Guardamar del Segura ( Valencian: [ˌɡwaɾðaˈmaɾ ðel seˈɣuɾa] ), or briefly Guardamar , is a municipality of the province of Alicante located at the mouth of the river Segura in southern Valencia (autonomous community) , Spain . It is a Mediterranean resort, with a large pine forest abutting an 11-km-long white sand beach .
7-409: Historically, it was an area of fishermen and farmers. A Phoenician colony, called Herna by Roman geographer Avienius in his book Ora Maritima was the first settlement near the mouth of Segura river, In Valencian, guardar means safekeeping and mar means sea, and this is another possible basis for its current name. Guardamar is the southernmost Valencian -speaking town and in 1991 41.8% of
14-448: The Greek suffix, "graphy", meaning "description", so a geographer is someone who studies the earth. The word "geography" is a Middle French word that is believed to have been first used in 1540. Although geographers are historically known as people who make maps , map making is actually the field of study of cartography , a subset of geography. Geographers do not study only the details of
21-453: The city had 14,261 residents. By January 2011 this figure had reached 16,863 of which 10,051 were Spanish. The total dropped by 2015 to 15,589. The most prominent nationalities in 2015 were: Carmen Verdú is the mayor of the city. In the latest municipal elections of May 2011, Carmen Verdú of the People's Party ( Partido Popular ) won the elections with an absolute majority , larger than the one
28-537: The former mayor (María Elena Albentosa) had, while the opposition (Socialist Party) lost some of their popular support. She is the second woman ever to occupy this position. At the 2015 local elections , the political composition on the local council was: Geographer A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography , the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" and
35-532: The natural environment or human society, but they also study the reciprocal relationship between these two. For example, they study how the natural environment contributes to human society and how human society affects the natural environment. In particular, physical geographers study the natural environment while human geographers study human society and culture. Some geographers are practitioners of GIS ( geographic information system ) and are often employed by local, state, and federal government agencies as well as in
42-546: The private sector by environmental and engineering firms. The paintings by Johannes Vermeer titled The Geographer and The Astronomer are both thought to represent the growing influence and rise in prominence of scientific enquiry in Europe at the time of their painting in 1668–69. Subdividing geography is challenging, as the discipline is broad, interdisciplinary, ancient, and has been approached differently by different cultures. Attempts have gone back centuries, and include
49-480: The town's residents could speak it. Guardamar is also the only municipality of the Vega Baja del Segura comarca (known locally as Baix Segura) where Valencian is traditionally and widely spoken. Guardamar hosts local festivals like Moros i Cristians (Moros y Cristianos), L'Encantà , and Fogueres de Sant Joan (Hogueras de San Juan), which commemorate its history. The INE (Spanish Census) of 2006 showed that
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