iberianature - Spanish history and culture

Largest towns and cities in Spain

List of metropolitan areas in Spain by population. I was surprised to see Oviedo–Gijón–Avilés as high as it is.

A history of Mojácar
I enjoyed this potted history of Mojácar:

Mojácar used to be a town of around 6,000 people in as far back as 1870. It maintained this number of inhabitants until round about 1900 when, slowly, numbers began to fall, speeding its descent in the 1930s. Through the various local vicissitudes of the drop in the local water-table, the end of the de-forestation, a peculiar plague of locusts in 1901, the end of the mines in the 1920s and the troubled times of the Civil War, the area in general eventually became depopulated with mass emigrations to Barcelona, Algeria, Germany and even Argentina, and Mojácar itself began its long descent into what was, by 1960, a moribund village of just 600 souls. Read complete post on Spanish Shilling

Paddy Woodworth on the Basque Country
Paddy Woodworth is an Irish reporter who has lived and worked in the Basque Country. His book The Basque Country: a cultural history, was described by the Irish Times as a terrific modern introduction to the Basque Country… succeeds in showing us the complexities of the Basque struggle for identity” Here’s an the introduction from his book from his website. “The Basque Country has had more than its fair share of stereotypes thrust upon it. The Basques have sometimes resisted this typecasting, but they have not been shy about making their own contributions, some as extravagant as any foreigner’s, to stock images of their homeland. More...

Tomato trek
I thought this cartoon strip was amusing. “Since a tomato leaves its branch of the plant in one of the hundreds of greenhouses from Almeria, until a consumer in Madrid take it into its meal, the price “grows” by 500% respect to the price given to the farmer”.

The roots of flamenco
Interesting article in The Guardian on the roots of flamenco. Forget the Hollywood image – flamenco has deep-rooted social and political resonances that cross culture and genre Read