You could say that the word country , which comes directly from French country, does not have its own or exclusive definition. The term is used as the most common synonym for Nation state . Even the Royal Spanish Academy appeals to other concepts to define it, by saying that a country is a nation , a region or a territory .
A country is, therefore, a certain geographic area and one politically independent entity , which has your own government , administration , laws , security forces and of course, population . Anyway, a State It can be made up of different countries or nations, such as Spain (with the Basque Country and Catalonia , for example).
Therefore, the word country shares meaning with nation (from Latin nātio), especially with your acceptance as political nation . That is, it is about the legal-political sphere and the constituent sovereignty of a State.
Countries are divided by imaginary lines that determine their territory. These lines are known as borders and they are responsible for delimiting the space in which each State has its jurisdiction.
Borders that in many cases and throughout history have brought with them the confrontation of many countries willing to expand their aforementioned borders by appropriating territories of the annexed nations.
When a country is under the domain of a remote country (that is, it cannot decide its own government and administration), it becomes a colony .
Throughout history, important European powers such as Britain, France or Germany have exercised as powers of Imperialism getting colonies in various parts of the world such as, for example, Africa. Thus, the Germanic country had as colonies Cameroon or Ghana while France did the same with Algeria, Morocco, Madagascar or Tunisia.
Spain has been another of the great colonizing powers over time. In this way, he not only had colonies in Africa, such as Tetuan or what is now Western Sahara, but also in other corners of the world geography as would be the case in America, after the discovery of it by Christopher Columbus.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that countries are represented by their governments in various international organizations , which can be scientific (as the European Space Agency , for example), economic (he Mercosur ), police (the Interpol ) or political-economic (the Un , the European Union, etc.).
In addition to all of the above we can not overlook that one of the most important daily publications that Spain has is called precisely "El País". The PRISA Group belongs to this Berlin-format newspaper that is characterized by being framed, ideologically speaking, in the center-left. Hence, he is in favor of progressivism and social democracy.
Great figures of the communication such as Miguel Ángel Aguilar, Javier Cercas, Jorge Edwards, Juan Goytisolo, Almudena Grandes, Felipe González, Elvira Lindo, Santos Juliá, Rosa Montero, Christine Ockrent and Javier Pérez-Royo have collaborated in this Spanish newspaper throughout of his extensive career, since 1976.
