Population aging, declining birth rates, and the consequences of rural to urban migration since the mid-20th century have raised alarms in Spain and Europe. One might think that this problem doesn’t affect Andalusia, with its territorial extension surpassing that of several European countries, being the most populated region in Spain (with over 8.6 million inhabitants, 18% of the national population) and, unlike other areas, continues to grow (1.3 million more in the last decade). However, the region is not immune to general demographic trends, and its current growth is not balanced.
Therefore, the Junta has taken action and is finalizing a Strategy against the demographic challenge, a roadmap based on a detailed prior diagnosis with a major overarching goal of reaching 10 million inhabitants and the country’s per capita income (30,000 euros) and several specific objectives to achieve that, including reducing by 80% the population loss that has been recorded in the last decade in 95 red-flagged areas on the map through cross-cutting measures.
These are the locations defined in the draft of the Strategy, which is open to public input until April 20th, classified as «priority action». The first tier in which Andalusian municipalities have been divided, to a greater or lesser extent, have been losing residents slowly but steadily.
These are residents who, for the most part, do not leave Andalusia but migrate to areas that also face demographic challenges that the Strategy aims to address, such as the need to provide services to an increasingly growing population that, in some cases, is growing at a faster rate than can be managed.
The prior diagnosis prepared to design this Strategy, coordinated by the Department of Justice, Local Administration, and Public Function but involving the entire Andalusian government, reveals that there is no widespread depopulation issue in Andalusia but rather an unbalanced distribution of inhabitants in the territory.
Half of Andalusians reside in thirty capital cities and large towns but no single city is home to more than 20% of the total population, whereas in regions like Aragon, only its capital, Zaragoza, concentrates over 51% of all residents.
Moreover, a defining feature of Andalusia is its significant network of medium-sized cities that connect a large part of the territory, with 253 municipalities hosting another 22.4% of the population.
Given the size of our region, with 785 municipalities (among which 5,671 population centers are distributed as Autonomous Local Entities, villages, townships, and scattered settlements), most of the territory is rural, with 337 municipalities (almost 43% of the total) where only 8.9% of Andalusians reside, primarily small municipalities in inland regions and mountainous areas.
The lack of services, between myth and reality
These are municipalities that, contrary to common belief and precisely because of the importance of medium-sized cities in the region, do not have as limited access as often thought to major transportation routes, hospitals, health and emergency centers, schools and institutes, or essential social services that, nevertheless, the Strategy against the demographic challenge also plans to further integrate.
So why, if they have services and an enviable quality of life compared to major cities, do 55% of Andalusian municipalities lose population for over a decade? Experts working with the Junta on the Strategy design agree that several factors play a role. One of them is the skewed negative image that rural areas are often attributed, lacking facilities and services that are not always the reality. Another factor is the lack of a culture of progress and development within the community, the notion that «young people have to leave because there are no opportunities here.»
However, there are concrete issues, such as lack of available housing, or abandoned houses requiring costly renovations. Decades of lacking initiatives to promote projects offering entrepreneurial and job opportunities so that young people consider staying in their hometown without sacrificing a future career path that fulfills their legitimate aspirations.
Where such efforts have been made, with innovative approaches that leverage local possibilities, the demographic decline has been halted, with examples like Benarrabá (Málaga) and their firefighting goats or Santiago de Calatrava (Jaén) and their successful initiative of converting the former Civil Guard barracks into rental housing for families with young children for 30 euros.
It is crucial to bear in mind that modern technologies now allow many professional activities to be carried out remotely. The expansion of telecommuting after the COVID pandemic, which has also increased interest in living in healthier and more natural environments, has led to a new profile of digital nomads across Europe interested in the quality of life offered by rural Andalusia.
In addition to retaining the population in the region, it is essential to attract new residents because the generalized aging of the population in the entire Western world also poses a threat to Andalusia. In fact, the population growth in the region is not due to a positive natural increase but to migration. A migration that, when regular and orderly, presents an opportunity.
With these premises, the draft of the Strategy against the demographic challenge identifies the municipalities where measures to counteract depopulation need to be focused, categorizing them into three groups based on their priority, considering population density, population and natural growth rate, aging and dependency index, migration rate, and average age of the population.
Based on these criteria, 95 municipalities of priority action have been identified, with over half concentrated in Granada (the Andalusian province with the highest number of local entities) with 30, and Almería with 22. The rest are distributed among 15 in Córdoba, 11 in Jaén, 9 in Huelva, 5 in Málaga, and 3 in Sevilla. Cádiz is the only province where no municipality in this situation has been identified, even though the capital is one losing residents.
In a second tier, the Strategy includes 208 municipalities of medium priority, and in the third, another 156 with low priority. The challenge is to, within 10 years, by 2035, halt the population loss in 80% of the affected areas so that these municipalities survive, and major cities, coastal areas, or the Guadalquivir Valley do not become saturated by continuing to attract residents leaving rural Andalusia, becoming the sole magnets for migrant populations.
Anticipating the problem
These are objectives that the Minister of Justice, Local Administration, and Public Function has described as «ambitious yet achievable,» especially because Andalusia has started addressing these issues before reaching the critical situation experienced by other regions. The Government of Juanma Moreno has taken proactive steps by including, for the first time, a management center with specific competencies in demographic challenges into the Junta’s structure: the General Secretariat of Local Administration, led by María Luisa Ceballos, with extensive experience in local government as the former Mayor of Priego de Córdoba and President of a provincial Council.
However, the Andalusian Government is fully aware that the demographic challenge is a cross-cutting issue that involves the entire government. Therefore, a key focus of the designed Strategy is to integrate the demographic perspective into all public policies to promote equal opportunities throughout the Andalusian territory and analyze its impact on rural environments.
Years ago, public administrations put on purple glasses to define their actions with a gender perspective, and the 2030 Agenda has introduced the importance of an environmental perspective to ensure sustainable development. However, this also involves a balance between territories and equal opportunities not only between different countries or regions within a country but also between urban and rural areas within the same region, in this case, Andalusia.
CONSULT THE LIST OF PRIORITY ACTION MUNICIPALITIES HERE: