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Cerdanya
Cerdanya () or often La Cerdanya ( la, Ceretani or ''Ceritania''; french: Cerdagne; es, Cerdaña), is a natural comarca and historical region of the eastern Pyrenees divided between France and Spain. Historically it was one of the counties of Catalonia. Cerdanya has a land area of , divided almost evenly between Spain (50.3%) and France (49.7%). In 2001 its population was approximately 26,500, of whom 53% lived on Spanish territory. Its population density is 24 residents per km² (63 per sq. mile). The only urban area in Cerdanya is the cross-border urban area of Puigcerdà-Bourg-Madame, which contained 10,900 inhabitants in 2001. The area enjoys a high annual amount of sunshine – around 3,000 hours per year. For this reason, pioneering large-scale solar power projects have been built in several locations in French Cerdagne, including Font-Romeu-Odeillo-Via, the Themis plant near Targassonne, and Mont-Louis Solar Furnace in Mont-Louis. History Antiquity The firs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catalan Counties
The Catalan counties ( ca, Comtats Catalans, ) were the administrative Christian divisions of the eastern Carolingian '' Hispanic Marches'' and the southernmost part of the March of Gothia in the Pyrenees created after their rapid conquest by the Franks. The various counties roughly defined what later came to be known as the Principality of Catalonia. In 778, Charlemagne led the first military Frankish expedition into Hispania to create the '' Hispanic Marches'', a buffer zone between the Umayyad Moors and Arabs of Al-Andalus and the Frankish Kingdom of Aquitaine. The territory that he subdued was the kernel of Catalonia (not yet known like that since the first written mention of Catalonia and the Catalans as an ethnicity appears almost a century later in 1113 at the Liber maiolichinus) which was already a no man's land since the defeat of the Visigoths and the arrival of the Muslims in 714 who crossed the Pyrenees with an army to be defeated in 732 at the Battle of Tours. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Llívia
Llívia (; es, Llivia ) 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. In 2009, the municipality of Llívia had a total population of 1,589. It is separated from the rest of Spain by a corridor about wide, which includes the French communes of Ur and Bourg-Madame. The Segre river, a tributary of the Spanish Ebro, flows through Llívia. History Llívia was the site of an Iberian oppidum that commanded the region and was named ''Julia Lybica'' by the Romans. It was the capital of Cerdanya in antiquity, before being replaced by Hix (commune of Bourg-Madame, France) in the Middle Ages. During the Visigothic period, its citadel, the ''castrum Libiae'', was held by the rebel Paul of Narbonne against King Wamba in 672. As the "town (or 'city') of Cerdanya," 8th century Llívia may also have been the scene of the siege by which governor Abdul Rahman Al Gh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Puigcerdà
Puigcerdà (; es, Puigcerdá) is the capital of the '' Catalan comarca'' of Cerdanya, in the province of Girona, Catalonia, northern Spain, near the Segre River and on the border with France (it abuts directly onto the French town of Bourg-Madame). History Puigcerdà is located near the site of a Ceretani settlement, which was incorporated into Roman territory. The Roman town was named Julia Libyca. Puigcerdà was founded in 1178 by King Alfonso I of Aragon, Count of Barcelona. In 1178 Puigcerdà replaced Hix as the capital of Cerdanya. Hix is now a village in the commune of Bourg-Madame, in the French part of Cerdagne. In the closing stages of the 1672-1678 Franco-Dutch War, the town was captured by a French army under the duc de Noailles but returned to Spain in the Treaties of Nijmegen. Puigcerdà was unique during the Spanish Civil War in having a democratically elected Anarchist council. The Portet-Saint-Simon–Puigcerdà railway was opened in 1929, crossing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catalonia
Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a '' nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy. Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula, to the south of the Pyrenees mountain range. Catalonia is administratively divided into four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. The capital and largest city, Barcelona is the second-most populated municipality in Spain and the fifth-most populous urban area in the European Union. > > > ''Catalonia'' theoretically derived. During the Middle Ages, Byzantine chroniclers claimed that ''Catalania'' derives from the local medley of Goths with Alans, initially constituting a ''Goth-Alania''. Other theories suggest: *''Catalunya'' derives from the term "land of castles", having evolved from the term ''castlà'' or ''castlan'', the medieval term for a castellan (a ruler of a ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Targassonne
Targasonne (; ca, Targasona; before 2022: ''Targassonne'') is a commune of Cerdanya in the Pyrénées-Orientales department in south of France. Targasonne is the home of the THEMIS Solar Power R&D Center. Geography Targasonne is located in the canton of Les Pyrénées catalanes and in the arrondissement of Prades. It is located at 1,600 meters near the villages of Égat and Font-Romeu-Odeillo-Via. The closest cities are Foix in the North-West at 61 kilometres and Perpignan at 90 kilometres to the East. Population See also * Communes of the Pyrénées-Orientales department * THEMIS Solar Power R&D Center * Solar furnace in Odeillo *Cerdanya Cerdanya () or often La Cerdanya ( la, Ceretani or ''Ceritania''; french: Cerdagne; es, Cerdaña), is a natural comarca and historical region of the eastern Pyrenees divided between France and Spain. Historically it was one of the counties ... References Communes of Pyrénées-Orientales {{PyrénéesOrienta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Themis (solar Power Plant)
The THEMIS solar power tower is a research and development centre focused on solar energy. It is located near the village of Targasonne, in the department of Pyrénées-Orientales, south of France, 3 kilometres from the world's largest solar furnace in Odeillo. Siting of the plant THEMIS solar power tower, owned by the General Council of the Pyrénées-Orientales, was strategically located in the region of Cerdanya, in the Pyrénées-Orientales, because the conditions are excellent for solar energy. First, Cerdanya has almost 2400 hours of sunshine a year; second, there is a very low wind limiting the time of disruption of the plant; third, the site is at a high elevation providing stronger sunlight. The land chosen for the plant is on a slope between 6° and 18°, which is suitable for a power tower. THEMIS research and development centre Research and development is focused on solar energy, and THEMIS is a research facility as well as a photovoltaic power facil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Font-Romeu-Odeillo-Via
Font-Romeu-Odeillo-Via (; ca, Font-romeu, Odelló i Vià), or simply Odeillo, is a commune in the Pyrénées-Orientales and Cerdagne near the Spanish border in the south of France. It comprises the villages of Odeillo and Via, as well as Font-Romeu, one of the oldest ski resorts in France and the oldest in the Pyrenees. Geography Localization Font-Romeu-Odeillo-Via is located in the canton of Les Pyrénées catalanes and in the arrondissement of Prades. It is bordered by the communes of Angoustrine-Villeneuve-des-Escaldes, Targasonne, Égat, Estavar, Saillagouse, Eyne and Bolquère. Transportation Font-Romeu-Odeillo-Via station is served by the Yellow Train line, a railway which runs from Villefranche-de-Conflent through to Latour-de-Carol. Toponymy The names of Odeillo and Via appear in 839 as ''parrochia Hodellone et parrochia Avizano''. Jean Sagnes (dir.), Le pays catalan, t. 2, Pau, Société nouvelle d'éditions régionales, 1985 The name ''Font-Romeu'' means i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iberians
The Iberians ( la, Hibērī, from el, Ἴβηρες, ''Iberes'') were an ancient people settled in the eastern and southern coasts of the Iberian peninsula, at least from the 6th century BC. They are described in Greek and Roman sources (among others, by Hecataeus of Miletus, Avienius, Herodotus and Strabo). Roman sources also use the term ''Hispani'' to refer to the Iberians. The term ''Iberian'', as used by the ancient authors, had two distinct meanings. One, more general, referred to all the populations of the Iberian peninsula without regard to ethnic differences ( Pre-Indo-European, Celts and non-Celtic Indo-Europeans). The other, more restricted ethnic sense and the one dealt with in this article, refers to the people living in the eastern and southern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula, which by the 6th century BC had absorbed cultural influences from the Phoenicians and the Greeks. This pre-Indo-European cultural group spoke the Iberian language from the 7th to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pyrénées-Orientales
Pyrénées-Orientales (; ca, Pirineus Orientals ; oc, Pirenèus Orientals ; ), also known as Northern Catalonia, is a department of the region of Occitania, Southern France, adjacent to the northern Spanish frontier and the Mediterranean Sea. It also surrounds the tiny Spanish exclave of Llívia, and thus has two distinct borders with Spain. In 2019, it had a population of 479,979.Populations légales 2019: 66 Pyrénées-Orientales INSEE Some parts of the Pyrénées-Orientales (like the ) are part of the . It is n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Seu D'Urgell
La Seu d'Urgell (; es, Seo de Urgel, formerly in ca, Urgell}) is a town located in the Catalan Pyrenees in Spain. La Seu d'Urgell is also the capital of the comarca Alt Urgell, head of the judicial district of la Seu d'Urgell and the seat of Bishop of Urgell, one of the Andorra co-princes. It is in the district of Alt Pirineu i Aran (''High Pyrenees and Aran''), and is the town with the most inhabitants, having 17.4% of the district population. La Seu d'Urgell and Puigcerdà together have 30% of the population of the area. It is located at the confluence of the Segre and the Valira rivers.GGCC, la Seu d'Urgell: Urban morphology. The city is in the local region of Urgellet, a [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pyrenees
The Pyrenees (; es, Pirineos ; french: Pyrénées ; ca, Pirineu ; eu, Pirinioak ; oc, Pirenèus ; an, Pirineus) is a mountain range straddling the border of France and Spain. It extends nearly from its union with the Cantabrian Mountains to Cap de Creus on the Mediterranean coast. It reaches a maximum altitude of at the peak of Aneto. For the most part, the main crest forms a divide between Spain and France, with the microstate of Andorra sandwiched in between. Historically, the Crown of Aragon and the Kingdom of Navarre extended on both sides of the mountain range. Etymology In Greek mythology, Pyrene is a princess who gave her name to the Pyrenees. The Greek historian Herodotus says Pyrene is the name of a town in Celtic Europe. According to Silius Italicus, she was the virgin daughter of Bebryx, a king in Mediterranean Gaul by whom the hero Hercules was given hospitality during his quest to steal the cattle of Geryon during his famous Labours. Hercules, c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exclave
An enclave is a territory (or a small territory apart of a larger one) that is entirely surrounded by the territory of one other state or entity. Enclaves may also exist within territorial waters. ''Enclave'' is sometimes used improperly to denote a territory that is only partly surrounded by another state. The Vatican City and San Marino, both enclaved by Italy, and Lesotho, enclaved by South Africa, are completely enclaved sovereign states. An exclave is a portion of a state or district geographically separated from the main part by surrounding alien territory (of one or more states or districts etc). Many exclaves are also enclaves, but not all: an exclave can be surrounded by the territory of more than one state. The Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan is an example of an exclave that is not an enclave, as it borders Armenia, Turkey and Iran. Semi-enclaves and semi-exclaves are areas that, except for possessing an unsurrounded sea border (a coastline contiguous with interna ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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