Gipuzkoa
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With a total area of 1,980 km2, Gipuzkoa is the smallest province of Spain. The province has 89 municipalities and a population of 720,592 inhabitants (2018), from which more than half live in the Donostia-San Sebastián metropolitan area. Apart from the capital, other important cities are Irun, Errenteria, Zarautz, Mondragón, Eibar, Hondarribia, Oñati, Tolosa, Beasain and Pasaia.
The oceanic climate gives the province an intense green colour with little thermic oscillation. Gipuzkoa is the province of the Basque Country in which the Basque language is the most extensively used since 49.1% of its population spoke Basque in 2006.
The first recorded name of the province was Ipuscoa in a document from the year 1025. During the following years, and in various documents, several similar names appear, such as Ipuzcoa, Ipuçcha, Ipuzka, among others.
The full etymology the word Gipuzkoa has not been fully ascertained, but links have been made with the Basque word Giputz, containing the root ip- which is related to the word ipar (north), ipurdi (back) and ipuin (tale). According to this, ipuzko (one of the several first known denominations) might refer to something "to the north" or "in the north".
Map - Gipuzkoa
Map
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 |
