RT Journal Article
T1 The spatial distribution of population in Spain: An anomaly in European perspective
A1 Gutiérrez, Eduardo
A1 Moral-Benito, Enrique
A1 Oto Peralías, Daniel
A1 Ramos, Roberto
K1 Economic Geography
K1 Spain
AB 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.
PB Wiley
SN 1467-9787
YR 2023
FD 2023-02-19
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10433/15789
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10433/15789
LA en
NO Journal of Regional Science
NO Consejería de Transformación Económica, Industria, Conocimiento y Universidades de la Junta de Andalucía, programa operativo FEDER Andalucía 2014-2020  (P20_00808).
NO Universidad Pablo de Olavide
NO Banco de España
DS RIO
RD May 9, 2026