Avram Iancu is a commune in Bihor

Bihor County

Bihor is a county of Romania, in Crişana, with capital city at Oradea. Together with Hajdú-Bihar County in Hungary it constitutes the Biharia Euroregion.-Demographics:...

 county, in the western part of Transylvania

Transylvania

Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...

, Romania

Romania

Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

. The commune is composed of three villages: Ant (Ant), Avram Iancu and Tămaşda (Tamáshida). The majority of the population (96%) in Avram Iancu village is Romanian

Romanians

The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....

. Overall, the commune is 74.7% Romanian, 15.6% Roma and 9.6% Hungarian. The architecture of the commune is typical for a Romanian field village: the main street traverses the village, houses being equally distributed along it.

Location

Geographically, it is situated at the border of Bihor County

Bihor County

Bihor is a county of Romania, in Crişana, with capital city at Oradea. Together with Hajdú-Bihar County in Hungary it constitutes the Biharia Euroregion.-Demographics:...

 with Arad County

Arad County

Arad is an administrative division of Romania roughly translated into county in the western part of the country on the border with Hungary, mostly in the region of Crişana and few villages in Banat. The administrative center of the county lies in the city of Arad...

, and Hungary

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

, at exactly the same distance (60 km) from the capital cities of the two counties, Oradea

Oradea

Oradea is the capital city of Bihor County, in the Crișana region of north-western Romania. The city has a population of 204,477, according to the 2009 estimates. The wider Oradea metropolitan area has a total population of 245,832.-Geography:...

 and Arad

Arad, Romania

Arad is the capital city of Arad County, in western Romania, in the Crişana region, on the river Mureş.An important industrial center and transportation hub, Arad is also the seat of a Romanian Orthodox archbishop and features two universities, a Romanian Orthodox theological seminary, a training...

. The commune is crossed by the European road

International E-road network

The international E-road network is a numbering system for roads in Europe developed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe . The network is numbered from E 1 up and its roads cross national borders...

 E671. The nearest city is Salonta

Salonta

Salonta is a city in Bihor County, Transylvania, Romania, near the Hungarian border.-Population:According to the last Romanian census from 2002, the city has a population of 18,074, made up of Hungarians , Romanians , Roma , and others .In terms of religion, 51.12% are Reformed , 36.46% Romanian...

, at 18 km.

History

The first official documentation of human settlement in the area dates back to 1169. The document mentions a very small village called Villa Tamasd, which in fact is the village Tămaşda, a component of the today commune. In the early 1600 the establishment was destroyed being caught in a battle between the Turkish and Hungarian armies. In 1700 the establishment and its surroundings were transformed in a fiefdom for a Hungarian noble.
The today's village of Avram Iancu was founded, in the early 1900, by the Romanian colonists which came from the eastern region of Bihor county. They received here land from the King Ferdinand I of Romania

Ferdinand I of Romania

Ferdinand was the King of Romania from 10 October 1914 until his death.-Early life:Born in Sigmaringen in southwestern Germany, the Roman Catholic Prince Ferdinand Viktor Albert Meinrad of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, later simply of Hohenzollern, was a son of Leopold, Prince of...

 the village being named Regina Maria after Ferdinand's wife Queen Marie

Marie of Edinburgh

Marie of Romania was Queen consort of Romania from 1914 to 1927, as the wife of Ferdinand I of Romania.-Early life:...

. In 1956, under the Communist regime

Communist Romania

Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...

, it was renamed after the 1848 Revolution Romanian hero Avram Iancu

Avram Iancu

Avram Iancu was a Transylvanian Romanian lawyer who played an important role in the local chapter of the Austrian Empire Revolutions of 1848–1849. He was especially active in the Ţara Moţilor region and the Apuseni Mountains...

.

Economy

Due to its fertile lands Avram Iancu is one of the biggest producers of agricultural products (vegetables) within Bihor county, supplying the markets for the neighboring cities with fresh high-quality vegetable products. In the beginning (during the communist times

Communist Romania

Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...

), there were just a few households doing intensive production on very small surfaces of land. After 1989 the proportion of households employed in this activity boosted to over 80%, more than a half being specialized in extensive cultures on large areas of land.