LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Spain: Madrid Chandler
built 264 days ago
In the centre of Spain is the nation’s cultural and political hub, Madrid. A city of neo-classical exuberance, huge parks and narrow medieval streets, it crackles with energy day and night. Days can be spent visiting artistic treasures or relaxing in Parque del Retiro, a huge wooded park near the city centre. At night the friendly people of Madrid and wonderful bars, cafes and nightclubs for every taste will sustain a permanently festive ambience for two people getting married.
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Spain [1] (Spanish: España) is a diverse country in Mediterranean Europe, sharing the Iberian Peninsula with Portugal at the western end of the Mediterranean Sea. Among many places, Spain is the home of the thriving capital Madrid, the vibrant coastal city of Barcelona, the famous running with the bulls at Pamplona, and the city where flamenco was born: Sevilla.
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Spain benefits from plenty of sun, a large coastal presence with glorious beaches, great regional food and of course plenty of culture. The European Union has identified the Costa del Sol as the fastest growing area in Europe, in terms of population, with the number of people living there expected to grow from 2.5 million to 6.5 million by 2011. A high-speed rail link is being constructed between Madrid and the Costa del Sol and should be completed by the end of 2007. This will reduce journey times to 2.5 hrs (currently 4.25hrs). Rumours are extremely strong with regard to a new Disney theme park being built in Malaga which is very attractive for the rental / investment market on the Costa del Sol.
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The center of Spain forms a vast plateau (Span. Meseta Central) extending from the Cantabrian Mts. in the north to the Sierra Morena in the south and from the Portuguese border in the west to the low ranges that separate the plateau from the Mediterranean coast in the east. It is traversed from west to east by mountain chains—notably the Sierra de Guadarrama—and the valleys of the Douro (Duero), the Tagus, and Guadiana rivers. Except for some fertile valleys, the central plateau is arid and thinly populated; wheat growing, viniculture, and sheep raising are the principal rural activities. The plateau comprises Castile-León, Castile–La Mancha, and Madrid, which form the heart of Spain, and Extremadura, which is in the west.
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Despite the forces working against the development of short narrative in 18thâ€century Spain, some examples of it can still be traced. Thus, Professor Antonio Fernández Insuela of the University of Oviedo (Spain) studied the small corpus of short narrative publications in the 18th century, particularly in Tertulia de la aldea (A Village Literary Gathering). This journal was structured in several sections, one of which included brief texts under the heading of ‘tales’, ‘jokes’, ‘sayings’, ‘funny stories’, etc., which had a historical or pseudoâ€historical origin and ... sometimes a traditional or folk one. RÃos Carratala (1993) mentions yet another 18thâ€century periodical which gave some attention to the shortâ€story genre: El Correo de Madrid (The Madrid Post). In this periodical, apart from some moralistic stories, jokes, and anecdotes, it was likewise possible to read brief tales with a folk source.
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Administratively, Spain is divided into 17 autonomous communities based on regional geography and history and in large part corresponding to the old Christian and Moorish kingdoms of Spain. The communities are subdivided into 50 provinces that predate the establishment of regional autonomy beginning in the late 1970s. The chief cities, other than Madrid, are Burgos, Valladolid, León, Zamora, and Salamanca in Castile-León; Toledo in Castile–La Mancha; and Badajoz in Extremadura.
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Madrid Chandler