Murcia is one of Spain's seventeen autonomous communities, located in the southeast of the country between Andalucía and Valencia, on the Mediterranean coast.

It consists of one province, and contains the city of Murcia which is the capital of the province and the community. Other cities located in Murcia include Cartagena and Lorca. See List of municipalities in Murcia.

Murcia is bordered by Andalucía (provinces of Almería and Granada), Castilla-La Mancha (province of Albacete), which was historically connected to Murcia until 1833, Valencia (province of Alicante), and the Mediterranean Sea.

The community measures 11 313 km² and has a population of 1,2 million, of whom one-third live in the capital.

Murcia 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 . Murcia is a warm, arid region and has relied for centuries on extensive irrigation. Water is supplied by the Segura River (Río Segura), which is, unfortunately, one of the most polluted rivers in Europe.

History

The Carthaginians established a permanent trading depot on the Murcian coast at Cartagena, which the Romans called Carthago Nova. For the Carthaginian traders, the mountainous territory was merely the Iberian hinterland of their seacoast emporium. Roman Murcia was a part of the province of Hispania Tarraconensis. 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 Murcia, Orihuela, Cartagena, 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 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 Kingdom of Murcia 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.

Culture

The Spanish spoken in Murcia is quite different from other areas of Spain. "Murciano" tends to eliminate many syllable-final consonants and to emphasize regional vocabulary, much of which is derived from old Arabic words. Some Murcian countryfolk still speak a separate dialect, called Panocho , which is virtually unintelligible to speakers of standard Castilian Spanish.

Communications

• San Javier-Murcia Airport.
• Cartagena Seaport.

External link

• Creation of a flag for Murcia, 1979