Other major cities are Londrina, Maringá, Ponta Grossa, Cascavel, São José dos Pinhais and Foz do Iguaçu.

At the border with Argentina is the National Park of Iguaçu, considered by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

Soon, Jesuit reductions were opened in the western and south-western parts of the state, whose territory largely belonged to the Spanish crown.

[10] In the 1940s, the northern part of the state was settled as a result of the expansion of the São Paulo coffee industry.

[11] Paraná is bounded on the north by São Paulo state, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by Santa Catarina state and the Misiones Province of Argentina, and on the west by Mato Grosso do Sul and the republic of Paraguay, with the Paraná River as its western boundary line.

The state can be separated into five main topographic areas, from east to west: a coastal zone, the mountains of Serra do Mar, and then three plateaus, each lower than the other, until the Paraná River is reached.

[13] An alternative analysis using the ECMWF model indicates that the Aw and Cwa Köppen types appear in the north.

[14] The northern part of the state is the convergence point between the Tropical Atlantic and Equatorial Continental air masses.

[14] The Cfa climate, subtropical with good distribution of annual rainfall and hot summers, occurs in the coastal plain and western parts of the state.

[18] The Cfb climate, warm temperate with good distribution of annual rainfall and mild summers, occurs at higher elevation.

[19] The 2022 census survey gave the following breakdown by race for the state: 7,389,932 White (64.6%), 3,440,037 Mixed (30.1%), 485,781 Black (4.2%), 100,244 Asian (0.9%), and 28,000 Amerindian (0.2%).

[20] Parana's white population is primarily descendant of Portuguese, Italian, Polish and Ukrainian immigrants, but many German families also settled in the state.

[22] Initially settled by the Guarani and Kaingang Amerindians, until the 17th century, virtually no European presence existed in Paraná.

As part of the province of São Paulo, immigration grew in the mid-19th century, mostly composed of Italian, German, Polish, Ukrainian, and Japanese peoples.

The main economic activities are agriculture, industry (agribusiness, automotive, and paper) and plant extraction (wood and yerba mate).

[30] Despite the good social indicators and high standard of living, unemployment is still a problem and the state is one of the most difficult for foreigners trying to find jobs.

[31] In agriculture, the state stands out in the production of soybeans, maize, wheat, sugarcane, cassava, beans, tomato, orange and yerba mate, in addition to also producing coffee, oat, barley, peach, tangerine and strawberry.

In 2019, national production was close to 800 thousand tons, being almost all carried out in the South (Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul).

Paraná is the largest producer in volume and Rio Grande do Sul in plantation areas (and where the sector is more industrialized).

However, many new producers are adopting more professional and efficient production systems, with technical acuity of management and globalized market vision.

[56] In fish farming, western Paraná, in municipalities close to Toledo and Cascavel, has become the largest fish-producing region in the country, with tilapia as the main cultivated species.

The Brazilian food and beverage industry's revenue in 2019 was R $699.9 billion, 9.7% of the country's Gross Domestic Product.

In 2015, the industrial food and beverage sector in Brazil comprised 34,800 companies (not counting bakeries), the vast majority of which were small.

Paraná created food companies of national importance such as Frimesa, C.Vale, Nutrimental, Copacol, Coopavel and Matte Leão.

Brazil, despite its efforts over the decades to get rid of the dependence on technology imports, has not yet managed to reach this level.

Imports are concentrated in expensive components, such as processors, microcontrollers, memories, under-mounted magnetic disks, lasers, LED and LCD.

Cables for telecommunication and electricity distribution, wires, optical fibers and connectors are manufactured in the country.

Consul is originally from Santa Catarina, having merged with Brastemp and today being part of the multinational Whirlpool Corporation.

[74] The capital, Curitiba, has a ring road around the city, incomplete only because the northern part (the least populated in the region) has not yet been built.

In the state, the following Olympic medalists were born: Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima[80] and Édson Ribeiro[81] in athletics; Natália Falavigna[82] in taekwondo; Douglas Vieira[83] in judo; Cyro Delgado[84] in swimming; Giba,[85] Serginho,[86] Elisângela Oliveira[87] e Filó[88] in volleyball; Emanuel Rego[89] in beach volleyball; in addition to World Championships medalists such as Jadel Gregório in athletics[90] and Amanda, Karol Souza and Mayara Moura in handball.