This paper has two main aims: on the one hand, it provides an overview of recent metropolitan area population changes in Spain and assesses their spatial patterns through a typology and on the other hand, it analyses the impact of the current economic crisis on the aforementioned trends. The main source used is the Padrón continuo, the local continuous registration system providing official data updated every year on 1 January. Regarding metropolitan area delimitation, we have decided to use that employed by the Atlas de las Áreas Urbanas de España and to situate the population threshold at 500,000 inhabitants. Fifteen urban areas satisfied the requirements. Therefore, this paper analyses, for the 2001–2011 decade, population growth and urban expansion in the 15 Spanish largest metropolitan areas. In the first phase, suburbanisation intensified while the areas simultaneously received significant international migration inflows. The latter compensated Spaniards’ exit flows from core cities, which increased their population again. The economic crisis, which began in 2008, and its significant impact on the real estate sector, drew an end to this urban expansion and growth period, as it seems to have slowed Spanish metropolitan area growth and restrained suburbanisation dynamics. Consequently, in recent years, residential mobility has decreased and metropolitan areas have entered a new phase characterised by a reduction of both foreign immigration inflows and Spaniards’ movements away from core cities. Therefore, with few exceptions, urban centres are currently once again gaining Spanish residents or at least have stopped losing them.

Until 2008-the beginning of the economic crisis-Spanish metropolitan areas were characterised by relatively high residential mobility, suburbanisation, and urban sprawl. Municipalities situated farthest away from the core cities were the areas that were expanding more rapidly, while urban cores were losing native population that was being replaced by foreign immigrants. All these features presumably changed when the Great Recession hit the Spanish economy and the housing bubble burst. Using two INE (Spanish National Statistical Institute) data sources, the Padrón, or local register, and the Estadística de Variaciones Residenciales, or residential moves statistics, this paper studies changing trends in residential mobility and migration between 1999 and 2012 in Spain, focusing on the country's main urban areas: Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, and Seville. In particular, internal migration patterns during the economic expansion and crisis periods are compared. Despite the fact that high unemployment since 2008 has certainly affected pre-crisis trends, results show that residential mobility has decreased much less than expected. Nevertheless, territorial patterns have changed and are now much less polarised. Urban cores and inner-ring towns, which had previously been losing inhabitants because of people moving to outer-ring areas, are now losing less native population. By contrast, suburban municipalities, which had been the most attractive to internal migrants during the economic growth period, are now much less appealing, as corroborated by the fact that practically no new housing is being built in these areas and their housing market has plummeted.

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RESUMENEl objetivo de este trabajo es analizar las diferencias en la intensidad de la fecundidad que existen actualmente en el interior de las provincias españolas, particularmente la que se encuentra entre las capitales de provincia y sus restos provinciales, así como explicar la evolución reciente de dicho fenómeno en España. Mientras que la diferenciación en los valores de la fecundidad entre provincias ha sido objeto clásico de estudio, poco se sabe de las diferencias internas y de su evolución. Los resultados alcanzados en este trabajo indican la existencia de diferencias en dos direcciones: en las provincias más urbanas las capitales (especialmente aquellas con un término municipal más reducido y que no incluyen, por lo tanto, nuevas áreas periféricas de expansión) experimentan menor fecundidad que el resto de sus respectivas provincias; en cambio, en las provincias más rurales, donde la población joven se concentra en la capital, es ésta la que muestra una mayor fecundidad que los municipios rurales del resto de la provincia.Palabras clave: Fecundidad, Análisis territorial, Proceso de urbanización, Población extranjera, España. SPATIAL DIFFERENCES ON FERTILITY IN SPAIN: A PROVINCIAL BASED ANALYSIS ABSTRACTThe main goal of this paper is to analyse present fertility intensity differences within Spanish provinces, focusing on differences between province capitals and the rest of their respective provinces, and on how these have recently changed. Despite fertility differences between provinces are widely treated in the literature, differences within them and their changes across time are far less explored. Results indicate that there are two different trends. In capitals of urban provinces -particularly in capital cities with no space to grow and, therefore, affected by significant suburbanisation flows-, fertility is lower there than in the rest of the province. However, in rural provinces, where young cohorts concentrate in their capitals, fertility is higher here than in the rest of the province.

En los veinte años transcurridos entre 1960 y 1980, los movimientos migratorios han alcanzado en España una envergadura sin precedentes que ha modificado por completo la distribución territorial de los habitantes y las características sociodemográficas de las poblaciones locales.El trasvase de población supuso el despoblamiento de la mayor parte del territorio y la concentración de los habitantes en unas zonas muy determinadas. Efectivamente, durante este período, 32 provincias presentaron un saldo migratorio negativo y, de ellas, 22 contaron en 1981 un menor número de habitantes que en 1960; en su conjunto, perdieron 3.765.878 emigrantes netos, el 23,37 por 100 de su población inicial. Las 18 provincias restantes recibieron 3.514.497 inmigrantes, el 24,55 por 100 de su población de 1960, y todas ellas crecieron con mayor o menor intensidad. Finalmente, un cuarto de millón de emigrantes compusieron el saldo emigratorio de nuestro país con el extranjero.En el presente artículo nos proponemos argumentar dos puntos:1. Los movimientos migratorios han constituido el principal factor diferenciador de la población en el territorio, por su efecto directo sobre el volumen y la estructura y por su efecto indirecto sobre el crecimiento natural. RÍS32/85 pp. 43-65