While Spain experienced strong population growth throughout the 20th century, with the total population increasing from 18.6 million inhabitants in 1900 to 41.1 million in 2001, municipalities with less than 2000 inhabitants experienced considerable population losses due to high levels of migration from the countryside to urban areas. This phenomenon has been called the Spanish “rural exodus”. While this exodus began in some areas as early as the 19th century (Recaño, 2017; Silvestre, 2005), it intensified in the first 30 years of the 20th century. Then, after declining during the Civil War and the post-war period, it accelerated again from the 1950s to the 1970s (Collantes and Pinilla, 2019; García-Docampo and Otero-Enríquez, 2012; Gutiérrez et al., 2020; Pujadas, 2007). During this period, industrial, tourist and urban areas – particularly Madrid and Barcelona, but also other large cities and provincial capitals – underwent exponential growth as a result of internal migration. Simultaneously, small municipalities progressively lost population. The 1970s oil crisis and the recovery of democracy coincided with the end of this rural exodus, which occurred largely because of the depletion of demographic reserves. Since then, the main features of the dwindling populations of these small municipalities have been ageing and masculinisation (Comisionado del Gobierno para el Reto Demográfico, 2018), as these towns have not recovered from decades of population losses due to migration. These losses are relevant, as a municipality's population size is a key determinant not only of its ability to provide efficient services, but also of its capacity to reproduce itself and survive demographically (Camarero et al., 2009; Molinero, 2019; Pujadas and Bayona-i-Carrasco, 2019).

The following figures illustrate the long-lasting depopulation process in Spain and the predominance of small municipalities within the Spanish municipal structure. In 1900, 27.5% of the total population of Spain could be categorised as “rural population”, a concept applied to municipalities with under 2000 inhabitants by the Spanish National Statistical Institute (INE). In fact, at the time, 77.8% of municipalities in Spain had fewer than 2000 residents. The share of the rural population in the total population had decreased to 15.5% by 1950, and to 8.6%, by 1981. During the 1980s, the decline in the rural population slowed, as the number of people living in these small municipalities was already extremely low. Indeed, the share of the rural population in the total population had fallen to just 7.3% by 2001, and to 5.7% in 2021, when 2.7 million inhabitants were living in small municipalities (last available data). Out of the 8131 municipalities in Spain in 2021, 5871, or 72.2%, had less than 2000 inhabitants. Out of these 5871 municipalities, 61% currently have less than 1000 inhabitants, and less than 1.5 million people, or 3.1% of the Spanish population, live in them, even though these municipalities spatially occupy 40% of the country's territory (Recaño, 2017).

Due to their older population structure, natural growth is negative in the vast majority of the small municipalities; i.e., there are many more deaths than births. In addition, in most Spanish municipalities, internal migration growth is also negative. Therefore, in these areas, foreign immigration is an important determinant of future changes (Bayona-i-Carrasco and Gil-Alonso, 2013a; Camarero et al., 2013). During the first decade of the 21th century, many small municipalities started to grow (Collantes et al., 2014), as large numbers of foreign migrants entered the country in those years. Due in part to this influx of international migrants, the population of Spain reached more than 47 million in 2010. However, this period of demographic growth ended with the onset of the Great Recession. During the period from 2009 to 2014, Spain lost around 500,000 inhabitants, while small municipalities resumed their traditional depopulation trends. In this paper, our first aim is to answer the following questions: What effects did the new economic growth or “post-crisis” phase – defined as the period from 2014 to the onset of the Covid-19 crisis – have on the populations of small Spanish municipalities, and how did these effects differ from those in the economic crisis phase? Did they regain population as a whole? Did some municipalities gain population while others lost inhabitants? Which geographical characteristics of Spanish rural areas were associated with demographic revitalisation, and which were associated with depopulation?

The second aim of this paper is to carry out an initial analysis of the impact of the health and economic crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic on population growth in small municipalities. This exercise is interesting because it allows us to investigate whether the pandemic reinforced previous trends in small municipalities, or whether it introduced new demographic dynamics. This question is addressed by comparing the population registered in the Padrón continuo (local continuous register) on 1 January 2020 and on 1 January 2021 (the last official data available at the time of writing). Obviously, the Covid-19 pandemic had an impact on all demographic phenomena, increasing the number of deaths in municipalities with older populations, reducing the number of births (INE, 2021), and changing migratory flows. As international immigration slowed down during 2020 due to lockdowns and the closure of international borders (Arango et al., 2021 Fanjul, 2021), internal migration played a more prominent role, both because of its new intensity, and because the direction of flows changed (Del Romero and Arroyo, 2022; González-Leonardo et al., 2022; Recaño, 2020). Focusing on small municipalities is particularly important, as press reports¹ and provisional statistical data (Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2021; IDESCAT, 2022) indicate that there was a population flow from large cities to small towns. These were mainly people who were seeking to escape urban lockdowns and to live in less dense areas with better environmental conditions (Hamidi et al., 2020). We believe that examining whether these new migration flows from cities to rural areas have reversed depopulation trends, and have thus redrawn the spatial patterns that existed before the Covid-19 pandemic, is a good point from which to start predicting the demographic future of small municipalities.

In a dynamic definition of the term, depopulation refers to a chronic loss of population in a municipality that precludes the possibility that it will recover its previous maximum population size (Johnson and Lichter, 2019). According to Pinilla and Sáez (2017), depopulation is a demographic and spatial phenomenon that can be explained by economic factors, and that can, in many cases, be counteracted only by designing and implementing specific policies for this purpose (Collantes and Pinilla, 2020). Depopulation processes tend to be long-lasting, and to have distinctive features in each country depending on its stage of industrial development and of urbanisation (Bairoch, 1985). Britain led the way in Europe, followed by Belgium and the Netherlands, then by France and Germany, and, finally, by the southern European countries, including Italy and Spain. At the beginning of these processes of industrialisation and urbanisation, the rural population was declining slowly. After the Second World War, there was a period of acceleration in most countries. Like in Spain, rural depopulation began in Italy in the final decades of the 19th century, and accelerated between the 1950s and the 1970s (Del Panta and Detti, 2019). While rural depopulation slowed in the most advanced European countries in the 1960s, in the countries that were lagging behind, including in Spain, it did not start to slow until the 1980s (Collantes and Pinilla, 2011).

Some of the economic causes of rural depopulation are obvious: a change in the economic model, such as a shift from a traditional agrarian society to an industrial and service-based economy, can lead to a rural exodus (Molinero, 2022). However, the causes of rural emigration are diverse. Although economic considerations, and especially the desire to get a better job, are the most intuitive reasons for moving to other areas, some studies have suggested that the reasons why people move from small towns to cities go beyond a desire for better job opportunities. Other potential reasons for such moves include a desire to pursue educational opportunities, personal issues, and the feeling of belonging or the desire for personal experiences in urban areas. Indeed, several multidimensional issues are involved in the process of depopulation, which is always accompanied by social changes in rural communities (Rodríguez-Soler et al., 2020). In addition, in many European countries, low fertility levels and population ageing have led to the expansion of areas with negative natural growth, and particularly of rural areas (Johnson et al., 2015). From a demographic perspective, depopulation tends to be cumulative, as municipalities that have lost population in the past are also among those that are most likely to do so in the future, which contributes to the perpetuation of regressive trends in the rural population (Nieto-Masot et al., 2020; Reynaud et al., 2020).

In rural areas experiencing negative natural growth, a potential population increase can only come from positive migration growth; i.e., from more people arriving and settling in those areas than are leaving them. Moreover, these flows, whether international or national, must be big enough to offset negative natural dynamics. International migration has been one of the main sources of population recovery in small municipalities, both in the United States (Johnson and Lichter, 2019) and in Europe (Kordel et al., 2018; Rye and O'Reilly, 2020). Hence, there is a large body of academic literature that has analysed this phenomenon at both the international comparative level (Jentsch and Simard, 2009; Halfacree, 2008; Hugo and Morén, 2008; Milbourne, 2007) and the individual country level in the last two decades. For instance, in southern Europe (Döner et al., 2020), the cases of Greece (Kasimis et al., 2003), Italy (Reynaud et al., 2020) and Portugal (Fonseca, 2008) have been analysed. Moreover, international immigration settlement patterns in rural areas in Spain have been studied, both in the country as a whole (García-Abad and Otero-Enríquez, 2014; Lardiés-Bosque, 2018; Morén and Solana, 2004; Morén-Alegret et al., 2018) and in specific autonomous communities (Camarero and Sampedro, 2019; Delgado-Viñas, 2019; Esparcia, 2002; Gil-Alonso and Bayona-i-Carrasco, 2021; García-Coll and Sánchez-Aguilera, 2005; Solé et al., 2012). The results of these studies show that the arrival of foreign immigrants in rural areas has helped to counteract population losses; to change population trends; and, in some cases, to even reverse these trends. However, these effects have varied over time depending on fluctuations in the international economy that can lead to population changes (Gil-Alonso and Thiers, 2019). In addition, the effects of the arrival of foreign immigrants have varied across different parts of the country, strengthening long-standing polarisation processes between the more dynamic areas and the more regressive rural areas (Camarero, 2020; Roquer and Blay, 2008). Molinero (2022), for instance, has argued that the former areas are mainly located in peripheral (coastal) provinces, but also in some interior development axes; whereas the latter areas are mainly located in inland Spain. Among these more regressive areas, the author distinguished between “remote” rural areas and “ambivalent” areas, which are also largely located in the interior provinces, but are more economically diverse and resilient. However, changes in the functions of rural space are especially visible in the coastal regions. There, agricultural activities have become less relevant, while industrial activities, including agro-industry related to intensive agriculture, and above all services, have become increasingly important. Indeed, these new activities in the peripheral rural areas have helped them to retain their native populations, while also attracting international immigrants.

Internal migration, which is a key factor in population distribution in many European countries (Rowe et al., 2019) and in the world (Rees et al., 2017), has also had a very diverse impact on rural areas (Rivera, 2020). Generally, most Spanish rural municipalities have experienced negative internal migration growth: i.e., more people have left than have arrived. This internal migration growth has been particularly negative in places where population dynamics are especially regressive; that is, in small municipalities with an older, masculinised population that is decreasing. As more women than men migrate from villages to urban areas, 85% of the municipalities with less than 1000 inhabitants currently have a predominantly male population (Comisionado del Gobierno para el Reto Demográfico, 2018). The opposite trend has occurred in large urban areas, which have, in recent years, become increasingly attractive (Otero-Enríquez et al., 2019) as global centres where human capital is concentrated. These global cities (like Madrid and Barcelona) have attracted highly educated young people, most of whom come from medium and small cities, rather than from small municipalities. Recently, internal migration growth has even become negative in many provincial capitals of inland Spain as a consequence of this brain drain (González-Leonardo, 2021).

However, not all small municipalities have lost population as a result of internal migration. Two categories of small municipalities have received more internal migrants than they have lost. The first category includes municipalities that are located on the periphery of large urban areas (Bayona-i-Carrasco and Pujadas, 2020), or of large, medium or even small cities. For example, the municipalities located around county capitals in Catalonia (Gil-Alonso and Bayona-i-Carrasco, 2021) have benefited from suburbanisation flows. In addition to these small municipalities affected by urban sprawl, there is a second category of rural towns that are located further away from urban areas, and that have also attracted internal immigrants and gained population. This phenomenon, known as “counterurbanisation” (Berry, 1980 Mitchell, 2004), is not common in Spain. It tends to occur in rural areas of great scenic beauty and high environmental value, particularly in those located in high mountains or near the coast. As a result, these areas have managed to develop tourist activities that have enabled them to retain population and attract new inhabitants (Solé et al., 2012). Some of these new residents, called “neo-rurals”, have left the city to move closer to nature; while others have brought their urban lifestyles to the countryside, creating rural gentrification processes (Paniagua, 2002; Solana-Solana, 2006, 2010).

Another factor that can affect the survival of small municipalities is that some are used temporarily by a floating population who live in them for part of the year, mainly on holidays or weekends. The population of these towns multiplies during these periods. “Numerous studies by the Autonomous Communities estimate that, in summer, the rural floating population multiplies on average by 5 or 6. In smaller towns it increases by 2 to 3 times, and in the more tourist towns – which have sports facilities and other attractive elements – it multiplies by 10 times or even more” (Molinero and Alario, 2022: 195).

According to the 2011 census, the percentage of the population in small municipalities who belonged to the non-resident “linked” population was high, ranging from 29.5% for villages with less than 100 inhabitants to 21% in villages with between 100 and 500 inhabitants (Pujadas and Bayona-i-Carrasco, 2019). Many of these part-time residents, who might have been born in the village or come from an urban area, have restored old houses or built new ones, and thus have helped to prevent the abandonment of these small towns. Hence, while the permanent population has been decreasing in these municipalities, the number of houses has been increasing (Molinero and Alario, 2022). This housing stock of secondary homes used by a temporary, floating population is particularly important in the smaller villages. In fact, in many of these villages, there are more secondary homes than main residences (Bayona-i-Carrasco and Gil-Alonso, 2013b).

Therefore, global figures on the rural population crisis reflect a wide range of local situations resulting from the multiple changes that have occurred in the rural areas of Spain since the mid-20th century. The shift from the paradigm of traditional agriculture to the paradigm of productivist, modernised and mechanised agriculture produced a surplus of labour. In response to this change, millions of people migrated from rural areas to cities in search of a better life. More recently, the third paradigm of integrated rural development and territorial cohesion, which is supported by the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), has sought to promote the endogenous development of rural areas: i.e., development leading to the revival of rural areas and the return of people to them. However, these policies have not had the same results throughout Spain, or across Europe as a whole (Molinero, 2022). To make this rebirth possible, the “urban-rural divide” must be eliminated, or at least mitigated. Differences between urban and rural area in terms of socio-economic conditions and the availability of services should be minimised to improve the quality of life and the opportunities of rural inhabitants. Hence, rural inhabitants are calling for better access to the welfare state, and have argued that government services should be fairly distributed to citizens throughout the country, regardless of their place of residence (Camarero, 2022). As teleworking has become more widespread in the wake of the Covid-19 health crisis, some authors have identified a fourth potential paradigm of rural development: that of a complex, open and multifunctional rural society (Molinero, 2022). To assess how far we are from achieving such a shift, we need to know where the country stands. To this end, this paper analyses the emerging spatial patterns of population growth and decline in small municipalities in the 21st century, and the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on them.

In this paper, microdata from the Padrón Continuo, the continuous population registration system that is supervised and coordinated by the Spanish National Statistical Institute (INE), are used. This system provides official population data for Spanish municipalities on 1 January of every year. The 21st-century demographic changes are analysed using population data from 2001 to 2021, which allows us to compare population changes in the period of intense economic growth with those that occurred during the deep economic crisis and the subsequent expansion phase. In addition, the initial effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on population growth are studied. To this end, 5678 municipalities with less than 2000 inhabitants² in 2009³ were selected. These municipalities represented almost 70% of the more than 8000 municipalities in Spain in 2009. A total of 2,791,582 people, or just 6.0% of the Spanish population, were living in these municipalities in that year. Their population in 2009 was taken as a reference because, after years of demographic growth and foreign immigration, this year marks a turning point for the population figures of many of these municipalities, largely due to the effects of the economic crisis.

Besides population stock data, birth and death figures obtained from Movimiento Natural de la Población (MNP) microdata were used to calculate natural growth rates by population size and their changes from 2001 to 2019, which was the last year for which data were available at the time of writing. Finally, migration growth was estimated by subtracting natural growth (births minus deaths) from total population growth in a given period.

For the analysis, the municipalities with less than 2000 inhabitants were classified according to their population growth during the 21st century. Cumulative annual growth rates were calculated for two periods. The first period, corresponding to the years before the economic crisis, runs from 1 January 2001 to 1 January 2009; while the second period, which covers the years affected by both the deep economic crisis and the recovery, runs from 1 January 2009 to 1 January 2020.⁴ The following formula was used for this purpose:

Where n represents the number of years, P_i the initial population and Pi+n the final population of the municipality under analysis.

The resulting rates were used to assign the municipalities to nine separate categories. The categories were formed based on whether the municipalities’ population growth was positive, stable or negative in the first period (2001–2009) and in the second period (2009–2020). This resulted in nine different combinations. In those municipalities where growth ranged from −0.1% to 0.1%, population was considered stable. Table 1 and Figure 4 show the results obtained, and present the geographic distribution of each category.

Finally, in a last section, preliminary data for 2021 were analysed to determine the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the municipalities of the typology used in this research. As data on birth and deaths were not yet available at the time of writing, the analysis was based only on Padrón continuo stock data.

The Spanish population grew from 41,116,842 in 2001 to 47,385,107 in 2021, according to the most recent Padrón continuo of 2021. Thus, over the first two decades of the 21st century, the country gained 6.2 million people, which represents an annual growth rate of 0.71%. International immigration boosted population growth rates in the early years of the century (1.62% from 2001 to 2009). From 2009 to 2020, these population growth rates declined to barely 0.14%.⁵ However, not all municipalities followed these patterns, as the international migration boom mainly affected large municipalities. In small municipalities, population growth was also positive from 2003 to 2007, and even increased by 24,000 inhabitants in 2006. Thus, when population size is taken into account, it is clear that the positive population growth stage mainly concerned municipalities with more than 1000 inhabitants. In municipalities with 500 to 1000 residents, population growth was positive, but at much lower levels. Nonetheless, the population growth trend in Spain ended secular population losses in many small municipalities. However, among municipalities with less than 500 inhabitants, there was no such recovery, and the population continued to fall (Figure 1).

During the economic crisis, small municipalities again began to lose population, with the heaviest losses occurring in 2012. From then on, growth rates slowly recovered, but remained consistently negative until the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The population decreased mainly because foreign immigration fell while emigration increased. Additionally, the Padrón continuo data were corrected through the deletion of emigrants who had left Spain a few years previously, but were still registered in the country. While this process initially affected non-EU citizens only, it was later applied to EU citizens as well.⁶

The period of economic crisis was followed by a period of slow economic recovery lasting from around 2015 to 2019, during which the populations of the largest municipalities were growing once again, initially slowly, and then at a faster pace. At the other end of the spectrum, the populations of municipalities with 1000 to 2000 inhabitants barely stabilised, while the smallest municipalities continued to lose inhabitants (Figure 1).

These trends were interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic. During this period, substantial shares of urban residents wanted to live in less dense areas because of the lockdowns, while cities lost the capacity to attract new residents for the same reasons. These shifts in preferences led to abrupt changes in population. For the first time since 2009, small municipalities started to gain population, while large cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants experienced significant losses (Figure 2). However, whether these developments represent a change of paradigm or a temporary shift in internal migration remains to be seen.

As a result of these changes, the population of municipalities with less than 2000 inhabitants accounted for only 5.7% of the population of Spain in 2021. Thus, these municipalities lost 210,000 inhabitants (i.e., −8.2% of the initial population) over the first two decades of the century. As Figure 2 shows, the relationship between population growth and municipality size was heterogeneous. In general terms, the larger the municipality, the more its population grew; except in the largest cities, where the dominant reason for population loss was suburbanisation. Despite this overall pattern, population growth was positive in a considerable share of the small municipalities during the first period (2001–2009). However, except in a very few cases, population growth was no longer positive in the second stage (2009–2020). Dispersion was even greater in 2020, when, because of the pandemic, the relationship between population growth and municipality size was reversed. In 2020, small municipalities had extremely diverse growth levels – an issue that will be explored in the last section of this paper – with half of municipalities with less than 500 inhabitants even experiencing positive growth. These figures were unprecedented in the 21st century.

The initial impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the population distribution throughout Spain can be analysed using Padrón continuo data for January 2021. First, it should be emphasised that the population figures for this year broke with some of the previous population trends. Due to internal migration flow changes (González-Leonardo et al., 2022), increasing mortality and decreasing birth rates, the Spanish cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants lost population (Figure 1). The magnitude of this decline was similar to that of 2013, when, due to the depth of the economic crisis and changes in how the Padrón was managed, especially concerning EU immigrants, a loss of around 170,000 inhabitants was reported. Unlike then, when municipalities of all sizes lost population, in 2020, the group of municipalities with less than 50,000 inhabitants gained population. This increase was especially significant in municipalities with less than 2000 inhabitants, which had a 0.77% growth rate (compared to a −0.45% growth rate between 2001 and 2020, see Table A.2 in the Appendix). It was a relevant change for small municipalities, even though it was partly fictitious: the registration of many people in the towns where they had a secondary residence, presumably in order to avoid the lockdowns, contributed to the growth of the registered population in these small towns.

Regarding the spatial patterns of this growth, it can be observed that the pre-Covid-19 trends and those in 2020 are strongly correlated, which means that pre-existing spatial inequalities were reinforced during the first pandemic year. In all the typology categories, the growth rates were higher in 2020 than in the 2017–2020 period. However, two groups, the negative-negative and negative-stable categories, still lost population, albeit at a slower rate; i.e., at a growth rate closer to zero (Figure 7).

Figure 8 shows the distribution of municipalities by population growth rate in greater detail. While more than 75% of the municipalities in the most dynamic categories had positive growth in 2020, the proportion of municipalities with positive growth was less than 50% in the most regressive categories. These growth differences are confirmed, from a geographical point of view, by the map in Figure 9. Indeed, among the municipalities that experienced the heaviest population losses during the two decades analysed, and that continued to lose population in 2020, there are many small villages in Castile and Leon, particularly those in the western provinces; some small municipalities in Aragon, Castile-La Mancha and Extremadura; as well as certain villages situated far from the coast in Galicia, Catalonia and Andalusia.

During the first two decades of the 21st century, population growth in small Spanish municipalities showed signs of increasing spatial polarisation. The two main explanatory features of this tendency were a municipality's population size and its geographic location. In general, the smaller a municipality was, the more population it lost in relative terms. However, not all small municipalities lost population. Growth rates were positive in several municipalities, largely because of their geographic location. Previous research on Catalan data showed that only small municipalities situated on the peripheries of large metropolitan areas (benefiting from suburbanisation), or in areas where the economy was based on tourism or agro-industry, were able to maintain positive growth during the period analysed (Gil-Alonso and Bayona-i-Carrasco, 2021). Current results for Spain as a whole confirm the importance of geographic location as a factor in rural population change, and are in line with other researchers’ findings for several developed countries. Indeed, rural depopulation is an inevitable process, as societies shift from an agrarian economy in which 70% or more of the active population work in agriculture, to an industrial economy, and later to a service economy. In this context, small villages that rely on tourism (whether on the coast, near ski resorts or in picturesque locations) can maintain or even increase their population. Similarly, some small municipalities may be able to maintain or even grow their populations by interacting with medium-sized or larger localities. Such relationships are clearly visible in small towns located in or near peri-urban areas, and thus in the outer ring of large metropolitan areas. Moreover, such interactions can help to explain the population changes in small municipalities that are located far from urban areas, but that maintain links to them through family, social or economic networks. By contrast, the absence of these types of bonds or of interactions may be expected to act in the opposite direction, leading to the depopulation or total abandonment of smaller villages, especially of those in the most remote rural areas with weak communication networks (Li et al., 2019). The diversity of population dynamics found in Spain by Molinero and Alario (2022), who distinguished between deep/regressive rural areas and dynamic/progressive areas, can also be observed in the United States. While many American counties far from metropolitan areas show negative population growth, there are others that show positive dynamics; and, as Johnson and Lichter (2019) have pointed out, not all of these counties are in tourist or retirement areas. These counties have, however, managed to enhance the value of their resources and establish positive economic and demographic relations with other regions.

Population shifts and economic changes cannot be separated from one another, since the latter is one of the main determinants of population growth through its influence on migratory flows. The population recovery phase that many small municipalities were experiencing in the first decade of the 21st century ended with the onset of the 2008 economic crisis, which led to a reduction in international immigrant flows. In the period after the economic crisis, population recovery was mainly observed in large cities, which are gateways for foreign newcomers and human capital attraction poles, and in intermediate-sized towns, particularly in those located on the peripheries of cities. By contrast, small municipalities were scarcely touched by this population recovery trend. In fact, municipalities with less than 2000 inhabitants have not regained their 2009 population levels, and the smallest ones even continue to lose inhabitants. Their less diverse economies could explain why small municipalities take longer to recover after recessions. Indeed, the post-crisis economic recovery had hardly any impact on most small municipalities.

The Covid-19 pandemic represented a turning point in previous population trends, reversing the relationship between population growth and population size. In other words, big cities were the spatial units that were losing the most people, while small municipalities were growing rapidly due to the arrival of urban residents fleeing lockdowns. In reality, many of these new inhabitants registered in the Padrón in a village where they already had a second home, or where they had previously lived (Molinero and Alario, 2022). Regardless of the reasons why, small villages as a whole began to recover. However, population did not grow for small municipalities in all categories or in every region of Spain. At this point, two questions arise. The first is whether these trends will or will not continue; in other words, whether the growth observed in rural areas in 2020 will continue over time, or whether it represents a one-time event attributable to the Covid-19 pandemic. The second is regarding the spatial relevance of this change, since the results of this research seem to show that this new growth has reinforced internal differences between the smallest municipalities and between the different areas of Spain.

The exceptionality of the pattern observed in 2020 underlines the importance of migration growth to population changes. Since natural growth was generally negative in small municipalities for several decades, migratory growth was the component that determined whether the populations of these municipalities grew or declined. Therefore, their dependence on economic fluctuations was strengthened, as migratory flows tend to be extremely sensitive to them.

Finally, the results of our analysis of population dynamics indicate that it will be very difficult for the populations of most small Spanish municipalities to recover. In these towns, natural growth was nearly always negative, and did not depend on economic fluctuations, but was instead the result of a very old age population structure and a small reproductive-age population. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that the number of births in these municipalities will increase, especially within a context of very low fertility rates. The unstable and selective nature of migration flows should also be taken into account. Thus, it appears that more than half of the small municipalities analysed, or about 3300 of them, representing 40% of all Spanish municipalities, are facing a bleak demographic future. These unpromising prospects, which affect a substantial part of the country's territory, have recently attracted political attention, and have given rise to geopolitical concepts such as “the Spanish Lapland” (Cerdà, 2017) or “the Empty Spain” (Del Molino, 2016), both of which focus on Spanish depopulation. In fact, the latter concept has been turned into a political movement called “the Emptied Spain”, which aims to defend the interests of the most depopulated provinces. While it has so far been successful in Teruel and Soria, the movement is seeking influence national politics. The creation by the present Spanish government of a Vice-Presidency for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, which is responsible, among other objectives, for the design and implementation of policies to counteract depopulation, could represent a first sign of progress. Moreover, the Covid-19 crisis has also reminded people of the value of rural spaces, not only in Spain, but throughout the European Union, as many other member states are also affected by rural depopulation. This is why the new President of the European Union, Ursula von der Leyen, has created a Vice-Presidency for Democracy and Demography, with one of its functions being “coordinating work on a long-term vision for rural areas, including on the effects of demographic change on connectivity and access to services”.⁷ It is this same political impulse that explains why the Next Generation EU Funds for European reconstruction have rural development as one of their objectives, along with social cohesion, integration, inclusion and the reduction of regional disparities. We are, therefore, facing a new political scenario that could open up new opportunities for Spanish and European rural areas.