Say “Mallorca” and most people picture a Spanish beach holiday. Say “Sardinia” and Italy comes to mind. Yet a 2025 UPSC question swapped all three of these regions to a different country each, testing whether candidates would catch it.
mcqquestion.comMallorca, Normandy, Sardinia.
- Mallorca. The largest of Spain’s Balearic Islands, in the Mediterranean Sea. Its capital, Palma, is a major tourist destination.
- Normandy. A region of northern France, on the English Channel coast. It is best known as the site of the D-Day landings in 1944.
- Sardinia. The second-largest island in the Mediterranean, after Sicily. It is an autonomous region of Italy.
- The 2025 PYQ. Every pair in the question swapped the region to a different, wrong country. The correct answer was “None.”
A Common Exam Trap.
- Shared History. Mallorca, Sardinia, and Corsica have all seen rule by multiple Mediterranean powers over the centuries, including Aragon, Genoa, and Savoy, which blurs their modern national identity in casual memory.
- Language Clues. Sardinia has its own language, Sardinian, distinct from standard Italian; Mallorca speaks Catalan alongside Spanish, distinct from Castilian Spanish.
- A Memory Trick. Mallorca and the other Balearic Islands (Menorca, Ibiza) are Spanish; Sardinia and Sicily are Italian; Normandy and Brittany are French.
Previous Year Question.
Asked as: “In how many of the above rows [Mallorca-Italy, Normandy-Spain, Sardinia-France] is the given information correctly matched?” This was asked in UPSC CSP 2025, GS Paper I. View this question.
Previous Year Question (2022).
Asked as: “Consider the following pairs: Region often mentioned in the news — Country. 1. Anatolia — Turkey. 2. Amhara — Ethiopia. 3. Cabo Delgado — Spain. 4. Catalonia — Italy. How many pairs given above are correctly matched?” This was asked in UPSC CSP 2022, GS Paper I. Answer: only two pairs (Anatolia–Turkey and Amhara–Ethiopia); Cabo Delgado is in Mozambique, and Catalonia is in Spain. View this question.
Test Yourself.
Beyond the 2025 PYQ.
- Sicily. Italy’s largest island, off its southern tip, is often confused with Sardinia despite being a separate island entirely.
- Corsica. A French island in the Mediterranean, just north of Sardinia, and the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte.
- Catalonia. A distinct autonomous region of mainland Spain, not to be confused with the Balearic Islands, though both share the Catalan language.
- Exam Angle. UPSC regularly tests region-to-country matching for exactly this reason: these regions are famous enough to sound familiar, but easy to mismatch under time pressure.
Leave a Reply