The process of population concentration in cities is a worldwide phenomenon—not yet finished—which has led to a widespread rural exodus and abandonment of rural areas. In Spain it occurred very abruptly from 1960, leaving numerous population centers abandoned in the northern half of the country. It is the so-called “empty Spain”. This problem has recently transcended from the local to the European level and has become part of all political agendas such as “the fight against the demographic challenge”, which the European Commission will finance in the next programming period 2021–2027. However, retaining the population in rural areas is a very complex problem that is difficult to solve. The aim of this article is to show that a polycentric system of towns, well distributed throughout the territory—as happens in Extremadura—has sufficient capacity to stabilize the population in the rural environment and is a viable and global alternative to the demographic challenge through the rururban partnerships and the integrated territorial investments. This article studies, as an empirical reality and demonstration effect, the autonomous community of Extremadura, an inland region bordering Portugal, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula, which has no abandoned nucleus and still maintains 50% of its population in rural areas, compared to a national average of less than 20%.
In 2020, a special issue titled “Sustainable Rural Development: Strategies, Good Practices and Opportunities” was launched, in which 16 papers were published [...]
Extremadura es una región eminentemente rural, por cuantoque las veinte ciudades principales tan sólo aglutinan a la mitad de lapoblación. En las últimas dos o tres décadas se han producido profundastransformaciones que han supuesto el paso de una economía agrariade subsistencia a una economía competitiva de los servicios, que haafectado tanto a las ciudades como, de manera más atenuada, a losámbitos rurales. Estos cambios, no obstante, no han sido suficientes paraexplicar la estabilidad de la población en los núcleos rurales, todavíabastante dependientes de un sector agrario incapaz de impulsar el desarrollode pueblos y comarcas por sí solo. Sin embargo, al amparo de lascoyunturas de las últimas décadas, la población rural ha sabido generaruna serie de rentas mixtas multisectoriales y nuevas dinámicas, basadasen la movilidad, que han permitido un nivel de vida digno y la estabilidadde su población.
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