The communities are in turn divided into fifty provinces (provincias). There are also five places of sovereignty (plazas de soberanía) on and off the African coast: the cities of Ceuta and Melilla are administered as autonomous communities; the islands of the Islas Chafarinas, Peñón de Alhucemas, and Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera are under direct Spanish administration.
Spain's climate is mostly temperate and mediterranean; there are clear hot summers in the interior, with more moderate and cloudy conditions along the coast. Winters are cloudy and cold in the interior, with the coastal regions being relatively temperate.
Spain's mixed capitalist economy supports a GDP that on a per capita basis is 80% that of the four leading West European economies. Its center-right government successfully worked to gain admission to the first group of countries launching the European single currency on January 1, 1999. The administration of Jose Maria Aznar has continued to advocate liberalisation, privatisation, and deregulation of the economy and has introduced some tax reforms to that end. Unemployment has been steadily falling under the Aznar administration but remains the highest in the EU at 13%. The government intends to make further progress in changing labour laws and reforming pension schemes, which are key to the sustainability of both Spain's internal economic advances and its competitiveness in a single currency area.
Catalan, Galician, and Castillian, the latter commonly called "Spanish", are all descended from Latin and have their own dialects; there are also some other surviving Romance dialects such as Asturian or Bable in Asturias and part of León, Aragonese in part of Aragón, and Aranese (a Gascon Occitan variant) in the Val d'Aran on the northwest tip of Catalonia. The Spanish spoken in America is descended from the dialect of Spanish spoken in southwestern Spain.
Spain is a predominantly (94%) Roman Catholic country. The most important minority group in the country are the gipsies. Nowadays,
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