Madrid, 27 May (EFE). The Urgent Spanish Foundation (FundéuRAE), promoted by the EFE Agency and RAE, explains that with place names beginning with a word indicating the type of political division (“country”, “state”, etc.) or its form of political organization (“kingdom” , “republic”…) it is recommended to use the article: “England”, not “England”.

Even so, phrases appear in the media that do not include a determining factor: “The UK will hold elections on July 4”, “The economic activity of the Dominican Republic grew during April” or “Microsoft closed a technology agreement with the United Arab Emirates”.

It is recommended to use definite determiners appropriate to toponyms that include terms referring to the form of division or political organization. The case of “United States” is an exception, since it is equally appropriate to omit the articles: “United States present”, “United States present”.

Likewise, as shown in “Spanish orthography”, the use of articles is optional with other toponyms, such as “(the) Argentina”, “(the) Peru”, “(the) Canada”, “(the) China”, “(the) Senegal”, “(the) Africa”…

The article is not part of a proper noun in the previous examples, so it is best written in lower case. Instead, it is capitalized in “Cairo”, “Mecca”, “La Paz”, “Valletta”, “El Salvador”, etc., because that is part of the name.

Therefore, in the example at the beginning, the most appropriate thing would be to write “The UK will hold elections on July 4”, “The Dominican Republic’s economic activity grew during April” and “Microsoft closed a technology agreement with the United Arab Emirates”.

FundéuRAE (www.fundeu.es), promoted by the EFE Agency and the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), has as its main goal the good use of Spanish in the media. EFE

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