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Spain External Boundaries and Landform Regions
Most of Spain's boundary is water: the Mediterranean
Sea on
the south and east from Gibraltar to the French border;
and the
Atlantic Ocean on the northwest and southwest--in the
south as
the Golfo de Cadiz and in the north as the Bay of Biscay.
Spain
also shares land boundaries with France and Andorra along
the
Pyrenees in the northeast, with Portugal on the west, and
with
the small British possession of Gibraltar at the southern
tip.
Although the affiliation of Gibraltar continued to be a
contentious issue between Spain and Britain in the late
1980s,
there were no other disputes over land boundaries, and no
other
country claimed the insular provinces of the Balearic
Islands and
the Canary Islands
(see Gilbraltar, Ceuta, and Melilla
, ch. 4).
The majority of Spain's peninsular landmass consists of
the
Meseta Central, a highland plateau rimmed and dissected by
mountain ranges
(see
fig. 5). Other landforms include
narrow
coastal plains and some lowland river valleys, the most
prominent
of which is the Andalusian Plain in the southwest. The
country
can be divided into ten natural regions or subregions: the
dominant Meseta Central, the Cordillera Cantabrica and the
northwest region, the Iberico region, the Pyrenees, the
Penibetico region in the southeast, the Andalusian Plain,
the
Ebro Basin, the coastal plains, the Balearic Islands, and
the
Canary Islands. These are commonly grouped into four
types: the
Meseta Central and associated mountains, other mountainous
regions, lowland regions, and islands.
Data as of December 1988
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