Commonwealth of Puerto Rico
Caribbean
Tropical · Festive · Proud
Puerto Rico (officially Commonwealth of Puerto Rico) is a country located in Caribbean. Its capital city is San Juan, with other major cities including Bayamón and Carolina. With a population of approximately 3.2M, the main languages spoken are Spanish, English. The country covers an area of 8,870 km². The official currency is the United States dollar ($). Traffic drives on the right side.
Puerto Rico has produced more MLB players per capita than any place on Earth — a passion for baseball that runs from neighbourhood diamonds to the national team, which regularly upsets larger nations in international competition.
San Juan serves as the political, cultural and economic heart of Puerto Rico, positioned in Caribbean. As the seat of government and often the most populous city, it concentrates the country's main institutions, universities and cultural landmarks. Beyond the capital, major cities include Bayamón, Carolina, Ponce — each a hub of regional culture, economy and history. San Juan's Old City — built on a small island connected to the main landmass by bridges, its streets following a 16th-century Spanish colonial grid — contains the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in US territory: El Morro fortress has guarded the harbour entrance since 1539, its limestone walls still intact above the Atlantic surf.
With a population of approximately 3.2M, Puerto Rico is a vibrant society with a rich mix of traditions and communities. The principal languages spoken are Spanish, English, which reflect the country's cultural heritage and open doors to a wide international community. Internationally, Puerto Rico is reached via the dialling code +1. Boricua identity — the Taíno word for the island's original inhabitants — fuses Spanish colonial heritage, African roots brought by enslaved people, and American civic life into a culture that is unambiguously Puerto Rican regardless of political status debates: expressed in bomba y plena music, the particular cadence of Caribbean Spanish, and a diaspora that created Nuyorican literature, art, and political consciousness.
Puerto Rico spans 8,870 km², in the Caribbean subregion of Americas. Geographically centred around 18.3°N, 66.5°W, the country offers a diverse range of landscapes shaped by its location, climate and geology. Road traffic follows the right-hand rule, in line with surrounding Americas convention.
The official currency is the United States dollar ($), used for everyday transactions and commerce throughout the country. Puerto Rico's economy is shaped by its geography, natural resources and trade relationships. Business and daily life operate under UTC-04:00, aligning the country with its regional neighbours.
The emblematic dish of Puerto Rico is Mofongo. Mofongo — fried green plantain mashed with garlic and pork crackling in a wooden pilón mortar, then filled with seafood, chicken, or vegetables — is Puerto Rico's most iconic dish, a perfect representation of how Taíno, African, and Spanish ingredients synthesised into Caribbean cuisine over five centuries of shared kitchen culture.
Baseball / Boxing holds a special place in the heart of Puerto Rico's national identity. Baseball runs deepest in Puerto Rican culture — the island has produced Roberto Clemente, Orlando Cepeda, Roberto Alomar, Yadier Molina, and more than 300 MLB players, with Clemente's humanitarian legacy creating the Roberto Clemente Award for community service, the sport's highest off-field honour, given annually in his name.
The highest point in Puerto Rico is Cerro de Punta, rising to 1,338 metres above sea level. El Yunque is the only tropical rainforest in the US National Forest system — 11,000 hectares of cloud forest in Puerto Rico's northeast that receives up to 5,000 mm of rainfall per year, sheltering the Puerto Rican parrot (one of the world's ten most endangered birds) and waterfalls descending through tree ferns to the Caribbean coast below.