CCa, PP, ASG, AHI 14 (3 RA, 11 DE) 7,447 (1.5%) 2,238,754 289 24,345 Nationality Cantabria Santander María José Sáenz de Buruaga (PP) Parliament PP 5 (1 RA, 4 DE) 5,321 (1%) 590,851 109 28,461 Historicalcommunity Castile and León Valladolid(de facto) Alfonso Fernández Mañueco (PP) Cortes PP and Vox 39 (3 RA, 36 DE) 94,223 (18.6%) 2,391,682 25 29,698 Historicalcommunity Castilla–La Mancha Toledo Emiliano García-Page (PSOE) Cortes PSOE 23 (3 RA, 20 DE) 79,463 (15.7%) 2,104,433 26 25,758 Region Catalonia Barcelona Salvador Illa (PSC) Parliament PSC 24 (8 RA, 16 DE) 32,114 (6.3%) 8,012,231 239 35,325 Nationality Extremadura Mérida María Guardiola (PP) Assembly PP and Vox 10 (2 RA, 8 DE) 41,634 (8.2%) 1,054,681 26 23,604 Region Galicia Santiago de Compostela Alfonso Rueda (PP) Parliament PP 19 (3 RA, 16 DE) 29,574 (5.8%) 2,705,833 91 28,644 Nationality La Rioja Logroño Gonzalo Capellán (PP) Parliament PP 5 (1 RA, 4 DE) 5,045 (1%) 324,184 63 32,828 Region Madrid City of Madrid Isabel Díaz Ayuso (PP) Assembly PP 11 (7 RA, 4 DE) 8,028 (1.6%) 7,009,268 830 42,198 Region Murcia City of Murcia Fernando López Miras (PP) Regional Assembly PP 6 (2 RA, 4 DE) 11,313 (2.9%) 1,568,492 132 25,887 Region Navarre Pamplona María Chivite (PSOE) Parliament PSN-PSOE, GBai, C/Z 5 (1 RA, 4 DE) 10,391 (2%) 678,333 63 37,088 Nationality Valencia City of Valencia Juanfran Pérez Llorca (PP) Corts PP 17 (5 RA, 12 DE) 23,255 (4.6%) 5,319,285 215 26,453 Nationality

RA: Regionally AppointedDE: Directly Elected

Autonomous cities Flag Coat of arms Autonomouscity Mayor-President Legislature Governmentcoalition Senate seats Area(km2) Pop.(2024) Density(/km2) GRP per capita (€) 2023 Ceuta Juan Jesús Vivas (PP) Assembly PP 2 (DE) 18.5 83,179 4,583 22,751 Melilla Juan José Imbroda (PP) Assembly PP 2 (DE) 12.3 85,985 7,031 20,479

DE: Directly Elected

History

Background

Spain is a diverse country made up of several different regions with varying economic and social structures, as well as different languages and historical, political and cultural traditions. While the entire Spanish territory was united under one crown in 1479, this was not a process of national homogenization or amalgamation. The constituent territories—be they crowns, kingdoms, principalities or dominions—retained much of their former institutional existence, including limited legislative, judicial or fiscal autonomy. These territories also exhibited a variety of local customs, laws, languages and currencies until the mid 19th century.

From the 18th century onwards, the Bourbon kings and the government tried to establish a more centralized regime. Leading figures of the Spanish Enlightenment advocated for the building of a Spanish nation beyond the internal territorial boundaries. This culminated in 1833, when Spain was divided into 49 (now 50) provinces, which served mostly as transmission belts for policies developed in Madrid.

Spanish history since the late 19th century has been shaped by a dialectical struggle between Spanish nationalism and peripheral nationalisms, mostly in Catalonia and the Basque Country, and to a lesser degree in Galicia.

In a response to Catalan demands, limited autonomy was granted to the Commonwealth of Catalonia in 1914, only to be abolished in 1925. It was granted again in 1932 during the Second Spanish Republic, when the Generalitat, Catalonia's mediaeval institution of government, was restored. The constitution of 1931 envisaged a territorial division for all Spain in "autonomous regions", which was never fully attained—only Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia had approved "Statutes of Autonomy"—the process being thwarted by the Spanish Civil War that broke out in 1936, and the victory of the rebel Nationalist forces under Francisco Franco.

Franco's dictatorial regime strongly believed that the only way of preserving the "unity of the Spanish nation" was by ruling Spain as a highly centralized state. Peripheral nationalism, along with communism and atheism, were regarded by his regime as the main threats. His attempts to fight separatism with heavy-handed but sporadic repression, and his often severe suppression of language and regional identities backfired: the demands for democracy became intertwined with demands for the recognition of a pluralistic vision of Spanish nationhood.

Upon Franco's death in 1975, Spain entered into a phase of transition to democracy. The most difficult task of the newly democratically elected (the Spanish Parliament) in 1977 acting as a Constituent Assembly was to transition from Franco's rigid centralism to a more decentralized model in a way that would satisfy the demands of the peripheral nationalists.

The Prime Minister of Spain, Adolfo Suárez, met with Josep Tarradellas, president of the Generalitat of Catalonia in exile. They agreed to restore the Generalitat and transfer limited powers while the constitution was still being written. Shortly after, the government allowed the creation of "assemblies of members of parliament" made up of deputies and senators of the different territories of Spain, so that they could constitute "pre-autonomic regimes" for their regions as well.

The Fathers of the Constitution worked toward balancing the opposing views of Spain—on the one hand, the centralist view inherited from monarchist and nationalist elements of Spanish society, and on the other hand federalism and a pluralistic view of Spain as a "nation of nations"—and developing a uniform decentralization of entities with the same powers and an asymmetrical structure that would distinguish the nationalities. Peripheral nationalist parties wanted a multinational state with a federal or confederal model, while the governing Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD) and the People's Alliance (AP) wanted minimum decentralization; the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) was sympathetic to a federal system.

In the end, the constitution, published and ratified in 1978, found a balance in recognizing the existence of "nationalities and regions" in Spain, within the "indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation." In order to manage the tensions present in the Spanish transition to democracy, the drafters of the current Spanish constitution avoided giving labels such as 'federal' to the territorial arrangements,Why Talk of Federalism Won't Help Peace in Syria. Foreign Policy while enshrining in the constitution the right to autonomy or self-government of the "nationalities and regions" through a process of asymmetric devolution of power to the "autonomous communities" that were to be created.Devolution and Democracy: Identity, Preferences, and Voting in the Spanish "State of Autonomies"

Constitution of 1978

The starting point in the territorial organization of Spain was the second article of the constitution, which reads:

The constitution was rather ambiguous on how this was to take place. It does not define, detail, or impose the structure of the state; it does not tell the difference between "nation" and "nationality"; and it does not specify which are the "nationalities" and which are the "regions", or the territories they comprise. Rather than imposing, it enables a process towards a decentralized structure based on the exercise that these "nationalities and regions" would make of the right to self-government that they were granted. As such, the outcome of this exercise was not predictable and its construction was deliberately open-ended; the constitution only created a process for an eventual devolution, but it was voluntary in nature: the "nationalities and regions" themselves had the option of choosing to attain self-government or not.

In order to exercise this right, the constitution established an open process whereby the "nationalities and regions" could be constituted as "autonomous communities". Provinces would serve as the building blocks and constituent parts of the autonomous communities. The 50 provinces were a pre-existing territorial division of the liberal centralizing regime of the 19th century created for purely administrative purposes (and in the 1978 Constitution were defined as groupings of municipalities). The constitution stipulated that the following could be constituted as autonomous communities: Two or more adjacent provinces with common historical, cultural and economic characteristics Insular territories A single province with a "historical regional identity"

It also allowed for exceptions to the above criteria, in that the Spanish Parliament could: