The country has many mineral resources, particularly cobalt, copper, iron ore, lead, coal, lignite, manganese, mercury, potassium, tungsten, kaolin, gypsum, salt, silver, sulfur, tin and zinc; also it has small amounts of natural gas and oil.
There are three climatic types: continental, tempered in the Meseta and the Ebro; Mediterranean in the south and east; and ocean, north, abundant and low thermal oscillation annual rainfall.
The main rivers of Spain flow west and southwest to empty into the Atlantic Ocean; usually they run through deep and rocky valleys through mountain courses.
Spain occupies 85 % of the Iberian peninsula and is surrounded by water on almost 88 % of its perimeter; its Mediterranean coast is about 1,660 km long and the Atlantic about 710 km.
In the last 60 years Spain has undergone more social change than anywhere else in western Europe. Until the 1950s, Spain was predominantly a poor, rural country, in which only 37 per cent of the population lived in towns of over 10,000 people.
