Floridablanca is a municipality in the department of Santander at an altitude of in the Eastern Ranges of the Colombian Andes. It is part of the metropolitan area of the departmental capital Bucaramanga. Floridablanca is known for its parks and the Piedra del Sol, a large rock with spirals and circles carved by the Guane over 1,000 years ago. This city is home of the tallest statue of Jesus Christ in Colombia, "El Santisimo". The statue is high and weighs. The city is situated along the Ruta Nacional 45A, a branch of the Pan American Highway, connecting the capital Bogotá with Santa Marta at the Caribbean coast and Cúcuta as a gateway to Venezuela. Together with other neighboring municipalities of Bucaramanga, Girón and Piedecuesta, Floridablanca is one of the growth areas for the capital of Santander with numerous constructions happening in recent years.
Geography and climate
Floridablanca is situated at an altitude of about in the Eastern Ranges of the Colombian Andes, though locally the topography varies greatly. To the east of the city the higher mountains of the Andes rise above the city, thrusted upwards by the north–south-trending Bucaramanga-Santa Marta Fault, one of the major megaregional :Template:Tectonism in Colombia|faults of Colombia. The area is dominated by the Bucaramanga Nest, the second-most seismically active region in the world. Because of the relatively low altitude, the city enjoys a very favorable climate all year round. Floridablanca's climate is classified as tropical. When compared with winter, the summers have much more rainfall. The climate is classified as Aw by the Köppen-Geiger system. The average annual temperature is in Floridablanca. The rainfall averages per year.
According to official DANE census, Floridablanca has 262,165 inhabitants, being the second most populated city in Santander. 47,37% are men, while 52,63% are women. 95,6% of the population over 5 years know how to write and read, meaning, illiteracy rate is about 4,4%. Statistics show that most of the adult people living in the city are from Bucaramanga:
7,7% from Floridablanca
44% from Bucaramanga
33% from other cities of Santander
16% from other departments
Economy
A study performed in 1998 provided data on the economical activities in Floridablanca, that has grown since those times. Commerce was the most important sector with 39% of the economical make-up, industrial production of clothing was nearly 10% and the food and drinks industry comprised 7% of the economical activities. The production of sweets, and especially the traditional Colombian dessert of obleas, has given Floridablanca the name "the sweet municipality of Colombia". The central part of the city hosts a concentration of malls; Cañaveral, constructed in 1984, and Parque Caracolí, inaugurated in 2013. The city, in recent years grown to connect with Bucaramanga, forms the entry point to the Chicamocha Canyon, located at an hour drive from the city, and hosts touristic activities with a paragliding school on the Mesa de Ruitoque, the Ruitoque Massif in the southwest of the city. Local buses to tourist hotspots as San Gil and the Chicamocha Canyon leave from a transport station called "Papi Quiero Piña". The Jardín Botánico Eloy Valenzuela, a botanical garden in Floridablanca, was once owned by the El Paragüitas tobacco company. In 2017, the city was designated by the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism as one of five "sustainable touristic destinations" of Colombia.
