The spatial distribution of population in Spain: An anomaly in European perspective

We exploit the GEOSTAT 2011 population grid with a very high 1 km2 resolution to document that Spain presents the lowest density of settlements among European countries. Only a small fraction of the Spanish territory is inhabited, particularly in its southern half, which goes hand in hand with a hig...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of regional science 2023-06, Vol.63 (3), p.728-750
Main Authors: Gutiérrez, Eduardo, Moral‐Benito, Enrique, Oto‐Peralías, Daniel, Ramos, Roberto
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
19th century
Climatic conditions
Comparative studies
Density
Discontinuity
economic geography
Geography
Historic sites
Industrialization
Population distribution
Regression analysis
Scarcity
Settlement patterns
Spain
Spatial analysis
Spatial distribution
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Summary:We exploit the GEOSTAT 2011 population grid with a very high 1 km2 resolution to document that Spain presents the lowest density of settlements among European countries. Only a small fraction of the Spanish territory is inhabited, particularly in its southern half, which goes hand in hand with a high degree of population concentration. We uncover through standard regression analysis and spatial regression discontinuity that this anomaly cannot be accounted for by adverse geographic and climatic conditions. The second part of the paper takes a historical perspective on Spain's settlement patterns by showing that the spatial distribution of the population has been very persistent in the last two centuries, and that the abnormally low density of settlements with respect to European neighbors was already visible in the 19th century, which indicates that this phenomenon has not emerged recently as a consequence of the transformations associated with industrialization and tertiarization. Using data on ancient sites, we find that Spain did not feature scarcity of settlements in comparison to other countries in premedieval times, suggesting that its current anomalous settlement pattern has not always existed and is, therefore, not intrinsic to its geography.
ISSN:0022-4146
1467-9787
DOI:10.1111/jors.12638