La delegación palestina llegó a El Cairo

Interesting. I saw this on the news yesterday. I would have expected "al Cairo".

It seems like it should be as you wrote. I thought it might be a shortened news ticker. Then just for fun I typed the English sentence into Bing Translator and it showed a el Cairo. As did Google Translate.

Maybe a el is only shortened to al when the El is not capitalized. Just guessing. Maybe I will ask Diana when I see her.

"New York" is just New York, "Paris" is just Paris, but "Cairo" is "El Cairo" (for whatever reason - even in other languages). I guess this is simply how contraction works (or in this case, doesn't work) when it's part of a formal name.

Thank you for sharing. You have a point. Why is it different with El Cairo? Now I really want to know. This is going to bug me until someone explains it.

I just found this paragraph in a Wikipedia entry on the City of Cairo: Egyptians today often refer to Cairo as Maṣr ([mɑsˤɾ], مصر), the Egyptian Arabic pronunciation of the name for Egypt itself, emphasizing the city's continued role in Egyptian influence.[3][4] Its official name is القاهرة al-Qāhirah , means literally "the Vanquisher" or "the Conqueror" I wonder if the "al-Qahirah" got translated to El Cairo in Spanish?

Good explanation. Rocket Arabic is in Egyptian - there may be something about this in the forum already.