Depopulation In Spain

According to the demographer Francisco Zamora, in order to maintain the population structure in Spain until 2050 every woman had to have 7.5 babies. This breath-taking statement involving the whole country is mainly caused by one area: Central Plateau. Central Plateau in Spain is the biggest geographical unit in the Iberian Peninsula; it goes from Sierra Morena in the South to Picos de Europa in the North, it is also bounded by the Portuguese border and the Ebro River. However, this area has a surprising low density of inhabitants what leads to call it the Southern Lapland. This low density of inhabitants is called depopulation, which basically consists in no generational takeover. Spain is suffering from this issue, which involves several

As a consequence of this issue, many schools are closing just because there are not enough people to attend class. If we follow a logical argument seeking for a cause -in a nutshell- it is roads. What we can extract from this reasoning is that there is no way (or highway) for money to go inside the plateau. As Murray Newlands et al. –contributor of Forbes- says ‘communication can mean the difference between your business succeeding or failing’ what implies that companies are not likely to trade in inner Spain. If unemployment rates are high, the families will not settle in these rural areas. It is kind of a cycle; schools are closing because companies do not produce in the Plateau because there are not good roads to communicate. According to this idea, the lack of infrastructures is causing health, demographic and economic problems in the

This way, traditions are being forgotten: Quintos’ celebration is a good example to support this argument. In brief, this celebration arose a hundred years ago when the Spanish Government used to call teens to join the Army. For decades, it has been a celebration each year when young people celebrate their no-callings to the Army. As a consequence of the depopulation, new generations are not aware of these old costumes which will lead to the disappearance of a part of the History. This is stated by the Nobel Prize Mario Vargas Llosa in his article called Culture and Globalization (2000) where he expresses his feelings about the new era of global culture. Focused on Spain, it means that we are losing part of our ancient culture and, moreover, young generations will not be conscious of what has happened over the