title: Can You Ever Forgive Me?

text: Peter Debruge wrote in "Variety" that "it takes an actress as delightful as [Melissa McCarthy] to make such a woman not just forgivable but downright lovable"; however, in how the film was promoted he concluded that "one gets the impression that Fox Searchlight is trying to hide (or at least downplay) the homosexual side of this story: Lee was a lesbian, while the openly gay Jack [Hock] can hardly pass a fire hydrant without asking for its phone number." "Film Journal International" said McCarthy's performance was "stunning" and her previous film roles "could not anticipate how fearlessly and credibly she inhabits Lee Israel." Eric Kohn of "IndieWire" said the film was a "charming melancholic comedy" where "Heller channels the dark urban milieu of vintage Woody Allen", and in which McCarthy's performance "elevates the material at every opportunity."


title: Heart murmur

text: Heart murmurs are unique heart sounds produced when blood flows across a heart valve or blood vessel. This occurs when turbulent blood flow creates a sound loud enough to hear with a stethoscope. Turbulent blood flow is not smooth. The sound differs from normal heart sounds by their characteristics. For example, heart murmurs may have a distinct pitch, duration and timing. The major way health care providers examine the heart on physical exam is heart auscultation; another clinical technique is palpation, which can detect by touch when such turbulence causes the vibrations called cardiac thrill.


title: Heart murmur

text: A murmur is a sign found during the cardiac exam. Murmurs are of various types and are important in the detection of cardiac and valvular pathologies (i.e. can be a sign of heart diseases or defects).


title: Heart murmur

text: There are two types of murmur. A functional murmur is a benign heart murmur that is primarily due to physiologic conditions outside the heart. The other type of heart murmur is due to a structural defect in the heart itself. Defects may be due to narrowing of one or more valves (stenosis), backflow of blood, through a leaky valve, (regurgitation), or the presence of abnormal passages through which blood flows in or near the heart.


title: Heart murmur

text: Most murmurs are normal variants that can present at various ages which relate to changes of the body with age such as chest size, blood pressure, and pliability or rigidity of structures.


title: Heart murmur

text: Heart murmurs are frequently categorized by timing. These include systolic heart murmurs, diastolic heart murmurs, or continuous murmurs. These differ in the part of the heartbeat they make sound, during systole, or diastole. Yet, continuous murmurs create sound throughout both parts of the heartbeat. Continuous murmurs are not placed into the categories of diastolic or systolic murmurs.


title: Heart murmur

text: Murmurs have seven main characteristics. These include timing, shape, location, radiation, intensity, pitch and quality.


title: Heart murmur

text: Aortic valve stenosis is a crescendo/decrescendo systolic murmur. It is best heard at the right upper sternal border (aortic area). It sometimes radiates to the carotid arteries. In mild aortic stenosis, the crescendo-decrescendo is early peaking. Whereas in severe aortic stenosis, the crescendo is late-peaking. In severe cases, obliteration of the S2 heart sound may occur.


title: Heart murmur

text: Stenosis of Bicuspid aortic valve is like the aortic valve stenosis heart murmur. But, one may hear a systolic ejection click after S1 in calcified bicuspid aortic valves. Symptoms tend to present between 40 and 70 years of age.


title: Heart murmur

text: Mitral regurgitation is a holosystolic murmur. One can best hear it at the apex location and it may radiate to the axilla or precordium. When associated with mitral valve prolapse, one may hear a systolic click. In this scenario, valsalva maneuver will decrease left ventricular preload. This will move the murmur onset closer to S1. Isometric handgrip will increase left ventricular afterload. This will increase murmur intensity. In acute severe mitral regurgitation, one may not hear a holosystolic murmur.


title: Heart murmur

text: Pulmonary valve stenosis is a crescendo-decrescendo systolic murmur. One can hear it best at the left upper sternal border. It has association with a systolic ejection click that increases with inspiration. This finding results from an increased venous return to the right side of the heart. Pulmonary stenosis sometimes radiates to the left clavicle.


title: Heart murmur

text: Tricuspid valve regurgitation is a holosystolic murmur. It presents at the left lower sternal border with radiation to the left upper sternal border. One may see prominent v and c waves in the JVP (jugular venous pressure). The murmur will increase with inspiration.


title: Heart murmur

text: Hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy (or hypertrophic subaortic stenosis) will be a systolic crescendo-decrescendo murmur. One can best hear it at the left lower sternal border. Valsalva maneuver will increase the intensity of the murmur. Going from squatting to standing will also increase the intensity of the murmur.


title: Heart murmur

text: Atrial septal defect will present with a systolic crescendo-decrescendo murmur. It is best heard at the left upper sternal border. This is the result of an increased volume going through the pulmonary valve. It has association with a fixed, split S2 and a right ventricular heave.


title: Heart murmur

text: Ventricular septal defect (VSD) will present as a holosystolic murmur. One can hear it at the left lower sternal border. It has association with a palpable thrill, and increases with isometric handgrip. A right to left shunt (Eisenmenger syndrome) may develop with uncorrected VSDs. This is due to worsening pulmonary hypertension. Pulmonary hypertension will increase the murmur intensity and may present with cyanosis.


title: Heart murmur

text: Flow murmur presents at the right upper sternal border. It may present in certain conditions, such as anemia, hyperthyroidism, fever, and pregnancy.


title: Heart murmur

text: Aortic valve regurgitation will present as a diastolic decrescendo murmur. One can hear it at the left lower sternal border. One may also hear it at the right lower sternal border (when associated with a dilated aorta). Other possible exam findings are bounding carotid and peripheral pulses. These are also known as Corrigan's pulse or Watson's water hammer pulse. Another possible finding is a widened pulse pressure.


title: Heart murmur

text: Mitral stenosis presents as a diastolic low-pitched decrescendo murmur. It is best heard at the cardiac apex in the left lateral decubitus position. Mitral stenosis may have an opening snap. Increasing severity will shorten the time between S2 (A2) and the opening snap. For example, in severe MS the opening snap will occur earlier after A2.


title: Heart murmur

text: Tricuspid valve stenosis presents as a diastolic decrescendo murmur. One can hear it at the left lower sternal border. One may see signs of right heart failure on exam.


title: Heart murmur

text: Pulmonary valve regurgitation presents as a diastolic decrescendo murmur. One may hear it at the left lower sternal border. A palpable S2 in the second left intercostal space correlates with pulmonary hypertension due to mitral stenosis.


title: Heart murmur

text: The cooing dove murmur is a cardiac murmur with a musical quality (high pitched). Associated with aortic valve regurgitation (or mitral regurgitation before rupture of chordae). It is a diastolic murmur heard over the mid-precordium.


title: Heart murmur

text: Severe coarctation of the aorta can present with a continuous murmur. One may hear the systolic component at the left infraclavicular region and the back. This is due to the stenosis. One may hear the diastolic component over the chest wall. This is due to blood flow through collateral vessels.


title: Heart murmur

text: Acute severe aortic regurgitation may present with a three phase murmur. First, a midsystolic murmur followed by S2. Following this is a parasternal early diastolic and mid-diastolic murmur (Austin Flint murmur). The exact cause of an Austin Flint murmur is unknown. Hypothesis is that the mechanism of murmur is from the severe aortic regurgitation. In severe aortic regurgitation the jet vibrates the anterior mitral valve leaflet. This causes collision with the mitral inflow during diastole. As such, the mitral valve orifice narrows. This results in increased mitral inflow velocity. This leads to the jet impinging on the myocardial wall.


title: Heart murmur

text: Ruptured aortic sinus (sinus of Valsalva) may present as a continuous murmur. This is an uncommon cause of continuous murmur One may hear it at the aortic area and along the left sternal border.


title: Heart murmur

text: A medical provider (e.g. doctor) may order tests for further evaluation of a heart murmur. The echocardiogram is a common test used. This is also known as an "echo" or ultrasound of the heart. It shows the heart structures and blood flow through the heart. Further testing is usually done when symptoms that may be of concern are present.


title: Heart murmur

text: The need for treatment depends on the diagnosis and severity. In some cases, the condition causing the heart murmur may prompt monitoring. Sometimes, heart murmurs disappear on their own. This happens when the cause of the heart murmur is no longer present. Monitoring will help determine how the condition changes. It may stay the same, worsen, or improve. In other cases, the condition causing the heart murmur may not prompt any further tests.


title: Visual impairment

text: Visual impairment, also known as vision impairment, is a medical definition primarily measured based on an individual's better eye visual acuity; in the absence of treatment such as correctable eyewear, assistive devices, and medical treatment– visual impairment may cause the individual difficulties with normal daily tasks including reading and walking. Low vision is a functional definition of visual impairment that is chronic, uncorrectable with treatment or correctable lenses, and impacts daily living. As such low vision can be used as a disability metric and varies based on an individual's experience, environmental demands, accommodations, and access to services. The American Academy of Ophthalmology defines visual impairment as the best-corrected visual acuity of less than 20/40 in the better eye, and the World Health Organization defines it as a presenting acuity of less than 6/12 in the better eye. The term blindness is used for complete or nearly complete vision loss. In addition to the various permanent conditions, fleeting temporary vision impairment, amaurosis fugax, may occur, and may indicate serious medical problems.


title: Visual impairment

text: The most common causes of visual impairment globally are uncorrected refractive errors (43%), cataracts (33%), and glaucoma (2%). Refractive errors include near-sightedness, far-sightedness, presbyopia, and astigmatism. Cataracts are the most common cause of blindness. Other disorders that may cause visual problems include age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, corneal clouding, childhood blindness, and a number of infections. Visual impairment can also be caused by problems in the brain due to stroke, premature birth, or trauma, among others. These cases are known as cortical visual impairment. Screening for vision problems in children may improve future vision and educational achievement. Screening adults without symptoms is of uncertain benefit. Diagnosis is by an eye exam.


title: Visual impairment

text: The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 80% of visual impairment is either preventable or curable with treatment. This includes cataracts, the infections river blindness and trachoma, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, uncorrected refractive errors, and some cases of childhood blindness. Many people with significant visual impairment benefit from vision rehabilitation, changes in their environment, and assistive devices.


title: Visual impairment

text: In 2010, the WHO definition for visual impairment was changed and now follows the ICD-11. The previous definition which used "best corrected visual acuity" was changed to "presenting visual acuity". This change was made as newer studies showed that best-corrected vision overlooks a larger proportion of the population who has visual impairment due to uncorrected refractive errors, and/or lack of access to medical or surgical treatment.


title: Visual impairment

text: In the UK, the Certificate of Vision Impairment (CVI) is used to certify patients as severely sight impaired or sight impaired. The accompanying guidance for clinical staff states: "The National Assistance Act 1948 states that a person can be certified as severely sight impaired if they are 'so blind as to be unable to perform any work for which eye sight is essential'". Certification is based on whether a person can do any work for which eyesight is essential, not just one particular job (such as their job before becoming blind).


title: Visual impairment

text: In practice, the definition depends on individuals' visual acuity and the extent to which their field of vision is restricted. The Department of Health identifies three groups of people who may be classified as severely visually impaired.


title: Visual impairment

text: The Department of Health also state that a person is more likely to be classified as severely visually impaired if their eyesight has failed recently or if they are an older individual, both groups being perceived as less able to adapt to their vision loss.


title: Visual impairment

text: In the United States, any person with vision that cannot be corrected to better than 20/200 in the best eye, or who has 20 degrees (diameter) or less of visual field remaining, is considered legally blind or eligible for disability classification and possible inclusion in certain government sponsored programs.


title: Visual impairment

text: In the United States, the terms "partially sighted", "low vision", "legally blind" and "totally blind" are used by schools, colleges, and other educational institutions to describe students with visual impairments. They are defined as follows:


title: Visual impairment

text: The United States Congress included this definition as part of the Aid to the Blind program in the passed in 1935. In 1972, the Aid to the Blind program and two others combined under Title XVI of the Social Security Act to form the Supplemental Security Income program which states:


title: Visual impairment

text: Vision impairment for a few seconds, or minutes, may occur due to any of a variety of causes, some serious and requiring medical attention.


title: Visual impairment

text: Visual impairments may take many forms and be of varying degrees. Visual acuity alone is not always a good predictor of an individual's function. Someone with relatively good acuity (e.g., 20/40) can have difficulty with daily functioning, while someone with worse acuity (e.g., 20/200) may function reasonably well if they have low visual demands. It is also important to note that best-corrected visual acuity differs from presenting visual acuity; a person with a "normal" best corrected acuity can have "poor" presenting acuity (e.g. individual who has uncorrected refractive error). Thus, measuring an individual's general functioning depends on one's situational and contextual factors, as well as access to treatment.


title: Visual impairment

text: The American Medical Association has estimated that the loss of one eye equals 25% impairment of the visual system and 24% impairment of the whole person; total loss of vision in both eyes is considered to be 100% visual impairment and 85% impairment of the whole person.


title: Visual impairment

text: Some people who fall into this category can use their considerable residual vision – their remaining sight – to complete daily tasks without relying on alternative methods. The role of a low vision specialist (optometrist or ophthalmologist) is to maximize the functional level of a patient's vision by optical or non-optical means. Primarily, this is by use of magnification in the form of telescopic systems for distance vision and optical or electronic magnification for near tasks.


title: Visual impairment

text: People with significantly reduced acuity may benefit from training conducted by individuals trained in the provision of technical aids. Low vision rehabilitation professionals, some of whom are connected to an agency for the blind, can provide advice on lighting and contrast to maximize remaining vision. These professionals also have access to non-visual aids, and can instruct patients in their uses.


title: Visual impairment

text: Older adults with visual impairment are at an increased risk of physical inactivity, slower gait speeds, and fear of falls.


title: Visual impairment

text: Physical activity is a useful predictor of overall well-being, and routine physical activity reduces the risk of developing chronic diseases and disability. Older adults with visual impairment (including glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration, and diabetic retinopathy) have decreased physical activity as measured with self-reports and accelerometers. The US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) showed that people with corrected visual acuity of less than 20/40 spent significantly less time in moderate to vigorous physical activity. Age-related macular degeneration is also associated with a 50% decrease in physical activity–however physical activity is protective against age-related macular degeneration progression.


title: Visual impairment

text: In terms of mobility, those with visual impairment have a slower gait speed than those without visual impairment; however, the rate of decline remains proportional with increasing age in both groups. Additionally, the visually impaired also have greater difficulty walking a quarter mile (400 m) and walking up stairs, as compared to those with normal vision.


title: Visual impairment

text: Older adults with vision loss are at an increased risk of memory loss, cognitive impairment, and cognitive decline.


title: Visual impairment

text: Studies demonstrate an association between older adults with visual impairment and a poor mental health; discrimination was identified as one of the causes of this association. Older adults with visual impairment have a 1.5-fold risk of reporting perceived discrimination and of these individuals, there was a 2-fold risk of loneliness and 4-fold risk of reporting a lower quality of life. Among adults with visual impairment, the prevalence of moderate loneliness is 28.7% (18.2% in general population) and prevalence of severe loneliness is 19.7% (2.7% in general population). The risk of depression and anxiety are also increased in the visually impaired; 32.2% report depressive symptoms (12.01% in general population), and 15.61% report anxiety symptoms (10.69% in general population).


title: Visual impairment

text: The subjects making the most use of rehabilitation instruments, who lived alone, and preserved their own mobility and occupation were the least depressed, with the lowest risk of suicide and the highest level of social integration.


title: Visual impairment

text: Those with worsening sight and the prognosis of eventual blindness are at comparatively high risk of suicide and thus may be in need of supportive services. Many studies have demonstrated how rapid acceptance of the serious visual impairment has led to a better, more productive compliance with rehabilitation programs. Moreover, psychological distress has been reported to be at its highest when sight loss is not complete, but the prognosis is unfavorable. Therefore, early intervention is imperative for enabling successful psychological adjustment.


title: Visual impairment

text: Blindness can occur in combination with such conditions as intellectual disability, autism spectrum disorders, cerebral palsy, hearing impairments, and epilepsy. Blindness in combination with hearing loss is known as deafblindness.


title: Visual impairment

text: It has been estimated that over half of completely blind people have non-24-hour sleep–wake disorder, a condition in which a person's circadian rhythm, normally slightly longer than 24 hours, is not entrained (synchronized) to the lightdark cycle.


title: Visual impairment

text: About 90% of people who are visually impaired live in the developing world. Age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma, and diabetic retinopathy are the leading causes of blindness in the developed world.


title: Visual impairment

text: Among working-age adults who are newly blind in England and Wales the most common causes in 2010 were:


title: Visual impairment

text: Cataracts are the greying or opacity of the crystalline lens, which can be caused in children by intrauterine infections, metabolic disorders, and genetically transmitted syndromes. Cataracts are the leading cause of child and adult blindness that doubles in prevalence with every ten years after the age of 40. Consequently, today cataracts are more common among adults than in children. That is, people face higher chances of developing cataracts as they age. Nonetheless, cataracts tend to have a greater financial and emotional toll upon children as they must undergo expensive diagnosis, long term rehabilitation, and visual assistance. Also, according to the Saudi Journal for Health Sciences, sometimes patients experience irreversible amblyopia after pediatric cataract surgery because the cataracts prevented the normal maturation of vision prior to operation. Despite the great progress in treatment, cataracts remain a global problem in both economically developed and developing countries. At present, with the variant outcomes as well as the unequal access to cataract surgery, the best way to reduce the risk of developing cataracts is to avoid smoking and extensive exposure to sun light (i.e. UV-B rays).


title: Visual impairment

text: Glaucoma is an eye disease often characterized by increased pressure within the eye or intraocular pressure (IOP). Glaucoma causes visual field loss as well as severs the optic nerve. Early diagnosis and treatment of glaucoma in patients is imperative because glaucoma is triggered by non-specific levels of IOP. Also, another challenge in accurately diagnosing glaucoma is that the disease has four causes: 1) inflammatory ocular hypertension syndrome (IOHS); 2) severe uveitic angle closure; 3) corticosteroid-induced; and 4) a heterogonous mechanism associated with structural change and chronic inflammation. In addition, often pediatric glaucoma differs greatly in cause and management from the glaucoma developed by adults. Currently, the best sign of pediatric glaucoma is an IOP of 21 mm Hg or greater present within a child. One of the most common causes of pediatric glaucoma is cataract removal surgery, which leads to an incidence rate of about 12.2% among infants and 58.7% among 10-year-olds.


title: Visual impairment

text: Childhood blindness can be caused by conditions related to pregnancy, such as congenital rubella syndrome and retinopathy of prematurity. Leprosy and onchocerciasis each blind approximately 1 million individuals in the developing world.


title: Visual impairment

text: The number of individuals blind from trachoma has decreased in the past 10 years from 6 million to 1.3 million, putting it in seventh place on the list of causes of blindness worldwide.


title: Visual impairment

text: Central corneal ulceration is also a significant cause of monocular blindness worldwide, accounting for an estimated 850,000 cases of corneal blindness every year in the Indian subcontinent alone. As a result, corneal scarring from all causes is now the fourth greatest cause of global blindness.


title: Visual impairment

text: Eye injuries, most often occurring in people under 30, are the leading cause of monocular blindness (vision loss in one eye) throughout the United States. Injuries and cataracts affect the eye itself, while abnormalities such as optic nerve hypoplasia affect the nerve bundle that sends signals from the eye to the back of the brain, which can lead to decreased visual acuity.


title: Visual impairment

text: Cortical blindness results from injuries to the occipital lobe of the brain that prevent the brain from correctly receiving or interpreting signals from the optic nerve. Symptoms of cortical blindness vary greatly across individuals and may be more severe in periods of exhaustion or stress. It is common for people with cortical blindness to have poorer vision later in the day.


title: Visual impairment

text: Blinding has been used as an act of vengeance and torture in some instances, to deprive a person of a major sense by which they can navigate or interact within the world, act fully independently, and be aware of events surrounding them. An example from the classical realm is Oedipus, who gouges out his own eyes after realizing that he fulfilled the awful prophecy spoken of him. Having crushed the Bulgarians, the Byzantine Emperor Basil II blinded as many as 15,000 prisoners taken in the battle, before releasing them. Contemporary examples include the addition of methods such as acid throwing as a form of disfigurement.


title: Visual impairment

text: People with albinism often have vision loss to the extent that many are legally blind, though few of them actually cannot see. Leber congenital amaurosis can cause total blindness or severe sight loss from birth or early childhood. Retinitis pigmentosa is characterized by decreased peripheral vision and trouble seeing at night.


title: Visual impairment

text: Advances in mapping of the human genome have identified other genetic causes of low vision or blindness. Two such examples are Bardet–Biedl syndrome .


title: Visual impairment

text: Rarely, blindness is caused by the intake of certain chemicals. A well-known example is methanol, which is only mildly toxic and minimally intoxicating, and breaks down into the substances formaldehyde and formic acid which in turn can cause blindness, an array of other health complications, and death. When competing with ethanol for metabolism, ethanol is metabolized first, and the onset of toxicity is delayed. Methanol is commonly found in methylated spirits, denatured ethyl alcohol, to avoid paying taxes on selling ethanol intended for human consumption. Methylated spirits are sometimes used by alcoholics as a desperate and cheap substitute for regular ethanol alcoholic beverages.


title: Visual impairment

text: It is important that people be examined by someone specializing in low vision care prior to other rehabilitation training to rule out potential medical or surgical correction for the problem and to establish a careful baseline refraction and prescription of both normal and low vision glasses and optical aids. Only a doctor is qualified to evaluate visual functioning of a compromised visual system effectively. The American Medical Association provides an approach to evaluating visual loss as it affects an individual's ability to perform activities of daily living.


title: Visual impairment

text: The World Health Organization estimates that 80% of visual loss is either preventable or curable with treatment. This includes cataracts, onchocerciasis, trachoma, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, uncorrected refractive errors, and some cases of childhood blindness. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that half of blindness in the United States is preventable.


title: Visual impairment

text: Many people with serious visual impairments can travel independently, using a wide range of tools and techniques. Orientation and mobility specialists are professionals who are specifically trained to teach people with visual impairments how to travel safely, confidently, and independently in the home and the community. These professionals can also help blind people to practice travelling on specific routes which they may use often, such as the route from one's house to a convenience store. Becoming familiar with an environment or route can make it much easier for a blind person to navigate successfully.


title: Visual impairment

text: Tools such as the white cane with a red tip – the international symbol of blindness – may also be used to improve mobility. A long cane is used to extend the user's range of touch sensation. It is usually swung in a low sweeping motion, across the intended path of travel, to detect obstacles. However, techniques for cane travel can vary depending on the user and/or the situation. Some visually impaired persons do not carry these kinds of canes, opting instead for the shorter, lighter identification (ID) cane. Still others require a support cane. The choice depends on the individual's vision, motivation, and other factors.


title: Visual impairment

text: A small number of people employ guide dogs to assist in mobility. These dogs are trained to navigate around various obstacles, and to indicate when it becomes necessary to go up or down a step. However, the helpfulness of guide dogs is limited by the inability of dogs to understand complex directions. The human half of the guide dog team does the directing, based upon skills acquired through previous mobility training. In this sense, the handler might be likened to an aircraft's navigator, who must know how to get from one place to another, and the dog to the pilot, who gets them there safely.


title: Visual impairment

text: GPS devices can also be used as a mobility aid. Such software can assist blind people with orientation and navigation, but it is not a replacement for traditional mobility tools such as white canes and guide dogs.


title: Visual impairment

text: Some blind people are skilled at echolocating silent objects simply by producing mouth clicks and listening to the returning echoes. It has been shown that blind echolocation experts use what is normally the "visual" part of their brain to process the echoes.


title: Visual impairment

text: Government actions are sometimes taken to make public places more accessible to blind people. Public transportation is freely available to blind people in many cities. Tactile paving and audible traffic signals can make it easier and safer for visually impaired pedestrians to cross streets. In addition to making rules about who can and cannot use a cane, some governments mandate the right-of-way be given to users of white canes or guide dogs.


title: Visual impairment

text: Most visually impaired people who are not totally blind read print, either of a regular size or enlarged by magnification devices. Many also read large-print, which is easier for them to read without such devices. A variety of magnifying glasses, some handheld, and some on desktops, can make reading easier for them.


title: Visual impairment

text: Others read braille (or the infrequently used Moon type), or rely on talking books and readers or reading machines, which convert printed text to speech or braille. They use computers with special hardware such as scanners and refreshable braille displays as well as software written specifically for the blind, such as optical character recognition applications and screen readers.


title: Visual impairment

text: Some people access these materials through agencies for the blind, such as the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped in the United States, the National Library for the Blind or the RNIB in the United Kingdom.


title: Visual impairment

text: Closed-circuit televisions, equipment that enlarges and contrasts textual items, are a more high-tech alternative to traditional magnification devices.


title: Visual impairment

text: There are also over 100 radio reading services throughout the world that provide people with vision impairments with readings from periodicals over the radio. The International Association of Audio Information Services provides links to all of these organizations.


title: Visual impairment

text: Access technology such as screen readers, screen magnifiers and refreshable braille displays enable the blind to use mainstream computer applications and mobile phones. The availability of assistive technology is increasing, accompanied by concerted efforts to ensure the accessibility of information technology to all potential users, including the blind. Later versions of Microsoft Windows include an Accessibility Wizard & Magnifier for those with partial vision, and Microsoft Narrator, a simple screen reader. Linux distributions (as live CDs) for the blind include Vinux and Adriane Knoppix, the latter developed in part by Adriane Knopper who has a visual impairment. macOS and iOS also come with a built-in screen reader called VoiceOver, while Google TalkBack is built in to most Android devices.


title: Visual impairment

text: The movement towards greater web accessibility is opening a far wider number of websites to adaptive technology, making the web a more inviting place for visually impaired surfers.


title: Visual impairment

text: Experimental approaches in sensory substitution are beginning to provide access to arbitrary live views from a camera.


title: Visual impairment

text: Modified visual output that includes large print and/or clear simple graphics can be of benefit to users with some residual vision.


title: Visual impairment

text: Blind people may use talking equipment such as thermometers, watches, clocks, scales, calculators, and compasses. They may also enlarge or mark dials on devices such as ovens and thermostats to make them usable. Other techniques used by blind people to assist them in daily activities include:


title: Visual impairment

text: Most people, once they have been visually impaired for long enough, devise their own adaptive strategies in all areas of personal and professional management.


title: Visual impairment

text: For the blind, there are books in braille, audio-books, and text-to-speech computer programs, machines and e-book readers. Low vision people can make use of these tools as well as large-print reading materials and e-book readers that provide large font sizes.


title: Visual impairment

text: Computers are important tools of integration for the visually impaired person. They allow, using standard or specific programs, screen magnification and conversion of text into sound or touch (braille line), and are useful for all levels of visual impairment. OCR scanners can, in conjunction with text-to-speech software, read the contents of books and documents aloud via computer. Vendors also build closed-circuit televisions that electronically magnify paper, and even change its contrast and color, for visually impaired users. For more information, consult assistive technology.


title: Visual impairment

text: In adults with low vision there is no conclusive evidence supporting one form of reading aid over another. In several studies stand-mounted devices allowed faster reading than hand-held or portable optical aids. While electronic aids may allow faster reading for individuals with low vision, portability, ease of use, and affordability must be considered for people.


title: Visual impairment

text: Children with low vision sometimes have reading delays, but do benefit from phonics-based beginning reading instruction methods. Engaging phonics instruction is multisensory, highly motivating, and hands-on. Typically students are first taught the most frequent sounds of the alphabet letters, especially the so-called short vowel sounds, then taught to blend sounds together with three-letter consonant-vowel-consonant words such as cat, red, sit, hot, sun. Hands-on (or kinesthetically appealing) VERY enlarged print materials such as those found in "The Big Collection of Phonics Flipbooks" by Lynn Gordon (Scholastic, 2010) are helpful for teaching word families and blending skills to beginning readers with low vision. Beginning reading instructional materials should focus primarily on the lower-case letters, not the capital letters (even though they are larger) because reading text requires familiarity (mostly) with lower-case letters. Phonics-based beginning reading should also be supplemented with phonemic awareness lessons, writing opportunities, and many read-alouds (literature read to children daily) to stimulate motivation, vocabulary development, concept development, and comprehension skill development. Many children with low vision can be successfully included in regular education environments. Parents may need to be vigilant to ensure that the school provides the teacher and students with appropriate low vision resources, for example technology in the classroom, classroom aide time, modified educational materials, and consultation assistance with low vision experts.


title: Visual impairment

text: The WHO estimates that in 2012 there were 285 million visually impaired people in the world, of which 246 million had low vision and 39 million were blind.


title: Visual impairment

text: Of those who are blind 90% live in the developing world. Worldwide for each blind person, an average of 3.4 people have low vision, with country and regional variation ranging from 2.4 to 5.5.


title: Visual impairment

text: By age: Visual impairment is unequally distributed across age groups. More than 82% of all people who are blind are 50 years of age and older, although they represent only 19% of the world's population. Due to the expected number of years lived in blindness (blind years), childhood blindness remains a significant problem, with an estimated 1.4 million blind children below age 15.


title: Visual impairment

text: By gender: Available studies consistently indicate that in every region of the world, and at all ages, females have a significantly higher risk of being visually impaired than males.


title: Visual impairment

text: By geography: Visual impairment is not distributed uniformly throughout the world. More than 90% of the world's visually impaired live in developing countries.


title: Visual impairment

text: Since the estimates of the 1990s, new data based on the 2002 global population show a reduction in the number of people who are blind or visually impaired, and those who are blind from the effects of infectious diseases, but an increase in the number of people who are blind from conditions related to longer life spans.


title: Visual impairment

text: In 1987, it was estimated that 598,000 people in the United States met the legal definition of blindness. Of this number, 58% were over the age of 65. In 1994–1995, 1.3 million Americans reported legal blindness.


title: Visual impairment

text: To determine which people qualify for special assistance because of their visual disabilities, various governments have specific definitions for legal blindness. In North America and most of Europe, legal blindness is defined as visual acuity (vision) of 20/200 (6/60) or less in the better eye with best correction possible. This means that a legally blind individual would have to stand from an object to see it—with corrective lenses—with the same degree of clarity as a normally sighted person could from . In many areas, people with average acuity who nonetheless have a visual field of less than 20 degrees (the norm being 180 degrees) are also classified as being legally blind.


title: Visual impairment

text: Approximately fifteen percent of those deemed legally blind, by any measure, have no light or form perception. The rest have some vision, from light perception alone to relatively good acuity. Low vision is sometimes used to describe visual acuities from 20/70 to 20/200.


title: Visual impairment

text: In Greek myth, Tiresias was a prophet famous for his clairvoyance. According to one myth, he was blinded by the gods as punishment for revealing their secrets, while another holds that he was blinded as punishment after he saw Athena naked while she was bathing. In the Odyssey, the one-eyed Cyclops Polyphemus captures Odysseus, who blinds Polyphemus to escape. In Norse mythology, Loki tricks the blind god Höðr into killing his brother Baldr, the god of happiness.


title: Visual impairment

text: The New Testament contains numerous instances of Jesus performing miracles to heal the blind. According to the Gospels, Jesus healed the two blind men of Galilee, the blind man of Bethsaida, the blind man of Jericho and the man who was born blind.


title: Visual impairment

text: The parable of the blind men and an elephant has crossed between many religious traditions and is part of Jain, Buddhist, Sufi and Hindu lore. In various versions of the tale, a group of blind men (or men in the dark) touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one feels a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then compare notes and learn that they are in complete disagreement.


title: Visual impairment

text: "Three Blind Mice" is a medieval English nursery rhyme about three blind mice whose tails are cut off after chasing the farmer's wife. The work is explicitly incongruous, ending with the comment "Did you ever see such a sight in your life, As three blind mice?"


title: Visual impairment

text: Poet John Milton, who went blind in mid-life, composed "On His Blindness", a sonnet about coping with blindness. The work posits that "[those] who best Bear [God]'s mild yoke, they serve him best."


title: Visual impairment

text: The Dutch painter and engraver Rembrandt often depicted scenes from the apocryphal Book of Tobit, which tells the story of a blind patriarch who is healed by his son, Tobias, with the help of the archangel Raphael.


title: Visual impairment

text: Slaver-turned-abolitionist John Newton composed the hymn "Amazing Grace" about a wretch who ""once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see."" Blindness, in this sense, is used both metaphorically (to refer to someone who was ignorant but later became knowledgeable) and literally, as a reference to those healed in the Bible. In the later years of his life, Newton himself would go blind.


title: Visual impairment

text: H. G. Wells' story "The Country of the Blind" explores what would happen if a sighted man found himself trapped in a country of blind people to emphasise society's attitude to blind people by turning the situation on its head.


title: Visual impairment

text: Bob Dylan's anti-war song "Blowin' in the Wind" twice alludes to metaphorical blindness: "How many times can a man turn his head // and pretend that he just doesn't see... How many times must a man look up // Before he can see the sky?"


title: Visual impairment

text: Contemporary fiction contains numerous well-known . Some of these characters can see by means of devices, such as the Marvel Comics superhero Daredevil, who can see via his super-human hearing acuity, or "Star Trek" Geordi La Forge, who can see with the aid of a VISOR, a fictional device that transmits optical signals to his brain.


title: Visual impairment

text: Blind and partially sighted people participate in sports, such as swimming, snow skiing and athletics. Some sports have been invented or adapted for the blind, such as goalball, association football, cricket, golf, tennis, bowling, and beep baseball. The worldwide authority on sports for the blind is the International Blind Sports Federation. People with vision impairments have participated in the Paralympic Games since the 1976 Toronto summer Paralympics.


title: Visual impairment

text: The word "blind" (adjective and verb) is often used to signify a lack of knowledge of something. For example, a blind date is a date in which the people involved have not previously met; a blind experiment is one in which information is kept from either the experimenter or the participant to mitigate the placebo effect or observer bias. The expression "blind leading the blind" refers to incapable people leading other incapable people. Being blind to something means not understanding or being aware of it. A "blind spot" is an area where someone cannot see: for example, where a car driver cannot see because parts of his car's bodywork are in the way; metaphorically, a topic on which an individual is unaware of their own biases, and therefore of the resulting distortions of their own judgements (see Bias blind spot).


title: Visual impairment

text: A 2008 study tested the effect of using gene therapy to help restore the sight of patients with a rare form of inherited blindness, known as Leber's congenital amaurosis or LCA. Leber's Congenital Amaurosis damages the light receptors in the retina and usually begins affecting sight in early childhood, with worsening vision until complete blindness around the age of 30. The study used a common cold virus to deliver a normal version of the gene called RPE65 directly into the eyes of affected patients. All three patients, aged 19, 22 and 25, responded well to the treatment and reported improved vision following the procedure.


title: Visual impairment

text: Two experimental treatments for retinal problems include a cybernetic replacement and transplant of fetal retinal cells.


title: Visual impairment

text: There is no high-quality evidence on the effect of assistive technologies on educational outcomes and quality of life in children with low vision , nor is there evidence on magnifying reading aids in children. Low-vision rehabilitation does not appear to have an important impact on health-related quality of life, though some low-vision rehabilitation interventions, particularly psychological therapies and methods of enhancing vision, may improve vision-related quality of life in people with sight loss.


title: Visual impairment

text: Statements that certain species of mammals are "born blind" refers to them being born with their eyes closed and their eyelids fused together; the eyes open later. One example is the rabbit. In humans, the eyelids are fused for a while before birth, but open again before the normal birth time; however, very premature babies are sometimes born with their eyes fused shut, and opening later. Other animals, such as the blind mole rat, are truly blind and rely on other senses.


title: Visual impairment

text: The theme of blind animals has been a powerful one in literature. Peter Shaffer's Tony Award-winning play, "Equus", tells the story of a boy who blinds six horses. Theodore Taylor's classic young adult novel, "The Trouble With Tuck", is about a teenage girl, Helen, who trains her blind dog to follow and trust a seeing-eye dog.


title: Castile and León

text: It was created in 1983, eight years after the end of the Francoist regime, by the merging of the provinces of the historic region of León: León, Zamora and Salamanca with those of Castilla La Vieja (Old Castile): Ávila, Burgos, Palencia, Segovia, Soria and Valladolid. The provinces of Santander and Logroño, which until then had formed part of Castile, opted out of this merger and formed the new Autonomous Communities of Cantabria and La Rioja respectively.


title: Castile and León

text: Castile and León is the largest autonomous community in Spain in terms of area, covering 94,222 km. It is however sparsely populated, with a population density below 30/km. While a capital has not been explicitly declared, the seats of the executive and legislative powers are set in Valladolid by law and for all purposes that city (also the most populated municipality) serves as "de facto" regional capital.


title: Castile and León

text: Castile and León is a landlocked region, bordered by Portugal as well as by the Spanish autonomous communities of Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, the Basque Country, La Rioja, Aragon, Castilla–La Mancha, the Community of Madrid and Extremadura. Chiefly comprising the northern half of the Inner Plateau, it is surrounded by mountain barriers (the Cantabrian Mountains to the North, the Sistema Central to the South and the Sistema Ibérico to the East) and it is drained by the Douro River, flowing west toward the Atlantic Ocean.


title: Castile and León

text: The region contains eleven World Heritage Sites, making it (along with Lombardia in Italy) the region with most UNESCO World Heritage Sites. UNESCO recognizes the Cortes of León of 1188 as the cradle of worldwide parliamentarism.


title: Castile and León

text: The Statute of Autonomy of Castile and León, reformed for the last time in 2007, establishes in the sixth article of its preliminary title the symbols of the community's exclusive identity. These are: the coat of arms, the flag, the banner and the anthem. Its legal protection is the same as that corresponding to the symbols of the State -whose outrages are classified as crime in article 543 of the Penal Code-.


title: Castile and León

text: Following the same wording, the banner is constituted by the shield quartered on a traditional crimson background. The Statute also expresses: "The anthem and the other symbols [...] will be regulated by specific law". After the promulgation of the fundamental norm, this law was not promulgated, so the anthem does not exist, but "de iure" is a symbol of autonomy.


title: Castile and León

text: Several archaeological findings show that in prehistoric times these lands were already inhabited. In the Atapuerca Mountains have been found many bones of the ancestors of "Homo sapiens", making these findings one of the most important to determine the history of human evolution. The most important discovery that catapulted the site to international fame was the remains of "Homo heidelbergensis".


title: Castile and León

text: Before the arrival of the Romans, it is known that the territories that make up Castile and León today were occupied by various Celtic peoples, such as Vaccaei, Autrigones, Turmodigi, the Vettones, Astures or Celtiberians. The Roman conquest resulted in warring with the local tribes. One particularly famous episode was the siege of Numantia, an old town located near the current city of Soria.


title: Castile and León

text: The romanization was unstoppable, and to this day great Roman works of art have remained, mainly the Aqueduct of Segovia as well as many archaeological remains such as those of the ancient Clunia, Salt mines of Poza de la Sal and the vía de la Plata pathway, which crosses the west of the community from Astorga ("Asturica Augusta") to the capital of modern Extremadura, Mérida ("Emerita Augusta").


title: Castile and León

text: With the fall of Rome, the lands were occupied militarily by the Visigoth peoples of Germanic origin. The subsequent arrival of the Arabs was followed by a process known as the Reconquista. In the mountainous area of Asturias, a small Christian kingdom was created which opposed the Islamic presence in the Peninsula. They proclaimed themselves heirs of the last Visigoth kings, who in turn had been deeply romanized. This resistance of Visigoth-Roman heritage and supported by Christianity, was becoming increasingly strong and expanding to the south, eventually setting its court in the city of León, becoming the Kingdom of León. To favor the repopulation of the new reconquered lands, a number of fueros or letters of repopulation were granted by the monarchs.


title: Castile and León

text: In the Middle Ages the pilgrimage by Christianity to Santiago de Compostela was popularized. The Camino de Santiago runs along the northern part of the region, and contributed to the spread of European cultural innovations throughout the peninsula. Today the Camino is still an important touristic and cultural attraction.


title: Castile and León

text: In 1188, the basilica of San Isidoro of León was the setting of the first parliamentary body in the history of Europe, with the participation of the Third Estate. The king who summoned it was Alfonso IX of León.


title: Castile and León

text: The legal basis for the kingdom was the Roman law, and because of this the kings increasingly wanted more power, like the Roman emperors. This is very clearly seen in the "Siete Partidas" of Alfonso X of Castile, which shows the imperial monism that the king sought. The King did not want to be a "primus inter pares", but the source of the law.


title: Castile and León

text: Simultaneously, a county of this Christian kingdom of León, began to acquire autonomy and to expand. This is the primitive County of Castile, which would grow into a powerful kingdom among the Christian kingdoms of the Peninsula. The first Castilian count was Fernán González.


title: Castile and León

text: León and Castile continued to expand to the South, even beyond the Douro river, seeking to conquest lands under Islamic rule. That was the time of the "Cantares de gesta", poems which recount the great deeds of the Christian nobles who fought against the Muslim enemy. Despite this, Christian and Muslim kings maintained diplomatic relations. One clear example is Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, "El Cid", paradigm of the medieval Christian knight, who fought both for Christian and Muslim kings.


title: Castile and León

text: The origin of the definitive dynastic unification of the kingdoms of Castile and León, which had been separated for just seven decades, was in 1194. Alfonso VIII of Castile and Alfonso IX of León signed in Tordehumos the treaty that pacified the area of Tierra de Campos and laid the foundation for a future reunification of the kingdoms, consolidated in 1230 with Ferdinand III "the Saint". This agreement is called the Treaty of Tordehumos.


title: Castile and León

text: During the Late Middle Ages there was an economic and political crisis produced by a series of bad harvests and by disputes between nobles and the Crown for power, as well as between different contenders for the throne. In the Cortes of Valladolid of 1295, Ferdinand IV is recognized as king. The painting María de Molina presents her son Fernando IV in the Cortes of Valladolid of 1295 presides today the Spanish Congress of Deputies along with a painting of the Cortes of Cádiz, emphasizing the parliamentarian importance that has all the development of Cortes in Castile and León, despite its subsequent decline. The Crown was becoming more authoritarian and the nobility more dependent on it.


title: Castile and León

text: The reconquista continued advancing in this thriving Crown of Castile, and culminated with the surrender of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, last Muslim stronghold in the Peninsula, in 1492.


title: Castile and León

text: In June 1978, Castile and León obtained the pre-autonomy, through the creation of General council of Castile and León by Royal Decree-Law 20/1978, of June 13.


title: Castile and León

text: In times of the First Spanish Republic (1873-1874), the federal republicans conceived the project to create an federated state of eleven provinces in the valley of the Spanish Douro, that would also have included the provinces of Santander and Logroño. Very few years before, in 1869, as part of a manifesto, federal republicans representatives of the 17 provinces of Albacete, Ávila, Burgos, Ciudad Real, Cuenca, Guadalajara, León, Logroño, Madrid, Palencia, Salamanca, Santander, Segovia, Soria, Toledo, Valladolid and Zamora proposed in the so-called Castilian Federal Pact the conformation of an entity formed by two different "states": the state of Old Castile -that is presently built for the current Castilian-Leonese provinces and the provinces of Logroño and Santander-, and the state of New Castile -which conforms to the current provinces of Castile-La Mancha plus the province of Madrid-. The end of the Republic, at the beginning of 1874, thwarted the initiative.


title: Castile and León

text: In 1921, on the occasion of the fourth centenary of the Battle of Villalar, the Santander City Council advocated the creation of a Castilian and Leonese Commonwealth of eleven provinces, idea that would be maintained in later years. At the end of 1931 and beginning of 1932, from León, Eugenio Merino elaborated a text in which the base of a Castilian-Leonese regionalism was put. The text was published in the Diario de León newspaper.


title: Castile and León

text: During the Second Spanish Republic, especially in 1936, there was a great regionalist activity favorable to a region of eleven provinces, and even bases for the Statute of Autonomy were elaborated. The "Diario de León" advocated for the formalization of this initiative and the constitution of an autonomous region with these words:


title: Castile and León

text: The end of the Spanish Civil War and the beginning of Franco regime ended the aspirations of the autonomy for the region. The philosopher José Ortega y Gasset collected this scheme in his publications.


title: Castile and León

text: After the death of Francisco Franco, regionalist, autonomist and nationalist organizations (Castilian-Leonese regionalism and Castilian nationalism) as Regional Alliance of Castile and León (1975), Regional Institute of Castile and León (1976) or the Autonomous Nationalist Party of Castile and León (1977). Later after the extinction of these formations arose in 1993 Regionalist Unity of Castile and León.


title: Castile and León

text: At the same time, others of Leonesist character arose, such as the Leonese Autonomous Group (1978) or Regionalist Party of the Leonese Country (1980), which advocated the creation of a Leonese autonomous community, composed of provinces of León, Salamanca and Zamora. The popular and political support that maintained the uniprovincial autonomy in León became very important in that city.


title: Castile and León

text: The autonomous community of Castile and León is the result of the union in 1983 of nine provinces: the three that, after the territorial division of 1833, by which the provinces were created, were ascribed to the Region of León, and six ascribed to Old Castile; however 2 provinces of Old Castile were not included: Santander (current community of Cantabria) and Logroño (current La Rioja).


title: Castile and León

text: In the case of Cantabria the creation of an autonomous community was advocated for historical, cultural and geographical reasons, while in La Rioja the process was more complex due to the existence of three alternatives, all based on historical and socio-economic reasons: union with Castile and León (advocated by the Union of the Democratic Centre political party), union to a Basque-Navarrese community (supported by the Socialist Party and Communist Party) or creation of an uniprovincial autonomy; the latter option was chosen because it had more support among the population.


title: Castile and León

text: After the creation of the Castilian-Leonese pre-autonomous body, which was supported by the Provincial Council of León in its agreement of April 16, 1980, this institution revoked its original agreement on January 13, 1983, just as the draft of the Organic Law entered the Spanish parliament. The Constitutional Court determined which of those contradictory agreements was valid in the "Sentence 89/1984 of September 28"; it declares that the subject of the process is no longer, as in its preliminary phase, the councils and municipalities, but the new body.


title: Castile and León

text: After the sentence, there were several demonstrations in León in favor of the "León alone" option (see Leonesism), one of them according to some sources brought together a number close to 90 000 people, This was the highest concentration held in the city in the Democratic period until the demonstrations rejecting the 2004 Madrid train bombings.


title: Castile and León

text: In an agreement adopted on July 31, 1981, the Provincial Council of Segovia decided to exercise the initiative so that Segovia could be constituted as a uniprovincial autonomous community, but in the municipalities of the province the situation was equal between the supporters of the uniprovincial autonomy and the supporters of the union.


title: Castile and León

text: The City Council of Cuéllar initially adhered to this autonomic initiative in agreement adopted by the corporation on October 5, 1981. However, another agreement adopted by the same corporation dated December 3 of the same year revoked the previous one and the process was paralyzed pending the processing of an appeal filed by the provincial council against this last agreement; this change of opinion of the city council of Cuéllar tipped the scales in the province towards the autonomy with the rest of Castile and León, but it was an agreement that arrived out of time. Finally the province of Segovia was incorporated into Castile and León along with the other eight provinces and legal coverage was given through the "Organic Law 5/1983" for "reasons of national interest", as provided for in article 144 c of the Spanish Constitution for those provinces that have not exercised their right on time.


title: Castile and León

text: Today, the "Villalar Foundation" is responsible for cultural activities on the art, culture or identity of Castile and León.


title: Castile and León

text: The community grants each year, on the Castile and León Day, the Castile and León Awards to the Castilian-Leonese persons outstanding in the following areas: arts, human values, scientific research, social sciences, restoration and conservation, environment and sports.


title: Castile and León

text: Castile and León is a landlocked autonomous community, located in the north-western quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula. Its territory borders on the north with the uniprovincial communities of Asturias and Cantabria, as well as with the Basque Country (Biscay and Álava); to the east with the uniprovincial community of La Rioja and with Aragon (province of Zaragoza), to the south with the Community of Madrid, Castile-La Mancha (provinces of Toledo and Guadalajara) and Extremadura (province of Cáceres) and to the west with Galicia (provinces of Lugo and Ourense) and Portugal (Bragança District and Guarda District).


title: Castile and León

text: The morphology of Castile and León consists, for the most part, of the northern half of the Meseta Central ("Meseta Norte") and a belt of mountainous reliefs. The Meseta Central is a high plateau with an average altitude close to above sea-level; it is covered by deposited clay materials that have given rise to a dry and arid landscape.


title: Castile and León

text: The Northern Plateau (Meseta Norte) is constituted by Paleozoic sockets. At the beginning of the Mesozoic Era, once the Hercynian folding that raised the current Central Europe and the Gallaeci zone of Spain, the deposited materials were dragged by the erosive action of the rivers.


title: Castile and León

text: During the alpine orogeny, the materials that formed the plateau broke through multiple points. From this fracture rose the mountains of León, with mountains of not much height and, constituting the spine of the Plateau (Meseta), the Cantabrian Mountains and the Sistema Central, formed by materials such as granite or metamorphic slates.


title: Castile and León

text: The karst complex of Ojo Guareña, consisting of 110 km of galleries and its caves formed in carbonatic materials of Coniacian which are situated on a level of impermeable marls, is the second largest of the peninsula.


title: Castile and León

text: This geological configuration has allowed upwellings of mineral-medicinal or thermal water, used now or in the past, in Almeida de Sayago, Boñar, Calabor, Caldas de Luna, Castromonte, Cucho, Gejuelo del Barro, Morales de Campos, Tresacasas, Valdelateja and Villarijo, among other places.


title: Castile and León

text: The main hydrographic network of Castile and León is constituted by the Douro river and its tributaries. From its source in the Picos de Urbión, in Soria, to its mouth in the Portuguese city of Porto, the Douro covers 897 km. From the north descend the Pisuerga, the Valderaduey and the Esla rivers, its tributaries more plentiful and by the east, with less water in its flows, highlight the Adaja and the Duratón. After passing the town of Zamora, the Douro is confined between the canyons of the Arribes del Duero Natural Park, bordering with Portugal. On the left bank are important tributaries such as Tormes, Huebra, Águeda, Côa and Paiva, all from Sistema Central. On the right they reach the Sabor, the Tua and the Tâmega, born in the Galician Massif. After the Arribes area, the Douro turns west into Portugal until it empties into the Atlantic Ocean.


title: Castile and León

text: Several rivers of the community pour their waters into the Ebro basin, in Palencia, Burgos and Soria (Jalón river), that of Miño-Sil in León and Zamora, that of the Tagus in Ávila and Salamanca (rivers Tiétar and Alberche and Alagón respectively) and Cantabrian basin in the provinces through which the Cantabrian Mountains extends.


title: Castile and León

text: In addition to the rivers, the Douro basin also hosts a large number of lakes and lagoons such as the Negra de Urbión Lake, in the Picos de Urbión, the Grande de Gredos Lake, in Gredos, the Sanabria Lake, in Zamora or the La Nava de Fuentes Lake in Palencia. Also emphasize a great amount of reservoirs, fed by the water coming from the rains and the thaw of the snowy summits. Thus, Castile and León, despite not having abundant rainfall, is one of the communities in Spain with the highest level of water dammed.


title: Castile and León

text: Many of these natural lakes are being used as an economic resource, boosting rural tourism and helping to conserve ecosystems. The Sanabria Lake was a pioneer in this.


title: Castile and León

text: Castile and León has a Continental Mediterranean Climate, with long, cold winters, with average temperatures between 3 and 6 °C in January and short, hot summers (average 19 to 22 °C), but with the three or four months of summer aridity characteristic of the Mediterranean climate. Rainfall, with an average of 450–500 mm per year, is scarce, accentuating in the lower lands.


title: Castile and León

text: In Castile and León the cold extends almost continuously for much of the year, being a very characteristic element of its climate. The coldest periods of winter are associated with invasions of a continental polar front and strata of marine arctic air, rare is that they do not reach temperatures of the order of -5 ° to -10  °C. Likewise, in situations of anticyclone, in the interior of the region they cause persistent fogs, creating prolonged cold situations due to radiation processes. The intense "cold waves" of the winter central months are typical, showing a particular tendency to occur from the second fortnight of December to the first of February. During its course the most extreme minimum temperatures occur, whose values vary between -10 ° and -13  °C of its westernmost sector and -15 ° and -20  °C of the central plains and high moorlands. The lowest recorded records reach -22  °C of Burgos, -21.9  °C in Coca (Segovia), -20.4  °C in Ávila, -20  °C in Salamanca and -19.2  °C in Soria. The high altitude of the Meseta and its mountains accentuates the contrast between winter and summer temperatures, as well as day and night temperatures.


title: Castile and León

text: Due to the mountainous barriers that surround Castile and León, the maritime winds are stopped, thus stopping the precipitations. Due to that, the rains fall in a very unequal way in the Castilian and Leonese territory. While in the middle of the Douro basin there is an annual average of 450  mm, in the western regions of the mountains of León, the Cantabrian Mountains and the southern area of the Provinces of Ávila and Salamanca, rainfall reaches 1500 mm per year, with a maximum of 3400 mm per year in the western part of the Sierra de Gredos, in the Candelario-Bejar Massif, which makes this area the rainiest not only from Spain, but from the Iberian Peninsula.


title: Castile and León

text: Although Castile and León is framed within the continental climate, in its lands different climate domains are distinguished:


title: Castile and León

text: Castile and León has many protected natural sites. Actively collaborates with the European Union program "Natura 2000". There are also some special protection area for birds or SPA.


title: Castile and León

text: The solitary evergreen oaks and junipers ("Juniperus sect. Sabina") that now draw the Castilian-Leonese plain are remnants of the forests that covered these same lands long ago. The agricultural holdings, due to the need of land for the cultivation of cereal and pastures for the immense herds of the Castilian Plateau, supposed the deforestation of these lands during the Middle Ages. The last Castilian and Leonese forests of junipers are found in the Provinces of León, Soria and Burgos. They are not very leafy forests that can form mixed communities with evergreen oaks, Portuguese oaks or pines.


title: Castile and León

text: The Castilian-Leonese slope of the Cantabrian Mountains and the northern foothills of the Sistema Ibérico have a rich vegetation. The most humid and fresh slopes are populated by large beeches, whose extension areas can reach 1,500 m altitude. In turn, the European beech forms mixed forests with the yew, the sorbus, the whitebeam, the European holly and the birch. On the sunny slopes the sessile oak, the European oak, the ash, the lime tree, the sweet chestnut, the birch and the scots pine (a typical species from the north of the Province of León).


title: Castile and León

text: Castile and León presents a great diversity of fauna. There are numerous species and some of them are of special interest because of their uniqueness, such as some endemic species, or because of their scarcity, such as the brown bear. There have been counted 418 species of vertebrates, which make up 63% of all vertebrates that live in Spain. Animals adapted to life in the high mountains, inhabitants of rocky places, inhabitants of fluvial courses, species of plains and forest residents form the mosaic of the Castilian-Leonese fauna.


title: Castile and León

text: The isolation to which the high summits are subject leads to the existence of abundant endemisms such as the Spanish ibex, which in Gredos constitutes a unique subspecies in the Peninsula. The European snow vole is a graceful small mammal of grayish brown color and long tail that lives in open spaces over the limit of the trees.


title: Castile and León

text: Small and large mammals such as squirrel, dormouse, talpids, European pine marten, Beech marten, fox, wildcat, wolf, quite abundant in some areas, boar, deer, roe deer and, only in the Cantabrian Mountains, some specimens of brown bear tend to frequent the deciduous forests, although some species also extend to coniferous forests and scrubland. The wildcat is slightly larger than a domestic cat, has a short and stout tail, with dark rings and striped fur. The Iberian lynx, however, lives almost exclusively in areas of Mediterranean scrubland.


title: Castile and León

text: Small reptiles such as the ladder snake, the coronella girondica and the aesculapian snake are also found in this environment. The smooth snake can be found from sea level to 1,800 m in height and in the community it tends to live on the heights. Further up, in the rocky areas of the subalpine floor at about 2,400 m altitude the Iberian rock lizard lives, one of the few reptiles adapted at this point.


title: Castile and León

text: In the mountain rivers live the otter and desman and in its waters the trout, anguillidae, the common minnows and some of the increasingly scarce autochthonous river crabs. The otter and the desman are two mammals with aquatic habits and very good swimmers. The otter feeds mainly on fish, while the desman seeks its food among the aquatic invertebrates that inhabit the riverbed. In lower sections of calmer waters swim barbel s and carps. Among the amphibians, the salamanders and as remarkable species: the Almanzor salamander ("Salamandra salamandra almanzoris") and the Gredos toad ("Bufo bufo gredosicola"), which are two endemic subspecies to the Sistema Central.


title: Castile and León

text: Where the rivers are encased forming sickles and canyons, rock-dwelling birds such as griffon vulture, cinereous vulture, Egyptian vulture, golden eagle or peregrine falcon. The Egyptian vulture, a small vulture, is black and white with a yellow head. Downstream and on its banks between the lush vegetation form their colonies the black-crowned night heron and the grey heron and the goldcrest, the eurasian penduline tit, the eurasian hoopoe and the common kingfisher.


title: Castile and León

text: Among the birds that populate the open Mediterranean forests live two endangered species: the black stork and the Spanish imperial eagle. The black stork, much rarer than its congener the white stork, is of solitary habits and lives far from man. The Spanish imperial eagle nests in the trees and feeds mainly on rabbits, but also birds, reptiles and carrion.


title: Castile and León

text: In the coniferous forests live among others the short-toed treecreeper, the coal tit and the eurasian nuthatch, a bird of gray back and flanks reddish-orange that it nests in holes to which it narrows the entrance with mud. The western capercaillie is a very dark and large rooster that lives in forest environments, so it is very difficult to observe. Among the forest raptors are the accipiter, the eurasian sparrowhawk or the tawny owl, which frequently attack other smaller birds such as eurasian jay, european green woodpecker, fringilla, great spotted woodpecker and typical warbler.


title: Castile and León

text: The bustard frequents the open plains with rain-fed crops; It is large and has a grayish head and neck and a brown back. In the Castilian-Leonese wetlands during the winter many specimens of greylag goose, which breeds in northern Europe and visits the area in winter, are concentrated.


title: Castile and León

text: The naturalist Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente (1928 - 1980), natural from Poza de la Sal, stands out in the scientific study and its dissemination. He had a great research and made the leap to fame with the television series "El hombre y la Tierra" (TVE).


title: Castile and León

text: In the Montaña Palentina, in the municipality of San Cebrián de Mudá, a program of reintroduction of the European bison, animal that had been a thousand years without presence in the Iberian Peninsula, in order to avoid the extinction of the species.


title: Castile and León

text: With 2 528 417  inhabitants (January 1, 2007), 1 251 082 men and 1 277 335 women, the population of Castile and León represents 5.69% of the population of Spain, although its vast territory covers almost a fifth of the total area of the country. In January 2005, the population of Castile and León was divided, by province, as follows: Province of Ávila, 168 638  inhabitants; Province of Burgos, 365 972; Province of León, 497 387; Province of Palencia, 173 281; Province of Salamanca, 351 326; Province of Segovia, 159 322; Province of Soria, 93 593; Province of Valladolid, 521 661; and Province of Zamora, 197 237.


title: Castile and León

text: The autonomous community has a very low population density, around 26.57  inhabitants/km, a record that is more than three times lower than the national average, which indicates that it is a sparsely populated and demographically decline, especially in rural areas and even in small traditional cities. The demographic characteristics of the territory show an aging population, with a low birth rate and mortality that approaches the state average.


title: Castile and León

text: In the year 2000, the population of Castile and León totaled 2 479 118 people, that is, 6.12% of the Spanish total. Its natural growth was one of the lowest in Spain: -7223 (-2.92 gross rate), as a result of the difference between the 25 080 deaths (10.12 of the gross rate) and the 17 857 births ( 7.20 gross rate). The number of inhabitants in 1999 was slightly higher (2 488 062), so that, despite the negative growth, the relative numerical stability is partly due to the increase in immigration: of 22 910 immigrants in 1999 it went to 24 340 in 2000. In that year, 59 children under the age of one year died.


title: Castile and León

text: The life expectancy is higher than the Spanish average: 83.24 for women and 78.30 for men, a superiority that in 1999 was repeated in the register, since women added 1 260 906 and the males 1 227 156. A study by the University of Porto (Portugal) cites Castile and León as one of the European regions where old people could expect to live longer.


title: Castile and León

text: In 1999, the age distribution gave the following results: 317 783 people from 0 to 14 years old; 913 618 between 15 and 39 years old; 576 183 from 40 to 59 years and 677 020 over 60 years.


title: Castile and León

text: The active population in 2001 was 1 005  200 and occupied 884 200 people, with which the unemployment was 12.1% of the active population. For sectors of the employed population, 10.9% worked in agriculture, 20.6% in the industry, 12.7% in construction, and 63,1 % in the services sector.


title: Castile and León

text: Many of the people of the territory, who devoted themselves mostly to agriculture and livestock, gradually abandoned the area, heading towards urban areas, much more prosperous. This situation was further aggravated at the end of the Spanish Civil War, with a progressive rural emigration. During the 1960s and 1980s, large urban centers and provincial capitals suffered a slight demographic increase due to a thorough urbanization process, although, despite this, the Castilian-Leonese area continues to suffer serious depopulation. Only the Provinces of Burgos, Valladolid and Segovia are gaining population in recent years.


title: Castile and León

text: There is also an increase in the population of metropolitan areas around cities such as Valladolid, Burgos or León. Due to this phenomenon, cities such as Laguna de Duero or San Andrés del Rabanedo have seen their population increase rapidly in a few years. The metropolitan area of the city of Valladolid is, by far, the largest in the autonomous community, with more than 430 000  inhabitants.


title: Castile and León

text: However, in absolute terms the autonomous community is losing population and aging. In 2011, it was one of only four autonomous communities that lost population along with Asturias, Galicia and Aragon.


title: Castile and León

text: In 1960 the urban population meant 20.6% of the total population of Castile and León; in 1991 this percentage had risen to 42.3% and in 1998 it was approaching 43%, which indicates the progressive state of rural depopulation.


title: Castile and León

text: The phenomenon is also reflected in the number of municipalities with less than 100 inhabitants, which was multiplied by seven between 1960 and 1986. Outside the provincial capitals, cities such as Miranda de Ebro and Aranda de Duero in Province of Burgos, Ponferrada and San Andrés del Rabanedo in Province of León, Béjar in Province of Salamanca and Medina del Campo and Laguna de Duero in Province of Valladolid.


title: Castile and León

text: Of the 2248 municipalities of this community, the 2014 registry registered 1986 with less than 1000 inhabitants; 204 from 1001 to 5000; 35 from 5001 to 10 000; 8 of 10 001 to 20 000; 6 of 20 001 to 50 000; 5 of 50 001 to 100 000 and 4 municipalities with more than 100 000 inhabitants. The latter are: Valladolid (306 830  hab.), Burgos (177 776  hab.), Salamanca (148 042  hab.) And León (129 551  hab.) Among the least populated are, between others: Jaramillo Quemado (Burgos), with 4  inhabitants, Estepa de San Juan (Soria), with 7, Quiñonería (Soria), with 8 and Villanueva de Gormaz (Soria), with 9.


title: Castile and León

text: Below is a table showing the 20 municipalities with the largest population according to the municipal census of the INE of 2015:


title: Castile and León

text: Catholicism is the predominant religion in the community. According to the barometer of the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS) conducted in October 2019, 76.8% of Castilian-Leonese are considered Catholics (43.2 Non-Practising and 33.6% Practising), non-believers 20.3%


title: Castile and León

text: Actual attendance at a church is on average less than these figures show. According to the same study, only half of self identifying Catholics go to mass regularly with those considered “practicing” Catholics attending more regularly than those considered “non practicing”.


title: Castile and León

text: As of 2018, the region had a foreign population of 123,575. The largest groups of foreigners were those of Romanian, Bulgarian, Moroccan and Portuguese citizenship.


title: Castile and León

text: Spanish is the only official and preponderant language throughout the territory. A large part of the "Route of the Castilian language" passes through the autonomous community, which indicates the importance traditionally attributed to this land in the origin and subsequent development of that language. In the province of Burgos begins its journey, due both to being the birthplace of the language according to Ramón Menéndez Pidal, and the famous "Cantar de Mio Cid". Valladolid stands out for having been the residence of the author of "Don Quixote", Miguel de Cervantes, as well as authors such as José Zorrilla or Miguel Delibes and the thrust of its University.


title: Castile and León

text: Regarding the first testimonies of the Castilian language, in the Abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos a very old beatus, the "Silos Beatus" is preserved. The "Glosas Silenses" come from that Monastery. Also in Castilian lands is the Monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, place where the "Cardeña Beatus" was written. In addition, the Statute of Autonomy of the community itself mentions the "Cartularies of Valpuesta" and the "Nodicia de kesos" as the most primitive traces of Castilian (Spanish) language. The Instituto Castellano y Leonés de la Lengua is responsible for carrying out various scientific works in this regard.


title: Castile and León

text: In addition to the Castilian language, in Castile and León two other languages or linguistic varieties are spoken in small areas of the community: the Leonese language, that "will be subject to specific protection [...] because of its particular value within the Community's linguistic heritage" and Galician language, which, according to the Statute of Autonomy, "will enjoy respect and protection in the places where it is usually used" (fundamentally, in the border areas with Galicia of the comarcas of El Bierzo and Sanabria). In the Salamancan comarca of El Rebollar, a modality of Extremaduran language is spoken (of the Asturian-Leonese branch) known as Palra d'El Rebollal. In Merindad de Sotoscueva (province of Burgos) a Castilian is spoken with some dialectal features of the Asturian-Leonese.


title: Castile and León

text: The community is formed from nine provinces: Province of Ávila, Province of Burgos, Province of León, Province of Palencia, Province of Salamanca, Province of Segovia, Province of Soria, Province of Valladolid and Province of Zamora. The provincial capitals fall in the homonymous cities to their corresponding provinces.


title: Castile and León

text: The concurrence of some peculiar geographic, social, historical and economic characteristics in the Leonese region of the El Bierzo is recognized, being created in 1991 the homonymous region, the only Castilian-Leonese recognized by law, administered by a Comarcal Council.


title: Castile and León

text: The new territorial arrangement approved by Law 7/2013, on Planning, Services and Government of the Territory of the Community of Castile and León, establishes that the geographical spaces delimited for the provision of services are the basic unit of territorial planning and services (UBOST) -urban or rural- and functional areas -stable or strategic-. Also, the new ordination determines that the mancommunities of common interest are entities for the fulfillment of their specific purposes, which may be declared when their territorial scope substantially agrees with an UBOST or several contiguous ones.


title: Castile and León

text: This ordination is still in the implementation phase, and in September 2015 the draft map dividing the autonomous community was presented in 147 rural UBOST and 15 urban UBOST.


title: Castile and León

text: The Statute of Autonomy does not explicitly establish one capital. Initially the Cortes were installed provisionally in Burgos; the possibility of fixing a capital in Tordesillas was also discussed, although the final decision was to install the Cortes provisionally in the castle of Fuensaldaña.


title: Castile and León

text: Finally, through the autonomous laws 13/1987 and 14/1987, approved simultaneously, it was decided respectively to establish that the Junta de Castilla y León -the government of the Community-, its president, and the Cortes -the legislative body- had its headquarters in the city of Valladolid; and that the Upper Court of Justice of Castile and León had its headquarters in Burgos. The main autonomous institutions are the following:


title: Castile and León

text: During the first legislature, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party was the party with the most representation in Cortes, being the first president of the community the Socialist Demetrio Madrid. Since the 1990s, regional policy has been framed by a series of absolute majorities of the People's Party, which continues to comfortably govern at present. Other national parties with presence in the community, either locally or regionally, are United Left (previously as Communist Party of Spain) and Union, Progress and Democracy, with a significant presence in the provinces of Ávila and Burgos. Previously Democratic and Social Centre of Adolfo Suárez also managed to be in the regional political life occupying the reformist center of the political spectrum.


title: Castile and León

text: The Leonesism through the Leonese People's Union, the Castilianism through Party of Castile and León, previously Commoners' Land or localistas parties like Independent Solution, Group of Zamoran Independent Electoral Members or Initiative for the Development of Soria have also had their presence, although at a lower level.


title: Castile and León

text: The community is governed by Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, of the People's Party. This party obtained 29 procurators in the 2019 Castilian-Leonese regional election. Mañueco's investiture was supported by the party Citizens, with 12 representatives. The party that obtained the most seats at the election, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party is in opposition, with 35 representatives. The leader of the opposition is Luis Tudanca. In addition, four more formations obtained parliamentary representation in the region: Podemos (2 seats), Vox (1), XÁvila (1) and Leonese People's Union (1).


title: Castile and León

text: The Gross domestic product (GDP) of the autonomous community was 57.9 billion euros in 2018, accounting for 4.8% of Spanish economic output. GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was 25,800 euros or 85% of the EU27 average in the same year. The GDP per employee was 97% of the EU average.


title: Castile and León

text: In July 2009, in full Great Recession, unemployment reached 14.14% of the population, when in 2007 it was half, 6,99 %. According to the survey of the employment of the fourth quarter of 2014, the employment rate is 54.91% and the unemployment rate is 20.28%, while the national figure is 59,77 % of employment and 23.70% of unemployed. Below the regional average of unemployment are Segovia (14.33%), Valladolid (16.65%), Soria (16.96%) and Burgos (18.76%), while above Salamanca (21,25%), León (22.65%), Palencia (23.22%), Ávila (25.33%) and Zamora (26.62%).


title: Castile and León

text: The fields of Castile and Leon are arid and dry although very fertile, predominating in them the dryland farming. Despite this, irrigation has been gaining importance in the areas of the valleys of Douro, Esla, Órbigo, Pisuerga and Tormes. The scarce orography and the improvement of communications has favored the entry of technical innovations throughout the process of agricultural production, especially in areas such as the province of Valladolid or the province of Burgos where the production per hectare is one of the highest in Spain. The most fertile Castilian-Leonese area coincides with the Esla valley, in León, in the fields of Valladolid and Tierra de Campos, a district that extends between province of Zamora, province of Valladolid, province of Palencia and province of León.


title: Castile and León

text: Castile and León has an agricultural area close to 5,783,831 hectares, which is more than half of the total area of its total territory. Most of the farmland is dryland, due to the climate and the low rainfall. Only 10% of the area is irrigated, with plots of intensive production, much more profitable than dryland crops.


title: Castile and León

text: Despite the decline of the population in rural areas, the Castilian-Leonese agricultural production still represents 15% of the Spanish primary sector and its average occupation is lower than that of other autonomous communities.


title: Castile and León

text: Castile and León constitutes one of the main Spanish cereal areas. As the popular saying says: ""Castile, granary of Spain"". Although the most traditional crop was wheat, the production of barley has gained ground since the 1960s. These two cereals are followed, in number of hectares cultivated and volume of production, rye and oats. In addition to legumes, such as carob and chickpeas, sunflower cultivation has spread in the southern countryside.


title: Castile and León

text: The vineyard (56,337 ha) saw the number of hectares cultivated during the last three decades of the 20th century decrease considerably; However, the application of the most modern aging techniques has notably improved the Castilian-Leonese wines, which compete in quality with those of La Rioja and begin to be known outside the Spanish borders. The main viticultural areas of the region are Ribera del Duero (DO), Rueda (DO), Toro (DO), Bierzo (DO), Arribes (DO) and Tierra de León (DO). Irrigated land is planted with sugar beet, a product that has been subsidized by the regional authorities, potatoes, alfalfa and vegetables. In the province of León, corn, hops and legumes are also sown.


title: Castile and León

text: Livestock represents an important part of the final agricultural production. Next to the small livestock units, which proliferate in the regions of pre-eminent agricultural dedication or in the mountain areas, now appears a modern livestock activity, with cattle, pig and sheep farms, of development. These farms are oriented both to the production of meat and to the supply of milk to the cooperatives that channel their subsequent commercialization, since the dairy production of Castile and León -more than one and a half million liters per year- is the second largest in Spain, only surpassed by Galicia.


title: Castile and León

text: Thus, small livestock farms tend to disappear, largely due to the effect of rural depopulation and the consequent loss of labor. Transhumant grazing is conserved in some areas; large herds, mainly sheep, travel every year hundreds of kilometers from the flat lands to the land with mountain pastures as in the El Bierzo, the Cantabrian valleys of province of León, the sierra de Gredos or Picos de Urbión. It is hard work that every time has less labor, having previously constituted a testimony of first importance on the history and cultural roots of the Castilian and Leonese people.


title: Castile and León

text: The sheep herd is the most numerous, with 5,425,000 heads, followed by domestic pig (2,800,000) and cattle (1,200,000). A long way away is the goats (166,200 heads) and horses (71,700 horses, mules and donkeys). The highest production of meat corresponds to that of pigs (241,700 t), followed by bovine (89,400 t) and poultry (66,000 t); in wool production Castile and León leads the national balance with 7,500 t. Within the section of Protected Geographical indication (I.G.P), highlights Lechazo de Castilla y León, based in Aranda de Duero.


title: Castile and León

text: In Castile and León there are about 1,900,000 hectares of non-arboreal, representing 40% of the total forest area. This deforestation is mainly due to the hand of the man who, over the centuries, has made forests disappear, giving way to areas of non-arboreal vegetation. Little by little, with the abandonment of rural areas and the reforestation policy of the Castilian and Leonese governments, this situation has been reversed.


title: Castile and León

text: During 2000, the Castile and León industry occupied 18% of the active population and contributed 25% of GDP. The most developed industrial axis is that of Valladolid-Palencia-Burgos-Miranda de Ebro-Aranda de Duero, where there is an important car industry, paper industry, aeronautics and chemistry, and is where most of the industrial activity of the Castilian-Leonese territory is concentrated. The food industry derived from the farm and livestock, with flour, sunflower oil and wines, among others is also important, especially in the Ribera del Duero comarca, especially in Aranda de Duero.


title: Castile and León

text: The 16,34 % of the companies in Castile and León belong to the auxiliary sector of construction. Among the largest companies in the sector, the following stand out: Grupo Pantersa, Begar, Grupo MRS, Isolux Corsán, Llorente Corporation, Volconsa and of auxiliary construction sector, Artepref of Gerardo de la Calle Group.


title: Castile and León

text: In Castile and León, the mining activity acquired great importance in the Roman times, when a road was drawn, the Vía de la Plata, to transfer the gold extracted in the deposits of Las Médulas, in the Leonese comarca of El Bierzo, the route started from Asturica Augusta (Astorga) to Emerita Augusta (Mérida) and Hispalis (Seville).


title: Castile and León

text: Centuries later, after the Spanish Civil War, mining was one of the factors that contributed to the economic development of the region. However, the production of iron, tin and tungsten decreased notably from the 1970s, while bituminous coal and anthracite mines were maintained thanks to the domestic demand for coal for thermal power plants. The economic reconversion that affected the Leonese mining basin and Palencian mining basin during the 1980s and 1990s resulted in the closure of numerous mines, social impoverishment, with a sharp increase of unemployment and the beginning of a new migratory movement towards other Spanish regions. Despite the investments of the Mining Action Plan of the Junta de Castilla y León, traditional coal mining operations have entered into a severe crisis.


title: Castile and León

text: In addition to the northern basin, in those of the Douro and Ebro rivers there are numerous hydroelectric plants that allow Castile and León to be one of the first autonomous communities producing electricity. Among others are those of Burguillo, Rioscuro, Las Ondinas, Cornatel, Bárcena, Aldeadávila I and II, Saucelle I and II, Castro I and II, Villalcampo I and II, Valparaíso and Ricobayo I and II.


title: Castile and León

text: The total installed hydraulic power amounts to 3,979 MW and annual production in 2010 was 5,739 GWH. Only in the system Saltos del Duero there are more than 3000 MW installed. In this way, Castile and León is the first Spanish autonomous community in installed capacity and the second in production.


title: Castile and León

text: The nuclear power is 466 MW, having produced 3,579.85 GWh in 2009. The only nuclear plant in Castile and León on August 1, 2017 was definitively and irrevocably closed.


title: Castile and León

text: This community stands out for the importance of the production of renewable energy. Castile and León is the community that covers the largest proportion of its electricity demand through renewable energies: 82,9 % in 2009. Traditional hydroelectric power It has been added with force since the late 1990s and 2000 wind power, with more than 100 parks in operation and a production of 5,449 GWh in that same year. By provinces, it is at the top Burgos with 46, and a total of 3,128 MW of installed power.


title: Castile and León

text: Among the non-renewable energies is also the natural gas (194 MW of installed power) and fuel-diesel fuel (69 MW).


title: Castile and León

text: The provinces of Valladolid and Burgos are the most economically advanced regions, with a GDP per capita higher than the national average. Even so, the average GDP per capita of the community of Castile and León is slightly below than average, at 21,244 euros per inhabitant.


title: Castile and León

text: Castile and León has several cities whose Holy Week is considered to be of International Tourist Interest. Examples are Holy Week in León, Holy Week in Salamanca, Holy Week in Valladolid or Holy Week in Zamora.


title: Castile and León

text: The region also has a wide network of Paradores, hotels of great quality that usually accommodate buildings of great historical value in privileged places to stimulate tourism in the area.


title: Castile and León

text: Since 1988, the foundation "Las Edades del Hombre" has been organizing various exhibitions of religious art in various parts of the national and international geography, highlighting for its interest the exhibitions held in Castile and León. The idea of carrying out these exhibitions was conceived in a chimney of Alcazarén with the writer José Jiménez Lozano and the priest of Valladolid José Velicia. The first "Las Edades del Hombre" were held in the Church of Santiago Apóstol of Alcazarén, with a small exhibition of sacred paintings. Later, and with the support of important personalities, the first known exhibition was held among the public, which was that of Valladolid. In 2012 the initiative was developed under the name of "Monacatus" in the town of Oña, being one of the most multitudinous editions with about 200 000 visitors. The last sample so far has taken place in the municipality of Arévalo, in 2013. With the title of "Credo", the exhibition has revolved around the faith and has received more than 226 000 visitors.