Salamanca (Spanish: [salaˈmaŋka] ^ⓘ) is a municipality and city in Spain, capital of the province of Salamanca, in the autonomous community of Castile and León. Attached to the comarca of Campo Charro, the city lies on the northern half of the Meseta Central, in the western-central part of the Iberian Peninsula, straddling the Tormes river. As of 2017, the municipality has a registered population of 144,436.

The Iron Age hilltop site of Cerro de San Vicente [es] on the right bank of the Tormes is considered as the first human settlement in the current-day city. By the 3rd century BCE, the urban settlement in the nearby Teso de las Catedrales had consolidated, under the influence of Vaccaei and Vettones. Following Roman subjugation, the indigenous oppidum gradually became the Roman civitas of Salmantica. Little is known of the history of the place after the Migration Period. Christian settlement took hold in the 11th century under Raymond of Burgundy. For much of its history, Salamanca has been a college town linked to the University of Salamanca, one of the oldest in Western Europe, whose germ was founded in 1218 as an studium generale, holding the status of university since 1254. It acquired a great deal of recognition in the 16th century for the intellectual production of the so-called School of Salamanca. In addition, the city has also recently developed as a centre for Spanish-language learning.

The Old City of Salamanca [es] is a World Heritage Site, featuring notable instances of plateresque architecture. Likewise, the Holy Week in Salamanca enjoys the status of Fiesta of International Tourist Interest.

The origin of the toponym Salamanca is not clear. Greeks Polybius of Megalopolis and Stephanus called the city Helmantike, Greek name that for them meant "Land of divination". On the other hand, Ptolemy appeals to a polis dominated by the Vacceis with the name of Salmatica or Salmantica. Roman Livy and Plutarch will call it Hermandica and Polyaenus calls it Salmantida or Salmatis. Other historians even call it Selium and Sentica.

On the other hand, some others like Justin and later Rui Méndez or Murillo attributed the creation of the city to Teucer, son of Telamon, king of Salamis, who after being defeated in the Trojan War, came to the Iberian Peninsula and founded a city, which remembering his homeland he would call Salamatica. Another theory that can be resorted to is that of the existence of a god of the first inhabitants — nomadic shepherds and Neolithic farmers — called Helman, whose name derived from the toponym Helmantica.

The philologist Martín S. Ruipérez contributes a new interpretative line that is summarized in that "the first element of Salamanca, sala- is the designation of the ford of a river", "sal- and hel- cannot be linguistically related one from the other" and regarding the second element -manca "where some believe to see the same element in the toponym Talamanca (de Jarama) which, in turn, would coincide in its first element with Talavera, and in Simancas, all of which is undemonstrable".

The municipal heraldic shield was approved on 11 June 1996 with the following coat of arms:

"Shield parted. First, of silver, with a stone bridge, pierced in sable, on which is passing a bull arrested in sable, and behind it a fig tree of sinople, uprooted. Second, of gold with four gules poles; bordure of azure with eight silver pate crosses. Manteled in silver chief, with two lions, natural, on the flanks and facing each other. To the bell, the Spanish Royal Crown, open and without diadems"