Bucaramanga - City of Colombia

Bucaramanga is a municipality and capital city of the department of Santander, Colombia. Bucaramanga is Colombia's fifth most important city and seventh-largest metropolitan area and has rapidly grown much since the 1960s, mostly in the neighboring municipalities.

Local manufacturing, especially of textiles and shoes, has struggled in the face of legal and contraband imports in recent decades. The city is the base of the Colombian Petroleum Institute , the research branch of the state oil company Ecopetrol, and the Colombian Natural Gas Company.

Girón was the first and most significant town founded by Spanish colonizers in the region, and Bucaramanga did not overtake Girón in population or economic significance until the early 1800s. In the 1860s and 1870s the city attracted a core of German merchants and adventurers and tensions between the newcomers and local merchants flared in 1879. With the political reorganization of 1886, Bucaramanga replaced Socorro as departmental capital. The region was devastated by the civil war of 1899-1902, commonly known as the Thousand Days War and Bucaramanga grew only modestly in the first half of the twentieth century.

Bucaramanga is also known as the "Ciudad de los Parques" and "Ciudad Bonita". The city is served by one transportation terminal and the Palonegro Airport, which is located west of the city. The site of the old airport, the last big piece of undeveloped land on the plateau itself, was turned into middle-class apartment housing (Ciudadela Real de Minas) in the 1980s.

The city has a good reputation due to its numerous universities, amongst them.

The Universidad Industrial de Santander is an official institution which offers 95 degrees and a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses within the health sciences, humanities, sciences and engineering colleges. Also it offers seven technological programs in different fields through the Distance Learning Institute. Also, the University has created affiliate branches in Barrancabermeja -home of the most important oil refinery in the country-, El Socorro and Málaga. Recently it has extended its services to Barranquilla and Bogotá through the offer of its Graduate Programs.