Province of Alicante (Provincia de Alicante)
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Alicante is bordered by the provinces of Murcia on the southwest, Albacete on the west, Valencia on the north, and the Mediterranean Sea on the east. The province is named after its capital, the city of Alicante.
According to the 2018 population data, Alicante ranks as the fourth most populous province in Spain (after Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia), with 1,838,819 inhabitants. Cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants in the province are Alicante (334,757 inhabitants), Elche (230,112), Torrevieja (101,792), Orihuela (86,164), Benidorm (71,034), Alcoy (61,552), Elda (55,168), and San Vicente del Raspeig (53,126).
The province has the largest ratio of foreigner population among all Spanish provinces. The total of 446,368 foreigners are registered in the province, which represents 23.6 percent of the total population. Out of 141 municipalities that make up the province, foreign population is above 25% in 54 municipalities, and above 50% in 19 municipalities. The latter include San Fulgencio (80%), Rojales (74%), Benitatxell (69.8%), Algorfa (69.7%), Llíber (67%), Teulada (65.5%), Daya Vieja (64.4%); San Miguel de Salinas (64.3%), Calp (62.8%), Els Poblets (61.6%), Alcalalí (60.8%), Benijófar (58.5%), L'Alfàs del Pi (56.6%), Orba (55%), Xàbia (54%), Torrevieja (53.5%), Murla (52%), Fondó (51.7%), and Benidoleig (50%).
From the 50 provinces of Spain, Alicante is the only one with three metropolitan areas—Alicante–Elche, Elda–Petrer and Benidorm—even though only one of them (Alicante–Elche) is ranked within the Spanish top ten metropolitan areas. It has an area of 5,816.5 km2, and so it has a population density of 313.8 inhabitants/km2.
Map - Province of Alicante (Provincia de Alicante)
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Country - Spain
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| Flag of Spain | |
Anatomically modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 42,000 years ago. The ancient Iberian and Celtic tribes, along with other pre-Roman peoples, dwelled the territory maintaining contacts with foreign Mediterranean cultures. The Roman conquest and colonization of the peninsula (Hispania) ensued, bringing the Romanization of the population. Receding of Western Roman imperial authority ushered in the migration of different non-Roman peoples from Central and Northern Europe with the Visigoths as the dominant power in the peninsula by the fifth century. In the early eighth century, most of the peninsula was conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate, and during early Islamic rule, Al-Andalus became a dominant peninsular power centered in Córdoba. Several Christian kingdoms emerged in Northern Iberia, chief among them León, Castile, Aragon, Portugal, and Navarre made an intermittent southward military expansion, known as Reconquista, repelling the Islamic rule in Iberia, which culminated with the Christian seizure of the Emirate of Granada in 1492. Jews and Muslims were forced to choose between conversion to Catholicism or expulsion, and eventually the converts were expelled through different royal decrees.
Currency / Language
| ISO | Currency | Symbol | Significant figures |
|---|---|---|---|
| EUR | Euro | € | 2 |
| ISO | Language |
|---|---|
| EU | Basque language |
| CA | Catalan language |
| GL | Galician language |
| OC | Occitan language |
| ES | Spanish language |
