The deep south

 Today we will follow the road less travelled. It is less travelled as a zippy motorway is its constant companion.  It goes up and down, and round and round a bit before going up and down again.  It has trees and scrub and occasional work men.  It does not leave us much to but think about Andalusia.



Spain sort exists, for many Brits, as Andalucía, and then, only the soggy fringe.  It is the second largest community in Spain, after the austere northern-central block of Castile Y Leon, being over 87,000 very squared kilometres, has more people living in it [8.6 million] although, to be fair, that is a product of its seize, and has the third largest GDP.  




Andalusia makes up 17.3% of Spain.  It shares, with Catalonia, the joy of bordering two other counties, in this case Gibraltar and Portugal.  While the previously noted Cabo de Gata gets a mere 150mm of rain a year, just inland of Cadiz, you get above 2000mm.



Andalucía has nine cities above 500,000 in number. Seville 1.95 million [which is twice the size of Birmingham], Malaga 1.75, Cadiz 1.2, Granada 0.93,  Cordoba 0.77 [think Leeds, but with less Satanic Mills], Almeria 0.75 Jaen 0.62 - Glasgow - and Huelva 0.53.




About 10% of the good people of Andalucía were born outside of Spain.  A fifth are Moroccan of origin, while about an eighth are British migrants. About 46% are European, 28% African, 14% South Americans and 0.07% Oceanians.



Let us end here and think of what tomorrow brings.













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