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Administrative Division: For the purpose of public holidays, Spain is divided into seventeen autonomous communities (comunidades autónomas), and two African autonomous cities (ciudades autónomas). Their abbreviations are:
• • Andalucía (AN),
• Aragón (AR),
• Asturias (O),
• Balearic Islands (IB),
• Basque Country (PV),
• Canary Islands (CN),
• Cantabria (S),
• Castilla-La Mancha (CM),
• Castilla y León (CL),
• Catalonia (CT),
• Ceuta (CE),
• Extremadura (EX),
• Galicia (GA),
• La Rioja (LO),
• Madrid (M),
• Melilla (ML),
• Murcia (MU),
• Navarra (NA),
• Valencia (VC),
• as set out in ISO 3166-2:ES .
• National and Regional Public Holidays: Spanish regions, towns, villages and cities have additional public holidays of their own. There is a base of, usually 9, public holidays that are common to all regions of Spain, plus Epiphany and Maundy Thursday which each region can replace with one or two region-specific public holidays. Regions also have the option of adding a regional public holiday, without removing any of the common ones, or Epiphany and Maundy Thursday .
• Epiphany: although it is, in theory, with Maundy Thursday, one of the 2 public holidays that each region can replace with another, in practice, over the last 30 years there has been only one occasion, in Catalonia, when Epiphany was not observed somewhere in Spain.
• Maundy Thursday is not a public holiday in Catalonia.
• Easter Monday is a public holiday in Catalonia, the Basque Region, Valencia, Navarra, and La Rioja.
• Although Christmas Eve is not a public holiday, some shops and businesses may be closed or will close early on this day.
• Saint Stephen's Day is a public holiday in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands.
• Annual Selection of Regional Holidays: The main reason why the specific public holidays for each province and municipality change every year, is that these are usually patron saint days, which always occur on a fixed date. Therefore, when these fixed dates fall on a weekend, another holiday or patron saint is chosen for that year, to avoid "wasting" a holiday.
• Note that 2 of the country-wide public holidays, Constitution Day and Immaculate Conception Day, are only one day apart (December 6 and 8). Therefore, certain years, depending on which days of the week these holidays occur, December 7 can become a de facto public holiday, with either businesses closing for the 3 days, or individuals taking the day off to make the bridge (hacer puente).
• Weekend Public Holidays: Public holidays that occur on a weekend are not officially moved to the following Monday.
• However, when a public holiday falls on a Thursday or Tuesday, it is common practice to "make the bridge" (hacer puente) by taking off the Friday or Monday so creating a very long weekend. When this happens you may find businesses running on short staff or smaller family run business closed for the full period .
• Electoral law does not allow electoral polls to take place within 3 months of each other.
• Spain International Codes ES and ESP (2 and 3-letter ISO3166 codes) and .es (ICANN national top-level internet domain). • Other Sources of Information The following specialized websites are also a good source of Spain information and news: Bank of Spain (Spain central bank), ASI Hot Spots (security-related world events: terrorist threats, political strife, strikes, criminal activity, aviation incidents and health outbreaks), CIA World Factbook (Spain maps, demographics and economic statistics), the IFES (information covering upcoming elections, referenda, electoral structures and voter participation in Spain), and Wikipedia (includes Spain commemorative dates that are not necessarily public holidays). |
