Valencian Community

The Valencian Community (English /vəˈlɛnsiən kɵˈmjuːnɨti/, /vəˈlɛnʃən kɵˈmjuːnɨti/; Valencian: Comunitat Valenciana [komuniˈtad valensiˈana]; Spanish: Comunidad Valenciana [komuniˈðað βalenˈθjana]; also known in Valencian as País Valencià)[a][1] is an autonomous community of Spain located in the central and south-eastern Iberian Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Valencia. The region is divided into three provinces: Alacant, Castelló and València, and thirty four comarques. It has 518 km of Mediterranean coastline and covers 23,259 km² of land with 5.1 million inhabitants (2009). Its borders largely reflect those of the historic Kingdom of Valencia. The current version of the Valencian Statute of Autonomy (2006) declares the Valencian Community nationality of Spain. The official languages are Valencian (as Catalan is known in this territory)[2][3] and Spanish. The official name of the autonomous community, in Valencian Comunitat Valenciana, has seen a variety of renditions in English; including "Valencian Community",[4] "Valencian Country", "Land of Valencia", "Region of Valencia" or most commonly, simply "Valencia". The Spanish name, Comunidad Valenciana, was co-official under the first Statute of Autonomy of 1982. At the present moment, the Valencian Government translates the name as "Region of Valencia" and, sometimes, "Land of Valencia", as the Department of Tourism states in publications edited both in Spanish and English.[5][6][7] Although Comunitat Valenciana, out of official consideration, is the most widely used name and the one that has become officially enshrined, there were two competing names at the time of the forging of the Valencian Statute of Autonomy. On the one hand País Valencià (País Valenciano in Spanish), was first reported in the 18th century, but its usage only became noticeable from the 1960s onwards, with a left-wing or Valencian nationalist subtext which began with the Spanish Transition to democracy in the late 1970s and early 1980s.[8] It can be translated as "Valencian Country",[9][10] or "Region of Valencia".[11] An example of this use is the so-called Consell pre-autonòmic del País Valencià, the forerunner of the modern Generalitat Valenciana in 1978, and it is also referred to in the preamble of the Statute of Autonomy.[12] In order to solve the gap between the two competing names—the traditional Regne de València and the contemporary País Valencià—a compromise neologism, Comunitat Valenciana, was created ("Comunitat or Community" such as in Autonomous Community, which is the official name of the Spanish regions constituted as political autonomous entities). In any case, the generic name of "Valencia" in English could refer to the city of Valencia, the Valencia province or the autonomous community.