In this question from a quiz:
"El presidente ________ Gobierno tiene su residencia oficial en el Palacio de la Moncloa, en Madrid"
I was told that it should be del. However, in the lesson it says not to use contractions prior to proper nouns. Is this not a proper noun, despite the fact it is capitalized?
Hola Lukas
The lesson is saying that if "el" is part of a proper noun, like a place, e.g the country "El Salvador", you cannot use "del", you need to say "de El Salvador", so you can't make the contraction in this case.
In the sentence "El presidente del Gobierno tiene su residencia oficial...", the word Gobierno is a proper noun and is capitalized when it is referring to the institution, but it doesn't have the "el" inherent, like in El Salvador, El Cairo, El Escorial...
Un saludo
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