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Cantabria (, ; ) is an autonomous community and province in northern Spain with Santander as its capital city. It is called a comunidad histórica, a historic community, in its current Statute of Autonomy. " La Ley Orgánica 11/1998, de 30 de diciembre, de reforma de la LO 8/1981, del Estatuto de Autonomía para Cantabria (BOE 31 diciembre 1998) . El Estatuto deja de referirse a Cantabria como "entidad regional histórica", expresión empleada por la propia Constitución (art. 143) para permitir la existencia de comunidades uniprovinciales, para ser sustituida por la expresión "comunidad histórica" (art. 1). Sinopsis del Estatuto de Cantabria Ignacio Carbajal Iranzo, Letrado de las Cortes Generales. Updated by Portal de la Constitución. 2005. Updated 2007; retrieved 9 June 2007. It is bordered on the east by the Basque Country (Biscay), on the south by Castile and León (provinces of León, Palencia and Burgos), on the west by Asturias, and on the north by the Cantabrian Sea, which forms part of the Bay of Biscay.
Cantabria belongs to Green Spain, the name given to the strip of land between the Bay of Biscay and the Cantabrian Mountains, so called because of its particularly lush vegetation, due to the wet and temperate oceanic climate. The climate is strongly influenced by Atlantic Ocean winds trapped by the mountains; the average annual precipitation is about .
Cantabria has archaeological sites from the Upper Paleolithic period, although the first signs of human occupation date from the Lower Paleolithic. The most significant site for is in the cave of Altamira, dating from about 37,000 BCE and declared, along with nine other Cantabrian caves, as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. It corresponds geographically to the area called Cantabri in the Ancient history, but from the late Middle Ages to the early 19th century, the name Cantabria also referred to the territory of the Basques, especially the lordship of Biscay.
The modern province of Cantabria was constituted on 28 July 1778 at Puente San Miguel, Reocín. This event is celebrated yearly on July 28, known as the Day of the Institutions. The Organic Law of the Autonomy Statute of Cantabria, approved on 30 December 1981, gave the region its own institutions of self-government.
The name Cantabria could also be related to the Celtic root kant or cant meaning 'edge' or 'rim' and thus 'coastal district' or 'corner-land', 'land on the edge', thus having the same probable derivation as the name of the English county of Kent and Canterbury, one of its major cities.
During the Spanish liberal regimes of the 19th century, the term came to be increasingly associated to the province of Santander. However, in late medieval and modern literature, Cantabria and Cantabrians refer to the Basque Country, especially the lordship of Biscay, and the Basques.
The main rivers of the region, sorted by drainage basin, are:
In Cantabria there are several zones of plant life:
During the last two decades of the 20th century, and due mainly to European agricultural policies (CAP), many farmers substituted forestry for livestock farming, so as to avoid unemployment and poverty. This provoked a surge of eucalyptus – see eucalyptus article on Spanish Wikipedia – plantations (and to a less extent of Pinus radiata) which often hid the illegal destruction of native forests, just as the spread of livestock farming had done in the past by the endemic conversion of forest into prairie. These acts have been laxly controlled by the local councils or the central governments, in a process that clearly follows the saying: " Pan para hoy, hambre para mañana" (which translates as 'Bread for today, hunger for tomorrow'; i.e., "short-term gain, long-term pain"). The plantation of pines has given way in the last decades to that of eucalyptus because this non-indigenous species has no natural attacker within the European ecosystem (while pines are highly vulnerable to the pine processionary). Both in relative and absolute terms the use of woods for forestry has increased in Cantabria, and is now almost 70% of all woods in the region.
Along with these characteristics it would also be necessary to mention peculiarities of the comarca of Liébana, which has a microclimate very similar to the Mediterranean, allowing to grow , and , and which is still very well conserved from human activity. The other remarkable comarca is Campoo, in southern Cantabria, with its Pyrenean oak.
The most important of these is the Picos de Europa National Park, which affects Castile and León and Asturias in addition to Cantabria, the three autonomous communities sharing its management. Santoña, Victoria and Joyel are also Special Protection Areas for the birds (ZEPA Programa de Vigilancia Ambiental del Plan Nacional de Regadios. Ministerio de Agricultura, Pesca y Alimentación (M.A.P.A.); retrieved 9 June 2007.).
Furthermore, nine Sites of Community Importance (LIC Biodiversity: Lugares de Importancia Comunitaria. Ministerio de Medio Ambiente. Retrieved on 9 June 2007.) have been declared: Western Mountain, Eastern Mountain, Western Rias and Oyambre Dunes, Dunes of Liencres and Estuary of the Pas, El Puntal Dunes and Estuary of the Miera, Ria de Ajo, Marshes of Noja-Santoña, Escudo de Cabuérniga Range and several caves with important bat colonies.
In relative contrast to other regions of Spain, Cantabria has not experienced much immigration. In 2007, only 4.7% of the population were immigrants. The predominant countries of origin for immigrants to Cantabria are Colombia, Romania, Ecuador, Peru, Moldova, and Morocco. Población extranjera según su nacionalidad y sexo (2004-06) , icane.es; retrieved 9 June 2007.
The majority of the population resides in the coastal area, particularly in two cities: Santander, with 183,000 people, and Torrelavega, the second largest urban and industrial centre in Cantabria, having a population of around 60,000. These two cities form a conurbation known as the Santander-Torrelavega metropolitan area. Castro Urdiales has an official population of 28,542, Cantabria: Población por municipios y sexo. Cifras de población referidas al 1 January 2006 , Instituto Nacional de Estadística website; retrieved 11 June 2007. making it the fourth largest in the region because of its proximity to the Bilbao metropolitan area, there are a large number of people not registered in Castro Urdiales, and the true count may be double the official figure.
The most populated municipalities of Cantabria as of 2018 are the following:
There are about 150 references to Cantabria or the Cantabri in surviving Ancient Greek and Latin texts. The Cantabri were used as mercenary in various conflicts, both within the Iberian Peninsula and elsewhere. It is certain that they participated in the Second Punic War, from references by Silius Italicus and Horace. When C. Hostilius Mancinus was besieging Numantia, he withdrew upon learning that Cantabri and Vaccaei were present among his auxiliaries. The Cantabrian Wars began in They were defeated by Agrippa with great slaughter in , but they revolted again under Tiberius and were never entirely subdued.
In older geographers, the term Cantabria referred to an expansive country bounded by the Cantabrian Sea (the Bay of Biscay), the western side of the Sella River in Asturias, the hillfort of Peña Amaya in Burgos, and along the Aguera River almost as far as Castro Urdiales. It thus included areas of Asturias, Santander, Biscay, and Guipuzcoa. Following the Roman conquest of Spain, however, it was restricted to the area of Santander and eastern Asturias, forming a part of Hispania Tarraconensis (" Spain"). The principal tribes of the area were the Pleutauri, the Varduli, the Autrigones, the Tuisi, and the Conisci or Concaui, who were known for blood drinking. The area was well settled, with the largest city being Juliobriga, and the local mountains exploited for lead mines.
During the 9th century, on mentioning the monastery of Saint Zacharias, in a letter sent to Wiliesind, bishop of Pamplona, Eulogius of Córdoba pinpoints it in Seburim (maybe Zubiri) on the river Arga, "waters all of Cantabria", suggesting a region stretching out far into the east. From this period on, source documents barely reference Cantabria by name, with Asturias featuring in names of the comarcas called Asturias de Santillana, Asturias de Trasmiera and Asturias de Laredo.
From a central core formed by the Hermandad de las Cuatro Villas ( Brotherhood of the Four Cities) (Santander, Laredo, Castro Urdiales and San Vicente de la Barquera), the Hermandad de las Marismas ( Brotherhood of the Marshes) was created, thereby uniting all the important seaports to the East of Asturias. During the period of the Reconquista, the Four Cities actively participated in the re-settling of Andalusia, dispatching men and ships. The coastal port cities of Cádiz and El Puerto de Santa María were settled by families from the Cantabrian Sea ports. Ships from the Four Cities took part in the taking of Seville, destroying the ship bridge linking Triana and Sevilla, a victory that is represented by the Carrack and the Torre del Oro of Sevilla in the coat of arms of Santander, Coat of arms of Cantabria and Avilés (Asturias).
With the rise of the Catholic Monarchs, the Brethren of the Marshes disappeared, leaving the Coregiment of the Four Villas, which included the whole area of influence of the old Brethren of the Four Villas (almost all of Cantabria). During the ancien régime, the greatest jurisdictional lordships of Cantabria were mainly under the control of three of the Grandee of Spain: that of Mendoza (Dukes of Infantado, Marquises of Santillana), of Manrique de Lara (Marquises of Aguilar de Campoo, Counts of Castañeda), and to a lesser extent that of Velasco (Dukes of Frías, Constables of Castile).Antonio Bar Cendón, De la montaña a Cantabria: la construcción de una comunidad autónoma (Santander: University of Cantabria Press, 1995), 201-3. , 9788481021127
From the 16th century on, there was renewed interest in studying Cantabria and the Cantabri, particularly concerning the precise location of the territory that this people had occupied. It was not until the 18th century that the debate about the location and size of Ancient Cantabria was settled in a series of works which described the history of the region such as La CantabriaEnrique Flórez. La Cantabria. Disertación sobre el sitio y extensión que tuvo en tiempos de los romanos la región de los cántabros, con noticia de las regiones cofinantes y de varias poblaciones Antiguas (The Cantabria. Dissertation of the place and extension that the land of the Cantabri had in times of the Romans, with notice of the adjacent regions and of several Ancient villages. Madrid. 1768 by the Augustinian father and historian Enrique Flórez de Setién. Concurrent with the resurgence of this interest in the Cantabrians and the clarification of the aforementioned polemic, many institutions, organizations and jurisdictions in the mountainous territory received the name of "Cantabrian" or "of Cantabria".
In 1727, the first attempt to unify what would later become the province of Cantabria occurred. Despite this, the high level of autonomy that the small entities of the fractured estate of Cantabria enjoyed, combined with a lack of resources, continued to be the main reason for Cantabria's weakness, aggravated by the progressive advance of the Bourbonic Unitary state and its administrative efficiency. The latter continually emphasised the impossibility of the smaller territories facing a multitude of problems on their own: from communications to the exercise of justice, from putting aside adequate reserves for hard times to the indiscriminate levees for soldiers, and above all the progression of fiscal impositions. All of this led to an acceleration of contact between villas, valleys and jurisdictions, which tended to focus on the Assemblies of the provinces of the Nine Valleys, led by the deputies elected by the traditional entities of self-government.
There were two events that triggered the culmination of the integration process in this second attempt:
In this General Assembly a framework was established and formal steps began to be taken, leading to administrative and legal unity in 1778. This all culminated in the success of the Assembly held in the Assembly House of Puente San Miguel on 28 July 1778, where the province of Cantabria was constituted. It was achieved by passing the common ordinances which had been developed to that end, and which had been discussed and approved previously in councils of all the villas, valleys and subscribed jurisdictions. They were, in addition to the Nine Valleys: Rivadedeva, Peñamellera, the province of Liébana, Peñarrubia, Lamasón, Rionansa, the Villa of San Vicente de la Barquera, Coto de Estrada, Valdáliga, the Villa of Santillana del Mar, Lugar de Viérnoles, the Villa of Cartes and environs, the Valley of Buelna, the Valley of Cieza, the Valley of Iguña with the Villas of San Vicente and Los Llares, the Villa of Pujayo, the Villa of Pie de Concha y Bárcena, the Valley of Anievas, and the Valley of Toranzo.
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]] Having learned lessons from the failed attempt of 1727, the first objective of the new entity was to obtain approval from King Charles III for the union of all the Cantabrian jurisdictions into one province. The royal ratification was granted on 22 November 1779.
The 28 jurisdictions that initially comprised the province of Cantabria were clear in their intention that all the other jurisdictions that formed the Party and Baton of the Four Villas of the Coast should be included in the new province. To this end they set out the steps needed for this to happen as soon as those jurisdictions should request it. They would have to abide by the ordinances, having the same rights and duties as the founders, all on an equal footing. Thus, the following joined in quick succession: the Abbey of Santillana, the Valleys of Tudanca, Polaciones, Herrerías, Castañeda, the Villa of Torrelavega and environs, Val de San Vicente, Valle de Carriedo, Tresviso, and the Pasiegan Villas of La Vega, San Roque and San Pedro, as well as the city of Santander with its abbey.
Competition between the townships of Laredo and Santander led to the latter, having initially allowed the name of Cantabria for the province created at the beginning of the 19th century, later retracting its consent and demanding that it bear the name of Santander, so there would be no doubt as to which was the capital. When in 1821 the Provincial Council presented before the constitutional Cortes Generales its definitive plan for the provincial borders and legal entities, it proposed the name of province of Cantabria, to which the Township of Santander replied that " this province must retain the name of Santander". However, many newspapers still showed in their headings the name of Cantabria, or Cantabrian.
Although defeated, he managed later to regroup in Liébana under the command of General Juan Díaz Porlier, calling his forces the Cantabrian Division, in which there were various regiments and battalions, such as the of Cantabria (cavalry) or the Shooters of Cantabria (infantry). During the Carlist wars they formed a unit called the Cantabrian Brigade.
In 1963, the president of the Provincial Council, Pedro Escalante y Huidobro, proposed reapplying the name of Cantabria to the Province of Santander, as suggested in an academic report written by the historian Tomás Maza Solano. Although further steps were taken and many of the townships were in favour of the move, the petition did not succeed, mostly due to the opposition of Santander City Council. On 30 December 1981, a process that had been started in April 1979 by the Council of Cabezón de la Sal, under the presidency of Ambrosio Calzada Hernández, culminated in the granting of self-rule to Cantabria, outlined in Article 143 of the Spanish Constitution. Cantabria based its claim to autonomy on the constitutional precept that made provision for self-government for " provinces with a historic regional character".
A Mixed Assembly formed out of provincial deputies and national members of parliament began the task of drawing up an Autonomy Statute on 10 September 1979. Following the approval of the General Courts on 15 December 1981, the King of Spain signed the corresponding Organic Law of Autonomy Statute for Cantabria on 30 December of the same year. Thus, the province of Santander broke its link to Castile, and left the former region of Castile and León to which it had belonged up to that time, together with the provinces of Ávila, Burgos, León, Logroño, Palencia, Salamanca, Segovia, Soria, Valladolid and Zamora.
On 20 February 1982, the first Regional Assembly (now Parliament) was formed, with provisional status. From this time, the former province of Santander has been known as Cantabria and has thereby regained its historic name. The first home-rule elections were held in May 1983. The 4th Legislature (1995–1999) brought into effect the first great reform of the Autonomy Statute of Cantabria, approved by all the parliamentary groups.
The Parliament of Cantabria Actividad Parlamentaria, Parlamento de Cantabria website; retrieved 9 June 2007. is the principal self-government institution of the Autonomous Community, being the representative body of the Cantabrians. Presently it is constituted by thirty-nine deputies elected by universal, equal, free, direct and secret suffrage. The primary functions of the Parliament are: to exercise the legislation, to approve the budgets of the Autonomous Community, to motivate and control the actions of the government, and to develop the rest of the competences that the Spanish Constitution, the Autonomy Statute and the rest of the legal order bestow on it. The President of the Autonomous Community holds the highest representation of the Community and ordinary representation of the Country in Cantabria, and presides over the Government, coordinating its activities.
The Government of Cantabria Consejo de Gobierno , gobcantabria.es; retrieved 9 June 2007. is the body in charge of directing the political activities and exercising the executive and regulatory powers according to the Constitution, the Statute and the laws. The Government is made up of the President, the Vicepresident (in which the President can delegate his executive functions and representations) and the Councillors, who are appointed and ceased by the President.
After several legislatures presided by the Partido Popular or by Juan Hormaechea's UPCA, the Regional Government of Cantabria was directed by a coalition of the Regionalist Party of Cantabria and Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) from year 2003 until 2011. The President was Miguel Ángel Revilla of Partido Regionalista de Cantabria (PRC), and the Vice President was Dolores Gorostiaga of the PSOE. As a result of the absolute majority of the Partido Popular in the regional elections of 2011, the president from 2011 to 2015 was Ignacio Diego Palacios, and the Vice President was also the healthcare Councillor, Maria José Sáenz de Buruaga. After the 2015 regional elections, Miguel Ángel Revilla of Partido Regionalista de Cantabria (PRC) was invested president for a third tenure with the support of PSOE.
]] There are 102 municipalities in Cantabria generally comprising several townships, and from these, several districts. A number of municipalities bear the name of one of their townships (be it its capital or not), but not all them do. Each municipality is governed by its own city council or municipal council, and two of them, Tresviso and Pesquera, did it by concejo abierto ( open council) until 2011, having fewer than 250 inhabitants.
The Mancomunidad Campoo-Cabuérniga is not a municipality, but a communal property, singular for its size and characteristics, of shared management between the municipalities of Hermandad de Campoo de Suso, Cabuérniga, Los Tojos and Ruente. This mountain estate is used as a grazing ground for Tudanca cattle and also for horses in less amount, in its brañas or grass prairies, and even nowadays transhumant cattle farming traditions survive in this region.
See also:
Comarcas in Cantabria have not reached administrative nature and barely have definite borders. Only Liébana for its geographic position in Picos de Europa, Trasmiera and Campoo, in the Ebro basin are established are clearly defined comarcas in the region. Nevertheless, functional differences in the territory can be distinguished, dividing it in the following areas: Santander Bay, of industrial and urban nature; Besaya valley, also industrial; Saja-Nansa, eminently rural; Western Coast, which has urban character; Eastern Coast, vacational; the traditionally renowned Trasmiera; rural Valles Pasiegos; Asón-Agüera, also mainly rural; the very well defined Liébana, and Campoo, rural and industrial by regions.
The secondary sector which employs 30.3% of the active population is the sector with the most productivity in recent years due to construction; that of (Reinosa being the most important city), food service (milk, meat, vegetables and seafood), chemistry (Solvay, Sniace), paper production (Sinace, Papelera del Besaya), textile fabrication (Textil Santanderina in Cabezón de la Sal), pharmacy (Moehs in Requejada), industrial groups and transport, etc. The service sector employs 63.8% of the active population and is increasing, given that large concentrations of the population live in the urban centers and the importance that tourism has acquired in the recent years. As of July 2014, the unemployment rate in Cantabria is 19.3%, compared to 24.47% in Spain; while as of April 2010 its purchasing power parity was €25,326, compared to €26,100 in Spain and €25,100 in the European Union25. In 2007, Cantabria's growth of real GDP was 4.1%, compared to a 3.9% average for Spain. The Gross domestic product (GDP) of the region was 13.8 billion € in 2018. GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was €25,500 or 84% of the EU27 average in the same year.
The main communications infrastructures of the region are:
The following are also remarkable in modern Cantabrian culture: Santander International Festival Festival Internacional de Santander website (Arts festival), Santander Summer Festival[14] (Music festival), Sotocine Sotocine website (Film festival)
Cantabrian lore turns its forests and mountains into magical places where the , and have been present as an essential part of the Cantabrian culture, either because they have been living in the popular heritage through the oral tradition transmitted from father to son, or because they have been recovered by scholars (Manuel Llano and others) who have worried about preserving the cultural heritage. Its mythology and present a great influence that has diluted with the pass of time, being romanized or Christianity in many cases.
There is a heavy presence of fabulous beings of giant proportions and Cyclopean features (the ojáncanos), fantastic animals ( culebres, caballucos del diablu (lit. horses of the devil, damselfly), , etc.), Fairy ( anjanas, ijanas of Aras), duendes ( nuberos, ventolines, , trasgus, trastolillos, musgosu, tentiruju), anthropomorphic characters (the sirenuca (little mermaid), the fish-man, the cuegle, the wife-bear of Andara, the guajona), etc.
The remo (rowing) is a very traditional sport in the coastal towns. The origins of rowing in Cantabria go back many centuries, when several (traditional fishing ) competed for the selling of the caught fish, which was reserved for the first ship to arrive to the fish market. At the end of the 19th century, work became sport and people started to celebrate between Cantabrian townships. The sport clubs of Cantabria, especially the Astillero, Castro Urdiales, and the Pedreña belong to the most prize-winning teams of the history of this sport, and nowadays they are having one of the best moments after a decades-long period of trophy drought.
The Pasiegan jump is another of the outstanding rural sports of the region and a clear example of how the use of a work skill that disappears with the pass of time, gives rise to games and competition. Similar to other forms, like the Canarian shepherd jump, in the beginning this technique was used in the Pasiegan valleys to cross the stone walls, the fences, the creeks or the ravines that bordered the fields and obstructed the pass in the abrupt geography of the highland areas of Cantabria.
Referring to mass sports, Cantabria is present in national and international competitions through teams such as the Racing de Santander, the RS Gimnástica de Torrelavega and the Cantabria autonomous football team in football or the Independiente RC in rugby union. The CB Cantabria that won Liga ASOBAL and King's Cups as well as IHF Super Globe, EHF Champions League, EHF Cup Winners' Cup and EHF Cup in team handball or the Cantabria Lobos that played in the Liga ACB in basketball represented the highest level of the Cantabrian sport in the recent past.
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