The Dominican Republic is a country that occupies a little more than the eastern two thirds of Hispaniola, in the archipelago of the Greater Antilles. The western third of the island is occupied by Haiti. Thus, La Española is an island shared by two States. Both by area and by population, the Dominican Republic is the second largest country in the Caribbean (after Cuba). Its territorial extension is 48 311 square kilometers and its total population is 9 445 281 inhabitants according to the 2010 census.4 It borders on the north with the Atlantic Ocean, on the south with the Caribbean Sea or the Antilles Sea, on the east with the Canal de the Mona, which separates it from Puerto Rico and to the west with the Republic of Haiti.

​

Inhabited by Tainos since the seventh century, the territory of the country was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 becoming the place of European settlement in America, named as Santo Domingo, current capital of the country and first capital of Spain in the New World. After three centuries of Spanish rule, with French and Haitian interludes, the country reached its first independence in 1821 but was quickly taken over by Haiti in 1822.