La Tasa De Urbanización En España A Finales Del Siglo XVIII: El Problema De Las Agrociudades

In this article a new estimate of the regional urbanization rates in Spain by late 18th century is offered. It is based on the combination of two criteria: population size and employment structure. While the former criterion has a long tradition, the latter is novel. The result of our approach is urbanization rates that are significantly lower than the one yielded by exclusively using the traditional criterion of population size. Operating with the 5,000 inhabitants threshold, the share of Spanish urban population falls from 23,7 to 14,5 per cent. The decrease is larger in southern regions. These results shed light on the importance of the “agro-cities” in late 18th century Spain. In sum, our approach shows that urbanization rates in Spain were lower, closer to the European average and more consistent with the relative level of economic development of our country in the Ancien Régime.