Abertawe
This page is about Swansea in Wales. For others, see Swansea (disambiguation).
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Swansea (Welsh: Abertawe) is a city and administrative county in south Wales, situated on the coast, immediately to the east of the Gower peninsula in the former county of Glamorgan. The English name is believed to come from "Sweyn's Ey" ("ey" being a Germanic word for "island") and to have originated in the period when the Vikings plundered the south Wales coast.
Swansea is Wales's second city, a centre of nationalist sympathies, and conducted a bitter but unsuccessful battle with Cardiff to be home to the National Assembly for Wales.
Swansea grew to its present importance during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, becoming a centre of heavy industry, but did not enjoy the same degree of immigration as Cardiff and the eastern valleys. Consequently, it retains close links with agriculture and rural life, and a healthy proportion of the population are Welsh speakers. At the 1991 census, the population of Swansea was about 177,000.
Swansea is a seaside town, in a region popular with holidaymakers from all over Britain. It is also an industrial and commercial centre, with a Roman Catholic cathedral and the ruins of a castle, and is home to a college of the University of Wales. The poet Dylan Thomas spent his first 20 years in the town, at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive. A memorial to him is nearby in Cwmdonkin Park. The actress Catherine Zeta-Jones is probably the most famous of the city's recent cultural exports.
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