The South is in the Northwest

It was a newspaper article. The mayor of Otero de Sanabria, in the province of Zamora, was protesting the cancellation of the morning high-speed train. June 9, 2023, a newspaper article. A newspaper article in a press seething with increasing aggression between the two main parties. Nothing new. Nothing new? An increasingly blatant aggression. "Either the Mafia or democracy," the Popular Party had just proclaimed. Today, with everything we know, that slogan is dizzying.

The high-speed train from Galicia to Madrid would no longer stop early this morning in Otero de Sanabria , a tiny town in Spain's oldest province, very close to the border with Portugal. The stop in Sanabria for the first two morning trains was being scrapped. This was what Vigo's mayor, Abel Caballero, Minister of Transport in Felipe González's second government, had requested, and what the current Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, and Renfe's management deemed appropriate. The goal was to shorten the morning journey between Vigo and Madrid by about fifteen minutes. Get rid of the obstacles. Very few people boarded in Sanabria, they argued. People who, for the most part, were taking advantage of the 8:40 a.m. AVE train to get to Zamora, the provincial capital, early. The AVE as a regional train in a depopulated Spain. There has been much anger in the region and throughout the province of Zamora, with a support campaign spearheaded by the actor Antonio Resines. "Lights in Vigo, shadows in Sanabria," the banners read. In response to this anger, the Castile and León regional government has promised a bus service.

Read also Coffins from Sanabria to Vigo, Madrid, and Brussels in protest against fewer high-speed trains. AGENCIES

Why on earth does the AVE stop in Otero de Sanabria, with only 29 registered inhabitants, the smallest town in Spain with a high-speed train station? Why is Zamora one of the few provinces in Spain with two AVE stops? The station is very close to Lake Sanabria, a beautiful spot well suited for water sports, just seven kilometers from La Puebla de Sanabria (1,393 inhabitants), the capital of one of the most sparsely populated regions in Spain. The station was also designed to connect with the Portuguese districts of Braganza and Vila Real in the Tras os Montes region. Perhaps one day we'll see Portuguese high-speed trains connect with the Spanish network through Sanabria. Twenty-two trains pass through Otero de Sanabria every day, running at full speed. Sixteen of them don't stop. They've removed the two earliest ones because Abel Caballero wants Vigo to dispatch in Madrid before eleven in the morning.

“Where is the South? The deep South is today on the outskirts of Spain's major cities, where poverty will soon knock on the doors of many families. And in strictly regional terms, the South is today in the Northwest; in the vast and sparsely populated quadrant formed by the four Galician provinces (A Coruña, Pontevedra, Lugo, and Ourense), plus the provinces of Zamora, Palencia, León, and Salamanca, plus a good part of Asturias and some sliver of Cantabria. It is the aging Spain, the depopulation that, due to its geographical location, faces a future without great opportunities.” ( La deriva de España , RBA, 2009).

I wrote these lines at the end of 2008, at the dawn of the last great economic crisis. In that book ( La deriva de España ) I attempted to explain what the effects of the crisis might be on the country's different geographic areas . Maps and perspectives facing an uncertain future. The true South lies in the Northwest. The political South no longer necessarily coincides with the geographic South. Some people were surprised. Sixteen years later, I reaffirm that idea, with one caveat: in 2025, we cannot include coastal Galicia in that quadrant. Today, we're going to reexamine the Northwest with the collaboration of Santiago Fernández Muñoz, professor of Human Geography at Carlos III University in Madrid.

The Northwest provinces are among the most disadvantaged in Spain: predominantly rural areas, very low population density, aging population, weak services, and a strong agricultural sector relative to the national average. The demographic indicators are particularly striking, with provinces steadily losing population in a context of strong Spanish population growth, with positive inflows of more than half a million inhabitants annually over the last three years.

While the Spanish population grew by 1.6 million between 2021 and 2025, the province of León lost 5,578 inhabitants, Zamora 3,622, 2% of its population, and Lugo 233 fewer inhabitants. The degree of aging is also very striking. The indicators for the population over 65 and those that establish a relationship between that age group and that of those under 14 are the highest in the country by far. These are also the provinces where the activity rate—the working population relative to the total—is among the lowest in Spain. While the Spanish average is above 58%, in Ourense it barely exceeds 47% and in León 49%. The Northwest also ranks at the bottom in terms of GDP per capita, although in this case there are other areas of Spain where this indicator is lower. As we mentioned before, we cannot include all of Galicia in this quadrant. Coastal Galicia is in the process of taking off, thanks in part to its recent connection to the high-speed rail network. That AVE train doesn't want to stop in Otero de Sanabria to avoid wasting time.

The indicators not only show that the Northwest is currently a depressed area, but forecasts place it in an even worse position in the coming decades. The INE's forecasts indicate that the aging process will continue to worsen unabated in the coming years. Sharp declines in the number of inhabitants are expected in all the provinces under consideration, while sustained population growth will be recorded across Spain as a whole. The message from the data is that there is no present, but what is even more worrying is that there is no future.

Recently, the presidents of Asturias, Castile and León, and Galicia met to try to focus on the development of the region and once again prioritized the development of transport infrastructure, especially rail. It doesn't appear that high-speed rail connections are a central element of the problem, although watching trains pass by nonstop is undoubtedly an undue provocation.

“There is no future.” Let us not forget that the Spanish electoral system does not mistreat these provinces; quite the contrary. When Torcuato Fernández Miranda and Adolfo Suárez drew up the basic lines of the transition, they devised a clever electoral model that, under the banner of proportionality, offers a decisive bonus to provinces with a larger rural base and smaller populations. A minimum of two representatives per province is guaranteed, with a maximum of 350 seats in Congress. The reformist platform that emerged from the Franco regime was intended to exceed 160 seats. And they achieved it. At that time, the Northwest did not present such worrying social indicators. The Northwest quadrant, with 2.3 million inhabitants, contributes 25 representatives to Congress. Catalonia, with 8.1 million inhabitants, elects 48 representatives: one representative for every 94,000 inhabitants in the Northwest. One representative for every 168,000 inhabitants in Catalonia. The problem, as we see, is not due to a lack of parliamentary representation.

However, the Northwest quadrant does not form a single autonomous community. It came close to achieving this, but the political realism of the transition put a stop to it. When the so-called pre-autonomy process was launched, the possibility of forming an Asturian-Leonese autonomous community that would incorporate the two major mining regions, the former Kingdom of León and Asturias together, was even considered. Rodolfo Martín Villa, then Minister of the Interior, threw his hands up in horror: "That can't be! The two mining regions together, no!" Martín Villa, who in 1980 would take over the Territorial Administration portfolio, did not want a strong mining autonomy on the eve of a major reconversion of the sector. Echoes of 1934. He put it out of the Socialists' heads. Asturias would be the Principality of Asturias, a single-province autonomy, with magnificent prizes sponsored by the heir to the Crown. And the provinces of the former Kingdom of León would merge with Old Castile, forming Castile and León, the largest autonomous region in Europe. Excluded from the merger were the province of Santander, which was renamed Cantabria, and the province of Logroño, which was renamed La Rioja.

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