Demographic challenge or rural challenge? Depopulation and socio-territorial trends of the rural world in Spain
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37230/CyTET.2025.226.1Keywords:
Rural Spain, Rural duality, New wave of immigration, Persistence of rural pushAbstract
Rural Spain is in fashion, due to its appeal as a more natural, ecological, and healthy area compared to urban Spain, which is more artificial, polluted, and stressful. However, a clear duality has emerged, characterized by a dynamic rural exterior, which includes some interior enclaves, as opposed to an increasingly depopulated rural interior, with a clear demographic, economic, and social disorganization, which persists despite the policies applied and the improvements that have occurred. In addition to conceptualizing, classifying, and mapping the types of rural space of Spain, its dynamics, trends, characteristics, and the causes of the current situation are studied; phenomena are periodized and perspectives are proposed. The new post-pandemic phase is noted, more dynamic, with new immigrants, unable to counteract the structural imbalances. There remains a deep rural push due to the difficulty of labor insertion and access to services. Therefore, the demographic challenge must become a rural challenge.
Downloads
References
ALARIO, M. & MORALES, E. (2022): La despoblación en España desde una perspectiva de género, pp. 199-220, en Cejudo, E. y Navarro, F.A. (2022): Despoblación y mundo rural europeo mediterráneo. El caso de Andalucía. Valencia, Tirant humanidades.
BOSERUP, E. (1970): Women’s Role in Economic Development. Nueva York; St. Martin’s Press.
CAMARERO, L. A. (2009): La población rural de España. De los desequilibrios a la sostenibilidad social. Barcelona, Fundación La Caixa.
CAMARERO, L. A. & SAMPEDRO, R. (2008): ¿Por qué se van las mujeres? El continuum de movilidad como hipótesis explicativa de la masculinización rural. Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas (Reis), n. 124, pp. 73-105.
CEJUDO-GARCÍA, E., NAVARRO-VALVERDE, F.A., CAÑETE-PÉREZ, J.A. (Eds.). (2024): Win or lose in rural development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48675-3
CNIG. (2025): Centro de descargas. Mapas vectoriales. https://centrodedescargas.cnig.es/CentroDescargas/mapas-vectoriales-bases-cartograficas
DÍAZ-MÉNDEZ, C. (2005): Aproximaciones al arraigo y al desarraigo femenino en el medio rural: Mujeres jóvenes en busca de una nueva identidad rural, Papers, n. 75, pp. 63-84.
FUNDACIÓN BBVA & INSTITUTO VALENCIANO DE INVESTIGACIONES ECONÓMICAS (IVIE). (2015): Series homogéneas de población 1900-2011. Bilbao y Valencia, noviembre de 2015. Base de datos disponible en http://www.fbbva.es/TLFU/tlfu/esp/areas/econosoc/bbdd/serieshomg.jsp[consulta:enero2022].
GARCÍA-BARBANCHO, A. (1975): Las migraciones interiores españolas 1961-1970. Madrid, Instituto de Estudios Económicos.
GARCÍA-FERNÁNDEZ, J. (1965): La emigración exterior de España. Barcelona, Ariel.
INSTITUTO NACIONAL DE ESTADÍSTICA (INE). (2020). Métodos y proyectos /Glosario de Conceptos/Entidad singular, en https://www.ine.es/DEFIne/es/concepto.htm?txt=Entidad%20singular&-c=4928&p=1&n=20[Consultade11/03/2021].
INE. (2022): Estadística de Variaciones Residenciales 1998-2021. www.ine.es
INE. (2022): Estadísticas del Padrón continuo. Años 2000 a 2021. www.ine.es
INE. (2022): Estadística de migraciones y cambio de residencia 2021-2023. www.ine.es
INE. (2024): Censo Anual de Población 2021 a 2024. www.ine.es
Ley 45/2007, de 13 de diciembre, para el desarrollo sostenible del medio rural. BOE n. 299 de 14 de diciembre de 2007. Revisión vigente desde 21 de octubre de 2009.
MINISTERIO AGRICULTURA, PESCA, ALIMENTACIÓN & MEDIO AMBIENTE (Mapama). (2025). GeoPortal, en https://sig.mapama.gob.es/geoportal/
MINISTERIO DE FOMENTO. (2018 y 2020): Áreas urbanas de España. Cuarenta años de las ciudades españolas. En http://atlasau.fomento.gob.es/[Consultade8deenerode2019].Actualizadoen2020,condatosde2019:ListadodeÁreasurbanas,enhttp://atlasau.mitma.gob.es/documentos/listado_2020.pdf[Consultade18/03/2021].
MINISTERIO DE TRANSPORTES, MOVILIDAD Y AGENDA URBANA. (2022): Áreas urbanas de España 2022 (AtlasAU).
MINISTERIO DE VIVIENDA Y AGENDA URBANA. (2023): https://atlasau.mitma.gob.es/#c=home
MINISTERIO PARA LA TRANSICIÓN ECOLÓGICA Y EL RETO DEMOGRÁFICO. (2025): https://www.miteco.gob.es/es/reto-demografico/temas/que-es.html
MOLINERO-GERBEAU, Y. (2020): La creciente dependencia de mano de obra migrante para tareas agrícolas en el centro global. Una perspectiva comparada. Estudios Geográficos, Vol.81(288), p.e031. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oi=bibs&cluster=5989772797278073878&btnI=1&hl=en
MOLINERO, F. & ALARIO, M. (2022): Una mirada geográfica a la España rural. Madrid, Revives. PDF de acceso libre.
SECRETARÍA DE ESTADO DE LA SEGURIDAD SOCIAL Y PENSIONES. (2025): La Revista de la Seguridad Social. Estadísticas. https://revista.seg-social.es/estadisticas16/06/2025.
TAMAMES, R. (1962): Los movimientos migratorios de la población española durante el período 1951-60. Revista de Economía Política, 32, pp. 105-140.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Fernando Molinero-Hernando, Milagros Alario-Trigueros
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Considering the provisions of the current legislation on Intellectual Property, and in accordance with them, all authors publishing in CyTET give -in a non-exclusive way and without time limit- to the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda the rights to disseminate, reproduce, communicate and distribute in any current or future format, on paper or electronic, the original or derived version of their work under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivative 4.0 license International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), as well as to include or assign to third parties the inclusion of its content in national and international indexes, repositories and databases, with reference and recognition in any case of its authorship.
In addition, when sending the work, the author(s) declares that it is an original work in which the sources that have been used are recognized, committing to respect the scientific evidence, to no longer modify the original data and to verify or refute its hypothesis. Author(s) also declare that the essential content of the work has not been previously published nor will it be published in any other publication while it is under evaluation by CyTET; and that it has not been simultaneously sent to another journal.
Authors must sign a Transfer of Rights Form, which will be sent to them from the CyTET Secretariat once the article is accepted for publication.
With the aim of promoting the dissemination of knowledge, CyTET joins the Open Journal Access (OA) movement and delivers all of its content to various national and international indexes, repositories and databases under this protocol; therefore, the submission of a work to be published in the journal presupposes the explicit acceptance by the author of this distribution method.
Authors are encouraged to reproduce and host their work published in CyTET in institutional repositories, web pages, etc. with the intention of contributing to the improvement of the transfer of knowledge and the citation of said works.
Enlace a CyTET en Linkedin
Hashtag en Twitter: #RevistaCyTET