According to payhelpcenter.com, the Kingdom of Spain (also known as Spain) is a nation constituted in a social and democratic state of law whose form of Government is the parliamentary monarchy. It occupies most of the Iberian Peninsula, in addition to other territories such as the archipelagos of the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea, the Canary Islands (in the Atlantic Ocean near Africa), as well as other territories such as Melilla and Ceuta in the north of Africa.
Member country of the European Union, in territorial extension it is the third largest country in Europe (not counting Russia). It shares land borders with France and with the principality of Andorra to the north, with Portugal to the west and with the British colony of Gibraltar to the south. In its African territories, it shares land and sea borders with Morocco.
Madrid houses the main international institutions regulating and disseminating the Spanish language: the Permanent Commission of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language, the headquarters of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and the headquarters of the Instituto Cervantes. It is an influential cultural center and has internationally renowned museums, including the Prado Museum, undoubtedly one of the most important in the world, and the Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum.
The most widespread theory until recent times about the origin of the city’s name was that of the Arabist Jaime Oliver Asín, who stated in 1959 that two very similar place names coexisted in medieval Madrid: the Arabic Maŷriţ or Maǧrīţ (ŷ and ǧ are two ways of representing the same sound), derived from maǧra, which means “channel” or bed of a river, and the Mozarabic romance, matrice, pronounced matrich with the meaning of “matrix” or “source.” Both refer to a stream that ran through the ravine that separates the current hills of the Vistillas and Almudena, in the current street of Segovia.
Both names could have had a convergent evolution by incorporating the suffix Romance -it (from the Latin -etum indicating abundance (Arabic-Romance hybrids were frequent in al-Andalus). However, more recently, the Arabist and linguist Federico Corriente points out that Maǧrīţ is actually nothing more than the phonetic Arabicization of Matrich, with metathesis of ǧ and ţ and is not related to the Arabic word maǧra, a possibility that Oliver Asín already pointed out but which he ruled out for reasons not exclusively linguistic. This is the opinion also of the philologist Joan Corominas.
Sports
The star sport in Madrid (as in the rest of Spain) is soccer, represented in the First Division of the Spanish Soccer League by:
Real Madrid Football Club
Based in the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, with a capacity for 80,354 spectators, it is the safest stadium in Europe.
- Estadio Santiago Bernabeu
- Has won 32 Leagues
- He has won 17 Copa del Rey
- He has won 8 Spanish Super Cup
- He has won 10 European Cups
- He has won 1 European Super Cup
- Has won 3 Intercontinental Cups
- It was designated by FIFA as the Best Club of the 20th Century
Athletic Club of Madrid
- His stadium is the Vicente Calderón
- Has won 10 leagues
- He has won 10 King’s Cups
- He has won 1 Spanish Super Cup
- He has won 1 European Cup Winners’ Cup
- Has won 1 Intercontinental Cup
The third team in the city is Rayo Vallecano, whose stadium is Teresa Rivero.
Basketball is also popular. The two most representative teams in the city, both in the ACB league, are Real Madrid de Baloncesto and Estudiantes.
Like the Tour de France, the Cycling Tour of Spain traditionally ends in Madrid.
Economy
The city of Madrid had a Gross Domestic Product of € 79,785,000,000 in 2003, representing 10% of national income. Of the economic sectors of the city, the most important is the tertiary or service sector, which already represents 85.09% of the city’s economy. Within this sector, financial services (31.91% of total GDP) and commercial activities (31.84% of total GDP) stand out. The rest of the GDP is contributed by the industry (8.96% of the total GDP), the construction sector (5.93% of the total GDP). Agriculture has a residual character, so that it barely contributes 0.03% of the total.
Sightseeing
Madrid was in 2006 the sixth most visited city in Europe and the second in Spain, welcoming more than 3.9 million tourists that year. It is also the headquarters of the World Tourism Organization and the International Tourism Fair – FITUR.
