- Province and City
One of the things that you must know is how to differentiate the Province (now called Comunidad in Spanish and used to be called Provincia) from the other Madrid (the City government). You can distinguish the institutions of the City government by the red flag with seven stars (soon we'll tell you what it means). Although the province has existed since 1833, the Community of Madrid was institutionalized in 1983, after a prolific amount of debate, in which the two Castiles (Castilla la Mancha and Castilla-Leon) seemed to reject the inclusion of Spain's capital in their communities. This would have caused a considerable amount of institutional problems with all the expenses that this endeavor would entail.
- Area
When looking at a map of the Province of Madrid, you'll see it is almost an equilateral triangle, in whose center would be the city. It seems that Madrid's geographic limits turn out to be those of nature: on the western side the "Central System" (the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains), the south represents the desire to include (the Royal Site of) Aranjuez and finally the eastern edge of the triangle comes from the rupture of the fluvial river basins.
The Province of Madrid occupies a surface area of approximately 8,028 km2 (1.6% of all Spanish territory). Being more specific the exact position of Spain is 40º 24´30´´ of longitude west of Greenwich, England.
- Altitude
Practically all of the Province is located between 600 and 1,000m above sea level, with the highest point being Peñalara at 2,430m and the lowest Alberche en Villa del Prado at 430m. Other considerable heights, as well as being famous, are the Ball of the World (la Bola del Mundo), in Navacerrada, at a height of 2,258m and the seven peaks, in Cercedilla, at 2,138m.
