Administrative Units of Spain

Municipal, provincial and autonomous areas and municipal, provincial and Autonomous Community boundaries registered in the Central Register of Cartography (https://www.ign.es/web/en/ign/portal/rcc-area-rcc). The geometry reflects the interpretation of the legal titles included in the Central Register of Cartography: limit line minutes, administrative rulings, court rulings etc. may be ‘provisional’, i.e. they do not have a legal title to support their geometry and therefore their representation in the cartography is only due to the topological necessity of the closure of municipal polygons. Royal Decree 1545/2007, of 23 November, governing the National Mapping System, establishes the functions of Central Register of Cartography to record the official cartography, the territorial delineations and their variations, and to collect, standardise and disseminate the official mapping. Article 20 of this Royal Decree states that the municipal boundaries, the boundaries of the provinces and the boundaries of the territories of the Autonomous Communities are part of the territorial restrictions and must therefore be entered in the Central Mapping Register. In addition, Article 4 (1) of the aforementioned Royal Decree provides that ‘all production of official geographical information and mapping shall be carried out using the National Geographic Reference Chart, which shall be composed of (...); by the territorial limitations registered in the Central Mapping Register (...)’, that is to say, the territorial delineations used in the official cartography must be those listed in the Central Register of Cartography. It should be noted that, as a general rule, the geometry with which each line is listed in the Central Register of Cartography has a geometrical uncertainty of around 40 metres, based on the experience and contrast with specific one-off work carried out by the Geographic Institute on a large number of borderline lines. This is the result of inaccuracies in the topographical methods and instruments used at the time by the Geographic Institute for lifting and subsequent mapping on the national topographic map, which should be added to the processes of digitisation of those lines on printed cartography, carried out after years to obtain their digital version. The exception to this is those where a series of technical and administrative work has been carried out as required by the national or Autonomous Community legislation in force for the demarcation of municipal terms in force, allowing for the registration of a more precise geometry.