The Spanish Constitution of 1978 recognizes historic entities and regions, inside the unity of the Spanish nation. However, Spain's identity is for some people more an overlap of different regional identities than a sole Spanish identity. Indeed, some of the regional identities may be even in conflict with the Spanish one.

In particular, a large proportion of Catalans , Basques and Galicians , quite frequently identify, respectively, primarily with Catalonia , the Basque Country , and Galicia , with Spain only second or not at all.The majority of these groups though, identify both as Basques, Catalans or Galicians and Spaniards at the same time.

Almost all communities have a majority of people identifying as much with Spain as with the Autonomous Community. It is this last feature of "shared identity" between the more local level or Autonomous Community and the Spanish level which makes the identity question in Spain complex and far from univocal.

LANGUAGES

Castilian is an official language throughout Spain, but other regional languages are also spoken, and are the primary languages in some of their respective geographies. Without mentioning them by name, the Spanish Constitution recognizes the possibility of regional languages being co-official in their respective autonomous communities. The following languages are co-official with Spanish according to the appropriate Autonomy Statutes .

Catalan, Galician, Aranese (Occitan) and Castilian are all descended from Latin and some of them have their own dialects, some championed as separate languages by their speakers. A particular case is Valencian , the name given to a variety of Catalan, that also has the co-official language status recognized in Autonomous Community of Valencia .

There are also some other surviving Romance minority languages : Asturian / Leonese , in Asturias and parts of Leon , Zamora and Salamanca , and the Extremaduran in Caceres and Salamanca , both descendants of the historical Astur-Leonese; the Aragonese or fabla in part of Aragon ; the fala , spoken in three villages of Extremadura; and some Portuguese dialectal towns in Extremadura and Castile-Leon. However, unlike Catalan, Galician, and Basque, these do not have any official status.

MINORITY GROUPS

Spain harbours a number of black African -blooded people — who are descendants of populations from former colonies but, much more important than those in numbers, immigrants from several Sub-Saharan and Caribbean countries who have been recently settling in Spain. There are also sizeable numbers of Asian -Spaniards, most of whom are Chinese , Filipino , Middle Eastern , Pakistani and Indian origins; Spaniards of Latin American descent are sizeable as well and a fast growing segment.

The important Jewish population of Spain was either expelled or forced to convert in 1492, with the dawn of the Spanish Inquisition . After the 19th century, some Jews have established themselves in Spain as a result of migration from former Spanish Morocco , escape from Nazi repression and immigration from Argentina. Currently, Melilla shows the highest ratio of Jews (and Muslims) in Spain. The Spanish law allows Sephardi Jews to claim Spanish citizenship .

A sizeable and increasing number of Spanish citizens also descend from these communities and provides special measures for immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries to obtain Spanish citizenship.