SPAIN - Reino de España

Spain (Spanish: España), officially the Kingdom of Spain (Spanish: Reino de España), is a country in Southwestern Europe with some pockets of territory across the Strait of Gibraltar and the Atlantic Ocean. Its continental European territory is situated on the Iberian Peninsula. Its territory also includes two archipelagoes: the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa, and the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. The African enclaves of Ceuta, Melilla, and Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera, make Spain the only European country to have a physical border with an African country (Morocco). Several small islands in the Alboran Sea are also part of Spanish territory. The country's mainland is bordered to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea except for a small land boundary with Gibraltar; to the north and northeast by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; and to the west and northwest by Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean.

The fauna presents a wide diversity that is due in large part to the geographical position of the Iberian peninsula between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and between Africa and Eurasia, and the great diversity of habitats and biotopes, the result of a considerable variety of climates and well differentiated regions.  The vegetation of Spain is varied due to several factors including the diversity of the relief, the climate and latitude. Spain includes different phytogeographic regions, each with its own floristic characteristics resulting largely from the interaction of climate, topography, soil type and fire, biotic factors.

A royal decree of September 12, 1861 established the Fábrica del Sello as the exclusive printer of Spanish stamps. In 1893 the Fábrica del Sello merged with the Casa de la Moneda to form the La Fábrica Nacional de Moneda y Timbre (FNMT) which has printed the stamps of Spain and her dependencies ever since, except during the Third Carlist War and the Spanish Civil War when concurrent issues were authorized by competing sides. Beginning in the 1950s the printer's initials, "F.N.M.T.", began to appear at the bottom of some stamps. Since 1977, the year of issue has appeared on Spanish stamps. Stamps in Spain are distributed and sold by the Spanish postal service known as the Correos y Telégrafos, and beginning in 2001 officially a governmental corporation, the Sociedad Estatal de Correos y Telégrafos, S.A. Since 2011 the corporation and its subsidiaries are known as the "Grupo Correos".

In 1843, the Spanish provisional government under General Narváez began to study the British experiment of prepaid postage labels. Finding the British printers Perkins, Bacon and Petch too pricey, they decided to establish their own printer, and on 24 October 1849 Queen Isabella II decreed that Spain would use postage stamps effective 1 January 1850. In December postage rates  and regulations were promulgated and the first stamps of Spain were issued on 1 January 1850. There were five stamps in the set with denominations from six cuartos to ten reales in different colors with all of them depicting Queen Isabella II.  They were printed lithographically and issued imperforate. Both thin and thick papers were used, but neither had any watermark.

The 1850 stamps were replaced on 1 January 1851 with a new set of six stamps which added the two reales denomination in red, and changed the five reales from red to rose in color. These 1851 stamps had a new portrait of Queen Isabella II, were typographed on thin paper, again without watermark, and issued imperforate. From 1967 through 1971, Spain issued a series of stamps that portrayed regional costumes from throughout Spain. Altogether, fifty-three such stamps were issued, at the rate of twelve per year, until the last year, when in 1971 only five such stamps were issued. The first stamp in the seriesshowed a traditional woman's costume of the Basque province of Álava.

The covers posted on November 19,2015 and I received on Novemeber 30, 2015.