"Valencian Region" (in Valencian: "Regió Valenciana") was a denomination that became majoritary during Franco's dictatorship, with the intention of emphasizing the intended nature of the territory under the political structure of the time: a region within Spain. In fact, before the twentieth century, several territories dominated by Spain were called "kingdoms", as a synonym of "country", in spite of the fact that they were not monarchies. From the nineteenth century onwards, the term "kingdom" began to be substituted by the term "region", especially in books which imitated the French regional geographical nomenclature. In that sense, "region" designated any state, country or nation (all previously used terms that designated the diverse territories of the Spanish Empire or under the king of Spain), regardless of their political and administrative nature of the territory, whereas "kingdom" was reserved to the particular State, country or nation governed by a monarch. Today, the concept of "region" does not refer to a particular political entity, but alludes to regional geography. Within the dictatorship, the term had a centralizing connotation and not simply a geographical meaning.