This paper explores the process of social participation that is rising in some rural territories that are part of the so-called 'Empty Spain'. From a theoretical perspective, the study takes up the discussion on social movements and, at the same time, the idea of community and the sense of belonging. It has been selected the rural area Sierra de la Demanda, located in the Southeast of the province of Burgos (Castilla-Le & oacute;n, Spain), as the most representative rural area of that empty Spain. The methodological approach is qualitative and is based on participant observation and ten in-depth interviews conducted to those who are engaged in the social spaces studied. The results allow us to consider that a progressive social participation is taking place, fostered by a sense of community that is discursively identified by the discourse and the actions, giving new features to the whole process.
Economic diversification is one of the ways to promote the development of European rural territories, particularly those experiencing stagnation and depopulation. The aim of this paper is to examine to what extent the rural development programs with LEADER approach, implemented in La Alcarria Conquense in the last 30 years, have favored the emergence and consolidation of non-agricultural activities and how these have influenced the dynamization of the territory. Through the analysis of the development programs, the categorization of fundable measures, and the evaluation of their impacts on the territory, it is concluded that the actions aimed at supporting SMEs, promoting rural tourism, and enhancing the agricultural sector have been crucial for diversifying the economy of the studied area. Among the limitations associated with this process include the following: the impacts of demographic dynamics on entrepreneurial capacity and innovation; the decline of effectiveness of investments in job creation recorded in recent programming periods; and the limited volume of financial resources allocated to funding programs with the LEADER approach.
Organic farming has advanced significantly in various Spanish regions, with contrasting characteristics and dynamics, and facing different obstacles. This is a key sector in terms of its capacity to dynamize Spanish agriculture and reinforce the implementation of European policies of ecological transition. This work is a participatory research action that aims, on the one hand, to develop a general diagnosis of organic agriculture in the Valencian Community, in order to identify problems, interconnections between factors and agents, possible solutions and barriers to its implementation. On the other hand, the work performs an analysis of the efficiency of public policies to support the sector developed in the last decade. These objectives were addressed through the creation of mental model maps, based on semi-structured interviews and two workshops with the participation of a wide group of agents representing all the groups involved in the evolution of the sector. The results allow us to outline a complete diagnosis of the sector that highlights some structural deficiencies of Valencian agriculture, identifies specific problems of the agroecological sector and analyzes the contrast between the dynamics of rainfed and irrigated areas. It also shows the level of performance of public policies, identifying strengths and weaknesses, among which the problems in growing domestic demand stand out.
Although the study of clientelism has been associated with caciquism, currently the figure of the cacique has been diluted for the benefit of the party machinery, which leads us to focus on the study of the networks that make up the "clientele pyramid", within of which the mayors constitute one of the main nodes when it comes to distributing the resources destined to feed the clientele. Additionally, they are not only in charge of the distribution of resources, but unlike what happened in the Restoration, when political apathy and demobilization facilitated electoral manipulation, now electoral mobilization is a crucial factor when it comes to get majorities. The analysis of the results of the autonomous elections held in Galicia in 2024, taking into account both the habitat and the training of the mayor of each of the Galician municipalities, allows us to see that, given that the Galician electoral system overrepresents the interior provinces of Lugo and Ourense, the electoral mobilization of its rural nuclei, which house approximately half of its population, provides a decisive plus of representation in the configuration of a predominant party system.
A large part of the municipalities in Aragon are in a situation of serious or very serious depopulation. In this context, the LEADER program and the GALs have been promoting the development of municipalities affected by the demographic challenge for more than three decades. Starting from the highest level of disaggregation of the projects executed through the LEADER program (2014-2020 period), this article presents an analysis at the municipal level to analyse whether the LEADER action focuses, as a priority, on supporting local development initiatives in municipalities affected by a more severe risk of depopulation. The methodology was based on the official database of LEADER projects provided by the Department of Rural Development of the Government of Arag & oacute;n. After cleaning and filtering the records, a homogeneous database was built at the municipal level, differentiating between productive and nonproductive projects. Descriptive statistics of central tendency and dispersion were then calculated, and nonparametric tests were applied. The research reveals that most local development initiatives are implemented in rural municipalities with a favourable or intermediate demographic situation. Consequently, although local development actions are supported in areas severely affected by depopulation, it is the municipalities with the best demographic situation that have a greater capacity to channel European financing.
A comprehensive approach to social well-being in peripheral non-urban areas involves examining its collective dimension and understanding how it manifests in various contexts and among different populations that are temporarily or permanently linked to these areas. This paper explores the impact of initiatives aimed at local socioeconomic revitalization through the reception of migrants. The study employs a qualitative methodology, including semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and focus groups. This article emphasizes the often-overlooked social dimension of well-being by investigating several cases from the Spanish and Italian peninsulas. It aims to shed light on the implications for rural areas undergoing revitalization, particularly in relation to concepts such as integration, location, and sustainability. To achieve this, the concept of social well-being is analyzed through four interconnected dimensions: a) social capital and social infrastructure, b) access to services and housing, c) homemaking, and d) environmental sustainability. Together, these dimensions help construct the notion of social territories, providing a foundation for understanding how well-being is developed in the peripheral rural areas of these two countries.
The results of a social research conducted in Sicily on neo-rural communities that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic as a challenge to the crises of our time are presented. The aim of this qualitative research is to understand the motivations why these neo-rural people have left the "comfort" of the city to move to the countryside, and how they are organising themselves in their new life. The ethnography was developed through fieldwork, participant observation, 10 semi-structured interviews and an open questionnaire. The results show an acceleration of the neo-rural model during the pandemic, with the transformation of the existing permaculture network in Sicily into a social movement in June 2020. Among the participants are professionals in agronomy, biology, informatic or education, who are now actively integrated in communities called "local nodes" (mutual support networks into the movement). This study aims to focus on this type of rurality organised according to specific designs and projects as opposed to other types of neo-rurality. This permaculture movement in Sicily pursues objectives such as ecoregionalism, energy self-sufficiency, fire prevention, seed conservation, environmental education, with the mission to protect and regenerate the island's biodiversity, implement the community circular economy and counteract the growing process of desertification.
This study conducts a bibliometric analysis of scientific research on rural depopulation in Spain between 1980 and 2023, a phenomenon increasingly relevant in the context of the so-called "Empty Spain". The objective is to identify trends, information gaps, and emerging approaches in the published literature to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of the field and guide future research. To this end, 127 articles published in geography journals relevant to the national context were selected, applying a bibliometric approach that considered temporal evolution, geographical scope, authorship, citation counts, and the main topics addressed. The results reveal a significant increase in scientific production since the year 2000, with a predominance of studies conducted in autonomous communities such as Castilla y Leon and provinces such as Valencia. However, important shortcomings were identified, including the scarcity of comparative studies with European countries, the limited attention to the landscape impacts of rural abandonment, and the lack of interdisciplinary approaches. In conclusion, the article highlights the need to expand research towards sociocultural, environmental, and spatial planning dimensions to develop more comprehensive and effective strategies for addressing depopulation in Spain.
This paper analyses the relationship between post-compulsory educational pathways and the expectations of rural youth to settle in rural areas by means of a survey carried out in 2022 among students from different educational pathways and fields of study in seven secondary schools in six rural Andalusian municipalities. First, we analyse the factors that influence the choice of academic or vocational pathway by rural students in the transition to post-compulsory education. Second, it explores whether there are differences in students' academic and mobility expectations depending on the pathway taken. Thirdly, we analyse the aspirations to remain in the territory according to the pathway followed, gender, social origin and the level of vulnerability of the territory. The results show differences in access to educational pathways according to social origin and gender. At the same time, the pathways contribute to projecting different academic and employment expectations in rural students. Finally, the potential of Intermediate Vocational Training as a factor of rootedness to the territory is evidenced, although this does not act in a singular way, but rather in conjunction with the territorial context, gender and social origin.
Despite the notable progress that the rural environment has experienced in recent years, the uncertainties that define it continue to be a challenge for territorial development. The need to act in the face of this situation, together with the new innovative and sustainable trends, the Good Practices of rural development are presented as optimal opportunities to confront the different problems and promote territorial development. This article presents the thematic and territorial analysis of different Best Practices in the Spanish rural area, the main focus of the study being the role played by women in general and in cases of entrepreneurship in particular, since it is mostly entrepreneurship that allows them to remain in the rural environment and thus develop their life project favourably. The results suggest that territorial development based on these experiences has a wide margin for improvement, so a proposal linked to the redefinition of the criteria for Good Practices is presented.
This article proposes a sociological approach to the enclaves of fruit and vegetable production for global markets, considering their specific logic of social production of space and nature. The aim of the research is to integrate nature into the problems of the sociology of agriculture when studying the social organisation of labour and production in intensive agricultural enclaves. To this end, we have selected two case studies to illustrate these processes empirically: i) the Petrolina-Juazeiro fruit-growing area (Brazil) located in the sub-middle irrigated valley of the San Francisco river in the 'sertao' area in the Brazilian Northeast and specialised in tropical and subtropical fruit crops (mainly grapes and mangoes) concentrated in a few large exporting companies; and ii) the fruit and vegetable enclave of the Region of Murcia (Spain) as a productive enclave of intensive agriculture located on the Spanish Mediterranean coast and specialised in horticultural (lettuce, tomato and others) and fruit (table grapes and stone fruit) crops for export, driven by medium and small farmers organised in cooperatives, as well as by large companies with local and/or international capital. It is proposed to understand the enclaves of intensive agriculture as a historical nature shaped by a particular 'ideology of nature', from which agro-industrial capital exploits the historically specific form of nature, in that it brings its conditions of possibility to the value relation through capitalisation and appropriation.
Population projections and forecasts below the regional level are widely used by governments for spatial planning, including service provision and infrastructure. However, projections and forecasts are often produced only at national and regional scales. We use autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models to forecast the rural population size of the 50 Spanish provinces up to 2040. Our results predict that the rural population in Spain will increase from 7.9 to 8.2 million inhabitants until 2040, but 25 out of 50 provinces will experience rural population shrinkage, particularly those in Northwest Spain. For instance, Ourense, Zamora, and Le & oacute;n are forecasted to lose more than 30 % of the rural population. Additionally, depopulation is expected to accelerate across provinces affected by rural population shrinkage.
The outbreak of COVID-19 implied a reversal of the dominant migratory trends in Spain's rural areas. In the years of the pandemic, rural areas were characterised by the retention of local residents and the arrival of immigrants from the cities. These changes augured a future demographic renaissance in these areas. However, the heterogeneity that characterises the Spanish countryside suggests that the impact of COVID-19 may have had a diverse demographic response. The aim of this article is to analyse the effects of the pandemic on rural demography. Using microdata from the Natural Movement, the Residential Variation Statistics and the Continuous Register for the period 2016-2021, we have created different categories of demographic behaviour, collecting the possible combinations of growth according to their components and subsequently applying a typology of municipalities developed by Goerlich. The results show an increase in municipalities with positive growth during the pandemic period due to the increase in internal immigrants. However, a detailed territorial analysis reveals a conjunctural demographic response to the pandemic and qualifies the dominant impression that rural areas benefited in a similar way from the outflows from urban centres.
This study analyses the causes and consequences of the phenomenon of depopulation in the Autonomous Community of Castilla y Leon, taking as an initial reference the development of its institutions of self-government. To carry out the study, the years between 1983, the year in which the Autonomous Community was formed, until 2023, have been taken as a time period. In the analysis, a study of the institutional, demographic, economic, cultural and social centralities is carried out; the identity of the Castilian-Leonese; the configuration of regional political elites and as well as the party model. For all this, the reading of articles, books and regulations about the subject.
Within a context of severe depopulation of many rural areas of Spain and Andalusia, and although now they are not the only ones affected by this phenomenon, the COVID19 pandemic, setting aside the tragedy that it entailed for the population as a whole and the deaths that it caused, is seen as a possible turning point that could reverse or at least halt the depopulation of rural areas. With this in mind, in this research, we explore the perceptions of the inhabitants of rural areas regarding the conditions in which local people got through the period of lockdown and restrictions and how this may affect the future of their areas. To this end, in 2021 we carried out a total of 114 in-depth interviews in 20 municipalities of Andalusia. The interviewees were classified according to different sociodemographic profiles and the types of area in which they lived. The results highlight that the perception they have is that they got through the pandemic better than city-dwellers to the extent that they enjoyed "better" conditions in terms of housing, access to open spaces, greater social distancing, and greater solidarity between the local residents. Most of them also think that these effects could serve to a greater or less extent to help stem depopulation.
The pandemic caused by COVID-19 and its consequences of forced confinement for the population highlighted the problems generated by the lack of quality open spaces in most dwellings in concentrated urban spaces. The desire for gardens and open spaces and the need to get out of these conditions generated, from the very beginning, a significant movement of interest in low-density spaces, especially peri-urban edges and rural areas, as a housing alternative. It seemed that this phenomenon was going to bring about a drastic change in the behaviour of the population and could reverse, or at least alleviate, the progressive depopulation of our rural areas. With a certain perspective, we can now analyse whether these movements have indeed meant a change in trend or whether they have been a temporary movement that has already been exhausted, as well as their real impact on the dynamics of their population. As an example of low-density rural areas, but with very different economic and physical characteristics, we will analyse this process in the regions of Las Merindades and Tierra de Campos, both significant examples of the rural areas of Castilla y Leon.
The socio-economic dynamism of rural areas depends as much on their internal resources and potential as on their external interactions. On this basis, the article aims to explain how external interactions (with different types of clusters) in rural areas can contribute to improving the internal dynamism of rural areas. To achieve this goal, a theoretical framework based on the notions of proximity and mobility is outlined, and literature on rural-urban relations too, which is used as a guide to study the external interactions of several rural areas in the Valencian Country. The empirical research combines statistical information to define local labour markets, with longitudinal qualitative information based on in-depth interviews with different actors to interpret these results. It is concluded that external contribution is effectively produced when there is the generation of forms of organised proximity between rural and urban areas that allow the generation of specific resources in rural areas, a fundamental element to generate symmetrical relations between rural and urban areas. And this external contribution is different depending on the type of cluster with which rural areas interact.
Mobility restrictions imposed by pandemic COVID-19 control had provoked a severe disruption in the migratory flows to rural areas. For many city residents, lockdowns created a sense of confinement, which led to a severe disruption of the traditional rural-to-urban migration flows-a shift that garnered media attention. The primary objective of this contribution is to assess the extent of this reversion and to measure the sustainability of population flows to rural municipalities in Castilla y Leon from urban areas. These flows are quantified and treated as time series, with a SARIMA model applied to estimate changes during the 20202021 biennium. The abruptness of the migratory shift since the implementation of lockdowns can be appreciated, as well as the speed at which it returned to a similar path to the pre-pandemic period, although with notable differences among provinces, especially those neighbouring Madrid and Bilbao compared to the rest of the region.
In analyses of the global agri-food chain, logistics and transport often take a back seat. However, the logistics channel plays a central role in a context where large retailers dominate logistics activities within their supply chains. This article examines how the commercial rationality of large retailers influences the restructuring of logistics activities in agro-export enclaves. The objective is twofold: to study the governance of the logistics sector in the Region of Murcia by supermarkets and the role played by quality standards in this process. The results show that the control of export logistics by European distribution chains has favoured the evolution of long-distance transport in the Region of Murcia towards standardised techno-intensive logistics that go beyond the traditional function of goods distribution. This transition allows supermarkets to extract more value and reinforces processes of corporate concentration and subordination within the logistics sector. The study takes a qualitative approach to the issue, based on in-depth interviews with Murcian logistics and transport companies that provide their services to European supermarket chains.
The hypothesis of a "rural reactivation" has been present since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and whether this crisis was going to imply a structural change in the demographic evolution of rural areas. This contribution analyzes the influence that the pandemic has had on the demographic dynamics of rural areas in Aragon, in a national context; specifically, in the evolution and distribution of the total population, and also of immigrants of foreign origin, including TCNs (foreigners from countries outside the EU). It analyzes how the pandemic has affected the evolution and distribution of these population groups by municipality size (rural, semi-rural and urban). Subsequently, attention will be paid to the evolution of some economic variables to understand how the pandemic has affected the foreign population group. For this, the statistical sources used are the Population Register and the Economically Active Population Survey (EPA) (INE). The results indicate that there has been no increase in registrations in the rural areas of Aragon and Spain, but there has been an increase in foreigners and also TCNs, although this statement can be qualified depending on the territories. Despite some growth of some groups in certain rural areas, results seems to indicate that the COVID-19 crisis has not led to a significant transformation in the face of the long-awaited "rural renaissance".
