HUELVA, ANDALUSIA

SpainAndaluciaAndalusiaAndaluciaAlmeriaAndalusiaCadizAndalusiaCordobaAndalusiaGranadaAndalusia

HuelvaAndalusiaJaenAndalusiaMalagaAndalusiaSeville


Huelva is a province of southern Spain, in the western part of the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is bordered by Portugal, the provinces of Badajoz, Seville, and Cádiz, and the Atlantic Ocean. Its capital is Huelva.

Its area is 10,148 km². Its population is 483,792 (2005), of whom about 30% live in the capital, and its population density is 47.67/km². It contains 79 municipalities.

See a list of municipalities in Huelva.

The economy is based on agriculture and mining. The famous Rio Tinto mines have been worked since before 1000 BC, and were the major source of copper for the Roman Empire. As an indication of the scope of ancient mining, sixteen million tons of Roman slag have been identified at the Roman mines. British companies resumed large-scale mining in 1873; the district is the namesake of the Rio Tinto Group.

The province contains Palos de la Frontera, and Moguer, where Christopher Columbus sailed out of on his first voyage in 1492, and shares the Parque Nacional de Doñana with Seville province.

The city may be the site of Tartessus; by the Phoenicians it was called Onoba. The Greeks kept the name and rendered it Ὄνοβα. It was in the hands of the Turdetani at the time of conquest by Rome, and before the conquest it issued silver coins with Iberian legends. It was called both Onoba Aestuaria (Greek: Ὄνοβα Αἰστουάρια, Ptol., ii. 4. § 5) or Onuba (used on coinage) during Roman times, or, simply, Onoba (Strabo, iii. p. 143, Mela, iii. 1. § 5). The city was incorporated into the Roman province of Hispania Baetica. The Arabs then called it Walbah. It suffered substantial damage in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake.

Map of Huelva: