Industrial Urbanization History and Evolution (1800-1975)

Industrial Urbanization: 19th Century to 1975

This period includes industrial urbanization from the beginning of industrialization in the 19th century to the economic crisis of 1975. Its main features are:

• a) The rate of urbanization experienced large growth, as the increase in urban population exceeded the rural population.
• b) Factors favoring this growth were administrative (new provincial division), economic, and social development. The modern city industry attracted the rural population.
• c) The process occurred in four distinct stages.

The Four Stages of Urban Development

Early 19th Century to Mid-Century

Until the mid-19th century, the concentration of population in cities was small (24.6%). Given the weakness of industrialization, the main urbanization factors were provincial capitals and maritime trade.

Mid-19th Century to the Civil War (1936)

From the mid-19th century to the Civil War (1936), urban growth was revealed and the urbanization rate almost doubled. The main factor of urban growth was industry, which attracted population from the countryside to industrialized cities.

Civil War and Post-War Slowdown

During the Civil War and the post-war period, urban growth slowed. Cities deteriorated and suffered supply problems. The Franco regime, given its little support in the most urbanized regions, favored the permanence of the population in the countryside. The adoption of autarkic policies that promoted basic industry allowed the growth of the cities where they were installed. Thus, the urban-industrial development triangle began to form with northwest vertices in Madrid, Barcelona, and Bilbao.

The Development Stage (1960-1975)

The stage of development (1960 to 1975) saw the fastest economic and urban growth of the century. The factors that allowed it were industry and, to a lesser extent, tertiary activities:

• Industry: Industry brought a significant amount of labor from rural areas to industrialized cities. This, coupled with high natural growth, increased the urban population by 30%. The main urban and industrial areas were still part of the Northeast, but industry and urbanization spread to the Cantabrian coast, the Mediterranean, the Ebro, the Madrid regional environment, and peripheral cities elected as polar axes of development: the Galician Atlantic coast axis, the Seville-Cadiz-Huelva triangle in Andalusia, and the Castilian arc (Valladolid-Palencia-Burgos).
• Tertiary Activities: These played a less prominent role in urbanization. However, certain sectors were responsible for the large metropolitan areas where advanced tertiary activities are located (Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Valencia), the tourist centers of the Mediterranean, the Balearic and Canary Islands, and some non-industrialized provincial capitals in the two plateaus, which were dominated by the traditional tertiary sector.

Large cities accounted for population growth during this period and extended in space, forming large peripheries. These eventually joined neighboring municipalities, forming metropolitan areas and other urban zones.