La despoblación de la España rural: ¿Una anomalía dentro de Europa?

In recent years, a perception has spread in Spain that our process of rural depopulation is so extreme and overwhelming that it is unique, anomalous we could say, in Europe. In this paper we argue that this perception is not correct. Even though there are very striking contrasts between the population densities of different parts of the country, this does not mean that Spain has undergone a particularly anomalous or exceptional process of rural depopulation during the modern era. After revising the empirical evidence about rural population dynamics in Europe and in a set of large European countries, we identify those traits that were characteristic of the Spanish case and explain them in their historical context.