San Andrés del Rabanedo is a

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality' ...

located in the

Province of León León (, ; ; ; ) is a province of northwestern Spain in the northern part of the Region of León and in the northwestern part of the autonomous community of Castile and León. About one quarter of its population of 463,746 (2018) lives in the c ...

Castile and León Castile and León is an Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in northwestern Spain. Castile and León is the largest autonomous community in Spain by area, covering 94,222 km2. It is, however, sparsely populated, with a pop ...

, Spain. According to the 2011

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

( INE), the city has a population of 31,562 inhabitants, and is the third largest city in the province after León and

Ponferrada Ponferrada () is a city of Spain, located in the autonomous community of Castile and León. Ponferrada, the second most populated municipality of the Province of León, is also the capital city of El Bierzo, the only Comarcas of Spain, ''comarca'' ...

. The municipality includes the districts of San Andrés del Rabanedo, Trobajo del Camino, Barrio Pinilla, Villabalter and Ferral del Bernesga.

Geography

San Andrés del Rabanedo is the second most-populated town in the

comarca A ''comarca'' (, , , ) is a traditional region or local administrative division found in Portugal, Spain, and some of their former colonies, like Brazil, Nicaragua, and Panama. The term is derived from the term ''marca'', meaning a "march, mark ...

of Tierras de León where it is only exceeded in size by the capital city of León. It is situated in the valley of the

River Bernesga A river is a natural stream of fresh water that flows on land or inside Subterranean river, caves towards another body of water at a lower elevation, such as an ocean, lake, or another river. A river may run dry before reaching the end of ...

which rises in the

Cantabrian Mountains The Cantabrian Mountains or Cantabrian Range () are one of the main systems of mountain ranges in Spain. They stretch for over 300 km (180 miles) across northern Spain, from the western limit of the Pyrenees to the Galician Massif ...

and flows southwards through the

before its confluence with the River Esla. The valley is at an altitude of about . There is a scarp slope parallel to the river which is cut by

gullies A gully is a landform created by running water, mass movement, or both, which erodes soil to a sharp angle, typically on a hillside or in river floodplains or terraces. Gullies resemble large ditches or small valleys, but are metres to t ...

in places, and above this is sloping moorland where cereals are grown. Above this again is an upland region at about with a natural covering of oak and pine. The city of León lies to the east and south of San Andrés del Rabanedo. To the southeast lies the municipality of Valverde de la Virgen, to the west lies Cimanes del Tejar, to the northwest Rioseco de Tapia and to the north, the municipalities of Sariegos and Cuadros. About one third of the municipality is occupied by the military base of ''Conde de Gazola'' and used for manoeuvres. The municipality of San Andrés del Rabanedo has an area of and at the time of the 2011 census it had a population of 31,562, giving a density of 486.75 inhabitants per square kilometre. The population of the Province of León has grown since the start of the twentieth century but this has been a growth of urban populations at the expense of rural areas. San Andrés del Rabanedo has been one of the fastest growing towns; it increased its population by almost 24,000 people in the twentieth century and had gained another 4,000 by the year 2008.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:San Andres del Rabanedo Municipalities in the Province of León