What is rural Spain? The concept, which has been gaining space in the public debate due to the demographic problems that exist in many areas, is defined by the Law for Sustainable Development of the Rural Environment approved in 2007 and specifies that it is all the geographical space formed by “municipalities with a population of less than 30,000 inhabitants and a density of less than 100 inhabitants per km2”.
Spain has followed in the footsteps of the rest of the Western countries in recent decades and the rate of urbanization has skyrocketed to the extent that economic development has taken off. This trend is much more pronounced in Spain compared to other neighboring states. and it becomes very difficult to reverse it despite the irruption of some parties that try to force the application of public policies aimed at repopulating rural areas.
Five facts about rural Spain
1. How much population congregates: according to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE) and the Ministry of Agriculture, There are 7,529,579 people registered in the municipalities of Rural Spain (16% of the total population in Spain). And everything indicates that it will decrease because our country is the country in the European Union where there is the highest percentage of the population over 65 years of age (around 27%), while it is the one with the least under 20 years of age (in around 15% of the population). Besides, Spain is the country with the lowest fertility rate in rural areas (1,09) from all over Europe (2019 Eurostat data, last updated).
2. How much area does it cover: Despite representing 16% of the total population, rural Spain covers 84% of the surface of our country. In total, it encompasses 423,814 km2 of the 504,750 km2 that Spain has. This enormous area that it covers compared to the small percentage of the population that it houses makes its population density be very low: of 17.8 inhabitants per km2.
3. How many municipalities are there: Rural Spain covers 84% of the Spanish geography and concentrate the 82% of the municipalities in Spain: There are 6,664 of the 8,131 in total. Among the 6,664, there are 317 localities with between 5,000 and 30,000 inhabitants (3.9%), which have more than three million people registered in the census (6.4% of the population of all of Spain). The rest of rural Spain corresponds to municipalities with less than 5,000 inhabitants, where there are 4.4 million inhabitants, representing 9.5% of the Spanish population.
4. How much employed population is there: the unemployment rate in rural Spain (13,6%) is lower than that of urban Spain (14,4%). However, the activity rate is also lower and this affects the better labor data: in rural Spain it is located at 53.9% while in cities it is at 58%.
5. What autonomies they are more “ruralized”: lhe five autonomous communities with the most inhabitants in rural areas are Andalucía (1.9 million), Castilla–La Mancha (900,000), Castilla y León (857,000), Galicia (688,000) and Catalonia (536,000), which together account for 65.1% of the total rural population of Spainaccording to data collected from the annual indicator report prepared annually by the Ministry of Agriculture.