Spanish language in the context of "Miskito Cays"

A department (French: département, Spanish: departamento) is an administrative or political division in several countries. Departments are the first-level divisions of 11 countries, nine in the Americas and two in Africa. An additional 10 countries use departments as second-level divisions, eight in Africa, and one each in the Americas and Europe.

As a territorial entity, "department" was first used by the French Revolutionary governments, apparently to emphasize that each territory was simply an administrative sub-division of the united sovereign nation. (The term "department", in other contexts, means an administrative sub-division of a larger organization.) This attempt to de-emphasize local political identity contrasts strongly with countries divided into "states" (implying local sovereignty).

The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), also known as the Sahrawi Republic and Western Sahara, is a partially recognized state in the western Maghreb, which claims the non-self-governing territory of Western Sahara, but controls only the easternmost one-fifth of that territory. It is recognized by 44 UN member states and South Ossetia. Between 1884 and 1975, Western Sahara was known as Spanish Sahara, a Spanish colony (later an overseas province). The SADR is one of the two African states in which Spanish is a significant language, the other being Equatorial Guinea.

The SADR was proclaimed by the Polisario Front on 27 February 1976, in Bir Lehlou, Western Sahara. The SADR government calls the territories under its control the Liberated Territories or the Free Zone. Morocco occupies the rest of the disputed territory, and calls these lands its Southern Provinces. The claimed capital city of the SADR is Laayoune (the largest city of the Western Sahara territory). Since the SADR does not control Laayoune, it has established a temporary capital in Tifariti, although most of the day-to-day administration happens in Rabuni, one of the Sahrawi refugee camps located in Tindouf, Algeria.

The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau, with additional native branches found in regions such as parts of Central Asia (e.g., Tajikistan and Afghanistan), southern Indian subcontinent (Sri Lanka and the Maldives) and Armenia. Historically, Indo-European languages were also spoken in Anatolia and Northwestern China. Some European languages of this family—English, French, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Spanish, and Dutch—have expanded through colonialism in the modern period and are now spoken across several continents. The Indo-European family is divided into several branches or sub-families, including Albanian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Indo-Iranian, and Italic, all of which contain present-day living languages, as well as many more extinct branches.

Today the individual Indo-European languages with the most native speakers are English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Hindustani, Bengali, Punjabi, French, and German; many others spoken by smaller groups are in danger of extinction. Over 3.4 billion people (42% of the global population) speak an Indo-European language as a first language—by far the most of any language family. There are about 446 living Indo-European languages, according to an estimate by Ethnologue, of which 313 belong to the Indo-Iranian branch.

Andorra, officially the Principality of Andorra, is a landlocked country on the Iberian Peninsula, in the eastern Pyrenees in Southwestern Europe, bordered by France to the north and Spain to the south. Believed to have been created by Charlemagne, Andorra was ruled by the count of Urgell until 988, when it was transferred to the Diocese of Urgell. The present principality was formed by a charter in 1278. It is currently headed by two co-princes: the Bishop of Urgell in Catalonia, Spain, and the president of France. Its capital and largest city is Andorra la Vella.

Andorra is the sixth-smallest state in Europe, with an area of 468 square kilometres (181 sq mi) and a population of approximately 87,486. The Andorran people are a Romance ethnic group closely related to Catalans. Andorra is the world's 16th-smallest country by land and 11th-smallest by population. Its capital, Andorra la Vella, is the highest capital city in Europe, at an elevation of 1,023 metres (3,356 feet) above sea level. The official language is Catalan, but Spanish, Portuguese, and French are also commonly spoken.

A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term family is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics analogous to a family tree, or to phylogenetic trees of taxa used in evolutionary taxonomy. Linguists thus describe the daughter languages within a language family as being genetically related. The divergence of a proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, with different regional dialects of the proto-language undergoing different language changes and thus becoming distinct languages over time.

One well-known example of a language family is the Romance languages, including Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, Romansh, and many others, all of which are descended from Vulgar Latin. The Romance family itself is part of the larger Indo-European family, which includes many other languages native to Europe and South Asia, all believed to have descended from a common ancestor known as Proto-Indo-European.

Llívia (Catalan pronunciation: [ˈʎiβiə]; Spanish: Llivia Spanish: [ˈʎiβja] ) is a town in the comarca of Cerdanya, province of Girona, Catalonia, Spain. It is a Spanish exclave surrounded by the French département of Pyrénées-Orientales. It is named after Livia, the wife of Augustus and matriarch of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Because of a technicality in the Treaty of the Pyrenees, signed in 1659, that transferred only "villages" in the Pyrenees to France, Llívia, which was a "town", remains under Spanish control. The Segre river, a tributary of the Spanish Ebro, flows through Llívia. It has a population of 1,560 (register office, 2024) .

Llívia is separated from the rest of Spain by a corridor approximately 1.6 km (1.0 mile) wide, which includes the French communes of Ur and Bourg-Madame. This corridor is traversed by a road, owned by both France (where it is part of Route nationale 20 and RD68) and Spain (where it is part of N-154). Before the implementation of the Schengen Area in 1995, it was considered a "neutral road", a custom-free route with access for both French and Spanish people; since 1995, there have been no formal borders. The two countries share a hospital in Puigcerdà (which lies close to Llívia), as well as other local initiatives.

The Balearic Islands are an archipelago in the western Mediterranean Sea, near the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. The archipelago forms a province and autonomous community of Spain, with Palma de Mallorca being its capital and largest city.

Formerly part of the Kingdom of Mallorca, the islands were made a province in the 19th century provincial division, which in 1983 received a Statute of Autonomy. In its later reform of 2007, the Statute designates the Balearic Islands as one of the nationalities of Spain. The official languages of the Balearic Islands are Catalan and Spanish.

The Canary Islands (/kəˈnɛəri/ ; Spanish: Canarias [kaˈnaɾjas] ) or Canaries are an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean and the southernmost autonomous community of Spain, located about 100 kilometres (62 miles) off the northwest coast of Africa. The archipelago has a population of approximately 2.27 million inhabitants, making it the most populous overseas special territory of the European Union.

The seven main islands are from largest to smallest in area, Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, La Palma, La Gomera, and El Hierro. The only other populated island is La Graciosa, which administratively is dependent on Lanzarote. The archipelago includes many smaller islands and islets, including Alegranza, Isla de Lobos, Montaña Clara, Roque del Oeste, and Roque del Este. It includes a number of rocks, including Garachico and Anaga. The island chain used to be referred to as "the Fortunate Isles". The Canary Islands are the southernmost region of Spain, and the largest and most populous archipelago of Macaronesia. It is also the largest and most populated archipelago in Spain. Because of their location, the Canary Islands have historically been considered a link between Africa, Europe, and the Americas.