El din

El din

Nation Candelaria And Marquez Function Industrial City and Port Population 199,000 (Census Esimate 2005) 19,502,500 (UN Estimate 2007) Representatives Council Leader Samuel James (Unionist) El din & the North MotH, Reuben Queseda (Unionist) El din & the East MotH, Calum Sharman (Unionist)

El din is a city on the Corazana Cove, on the western coast of the island of Marquez. Founded by Spanish settlers in 1785; its name is of uncertain derivation but is possibly connected to the often barren terrain for some miles inland. It remains as it has always been; the gateway to the vast, rugged expanses of the North-West of Marquez, and the lakes and forests of the East.

Within a few years, El din had become the economic and cultural capital of Hispanic Marquez, its success built predominately on the surrounding networks of hamlets that took advantage of the rich natural resources of the area. Mining, forestry and livestock rearing communities grew up around it, with the city's coffers rapidly growing fat off their toils. El din became a bastion against British aggression in the early nineteenth century, failing unlike its southern neighbours to fall to the newcomers' hands. Prime Minister Robinson's peace treaty was signed here, and El din took up its place as the new country's largest, wealthiest and most developed city.

The good times would not last. The rise of other cities on the west Marquez coast and across the Candelarias threatened El din's status, with many of its more wealthy denizens attracted to the apparently brighter lights elsewhere. Their departure heralded the first influx of non-Hispanics from across the Unnamed Straight; who revitalised the city to some degree, financing new parks, wide boulevards and the city's unusual grid design, but loosening El din's historical ties with its satellite villages. Early signs of the city's future problems began when a number of mining </div>communities found their available mineral resources had run dry and collapsed, with many fleeing south. Most of those in the city itself whose jobs relied upon these other workers remained, but the city's status as the Candelarias' wealthiest had long since gone and its relative population began to dwindle.

Worse would follow in the years after the Civil War, and the United Kingdom's economic integration into Europe. Almost overnight, the country's agriculturally-based economy collapsed; and while the need for farm produce on Marquez was still great, it quickly proved that the greater arable land was in the south leaving much of the north essentially worthless. Thousands of former farmers poured into El din, forming the islands' first shanty towns. Originally thought of as "emergency villages", the term villa miseria, or "Miseryville", was soon adopted for these places as the city's authorities struggled to find ways of rehousing their occupants. A certain amount of social snobbery, at times racially and/or culturally motivated, saw the Anglo, and English-speaking Hispanic, inhabitants of the city proper largely ignore the plight of their near neighbours, unless it was deemed to directly affect them. As the vast settlements of tin shacks began to grown and become havens for thieves and drug dealers; El din's lower middle class finally woke up to the problems of the villas miseria, but by this time their inhabitants had often become entrenched in their new surroundings.

</div>The nature of the villas miseria has at times been clearly exaggerated. Though to this day they posses only limited, if any, sanitation systems and little regular electricity; crime within their borders is little, if at all, worse than the rest of El din and like most of the rest of the country they have mercifully avoided the horrors of gang warfare and heavy drug abuse. Still, these El dinenses are clearly the most impoverished Candelariasians, and their situation has improved little over the last two decades.

El din as a whole maintains a unique character as a result of its many poor, largely Hispanic neighbourhoods and the at times shockingly affluent districts running alongside them. The city is also believed to be the most religious in the country, with both the Candelarias' oldest and largest Roman Catholic cathedrals; but is perhaps most notable internationally as the home of the C&M's National Space Facility. Economically, El din has to some degree reconnecting with its port; but the primary employer has become the Arrigo-based Morales Automobile Company.

The Cathedral City

</div>El din gained its nickname in its earliest history after the opening of the Blessed Peter Gonzalez Cathedral in 1804, the first in the islands. Though not initially of a large size, the BPG soon became a place of pilgrimage for all the islands' Catholics; and has been expanded several times over the years and is today politely considered something of a pile. No less notable is the El din City Cathedral (or, unofficially, St. Joseph's), opened in 1847 and still the largest such in the country by total surface area (though the Christ Church Cathedral in Albrecht and the Sacred Heart in Arrigo can hold larger congregations.

Football

The progress of time has seen an almost total reversal of the backgrounds of the city's two professional clubs. In 1933, several local teams with </div>playing staffs drawn mostly from the English-speaking communities coalesced to form Cathedral City FC, whose wealth allowed them to become a major force in the islands' burgeoning amateur, and later professional, leagues. In response; Recreativo El din attempted to pump money into their football section, but never reached the heights of their more illustrious neighbours. As the years progressed however; the area surrounding CCFC's home on Thirteenth Street became increasingly Spanish-speaking as the previous inhabitants moved gradually to the leafier new suburbs. The club became universally known as "Catedral", from which came the usual nickname of 'the Cats'; and by the time the new CMSC began in the early eighties the process was complete to the point that the stadium was now referred to as La Decimotercia. With well over 35,000 fans packed into the ground their status as one of the country's biggest clubs was assured and remains in place, despite their much-publicised failure to win a single item of silverware, either in the classical era or since the establishment of the CMSC; their best result being a second-place league finish in 1990/00.

Meanwhile, Recreativo rapidly became the club of the moneyed classes, changing its name several times in a bid to get greater sponsorship; eventually achieving their goal of Division One football in the early 70s as Sports of El din. Like so many other clubs of the time however, they over-stretched and went bankrupt not long after. Since the CMSC they have played in the lower divisions as El din United, El din Recreationals and the current, risible, El din Marbles. With a support base that varied from ridiculously rich paper-mill barons to inhabitants of the villas miseria; it is under this new identity that the club finally began to gain some real success after achieving promotion to Division Two three seasons ago.

</div>Catedral meanwhile, have spent recent seasons bouncing between the top two divisions. More traumatic however has been the necessity to relocate away from their traditional home, after it became clear that La Decimotercia would no longer live up to Division One safety standards. The Neuva Decimotercia would not open until half way through the current season; forcing the club to play at the Marbles' Little Road Stadium until that point - another ignominy when coupled with what is seen as the sanitised design of Cathedral City's permanent new home. Their predicament is seldom helped by the insistence by fans for Coach Che Martín to involve as many locally-born players as possible, and it was in part this that contributed to the club's relegation from the CMSC in the XXV season. Che Martín was given the axe half-way through the season, but new coach Charlie Cunningham could do nothing to keep them up.

Worse still for the Cats was that their hated rivals finished second in division two to go straight up in the opposite direction. Under Giles Walton, El din Marbles are widely seen as having little chance of retaining their place, but the talents of young striker Nataniel O'Leary and creative midfielder Crawford Panama might help them out of trouble somewhat, while the arrival of muscular Kura-Pellandi striker Andy Madden will be a major boost.

National Space Facility

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In the years following the Civil War, it became apparent to C&M government members involved in the financing of the country's missile programme that national defence was no longer a major priority. Scientists and engineers integral to the programme were for the most part seamlessly transferred to a new operation based (almost) entirely around scientific discover. Although initially based on the other side of the country, in the west of Candelaria; it was decided to establish the new national Space Programme in El din, with the hope of revitalising the city's struggling economy and making use of the large swathes of undeveloped land.

In 1972 however, the new Modern Liberal government of President Allen decreed that the minds and money wrapped up in the programme could be put to better use elsewhere, and C&M's involvement in the space race was officially put to bed. With building work on the National Space Facility in El din already well under way however, it was permitted to be finished, with the National Observatory opened in 1973 on top of Dulce Hill in the heart of the city's Eastside. The Facility itself, spread around the base of the peak quickly became little more than a semi-official national museum of space, and a secondary campus for the small University of El din.

The NSF began to take closer steps to its original intended role in the mid-eighties, when a number of government departments, universities and research councils formed a partnership to coordinate C&M's civil space activities, principally focusing on satellite telecommunications and global navigation.

The establishment of the International Space Programme with Descartesland changed everything; with the NSF becoming the primary Research Centre and Mission Control for C&M based operations. Once consisting of a switch, light and a couple of gauges; it is now a thoroughly plush, modern and expensive entity. A second site for the Facility is springing up a short bullet-train ride to the north-east in the town of Agujero, to be closer to the country's main launch site in the Valle de los mentirosos. This new Operations Centre provides extensive test facilities to verify the proper operation of spacecraft, such as the acoustic and electromagnetic testing bays and multi-axis vibration tables. Launch equipment is assembled here after the move from El din proper, the OC also maintaining tracking, telemetry and tele-command stations for ISP spacecraft. Across its two sites, the NSF employs about 1500 engineers, technicians and scientists working hands-on spacecraft and space technology.

Twinning

El din is officially twinnned with Spenson in Zwangzug. Enrique Velazco, deputy headmaster of El Cuarado Primary School, is the President of the Twinning Association.