page_title: Demographics of Spain
section_title: Metropolitan areas
hierarchical_section_title: Demographics of Spain / Metropolitan areas
caption_attribution_description: Español: Grandes Áreas Urbanas (GAU) en España, según Ministerio de Fomento. Información de Población según Padrón 2018 English: As per the Ministry of Development, 2018 population as per Spanish Statistics Institute
context_page_description: As of 1 January 2020, Spain had a total population of 47,431,256, which represents a 0.9% increase since 2019. The CIA Factbook gives a racial description of "composite of Mediterranean and Nordic types" under "ethnic groups" instead of the usual breakdown of ethnic composition. This reflects the formation of the modern Kingdom of Spain by the accretion of several independent Iberian realms, like León, Castile, Navarre, the Crown of Aragon, and Granada, among others.
  Spain's population peaked in 2019, surpassing for the first time in history 47 million inhabitants. As of January 2020, there were already 47,431,256 people living in Spain. Its population density, at 91.4 inhabitants per square kilometre, is lower than that of most Western European countries. With the exception of the capital Madrid, the most densely populated areas lie around the coast.
  The population of Spain doubled during the twentieth century, but the pattern of growth was extremely uneven due to large-scale internal migration from the rural interior to the industrial cities, a phenomenon which happened later than in other Western European countries.
context_section_description: The largest metropolitan areas in 2007 were:
  Madrid	6,489,162
  Barcelona	5,375,774
  Valencia	1,705,742
  Seville	1,519,639
  Bilbao	950,155
  Málaga 897,563
  Asturias (Gijón–Oviedo–Avilés) 857,079
  Alicante–Elche 748,565
  Zaragoza 731,803
  Vigo - Pontevedra 662,412
  Las Palmas de Gran Canaria 616,903
  Bahía de Cádiz (Cádiz–Jerez de la Frontera) 615,494
  Santa Cruz de Tenerife 573,825
  Murcia 563,272
  Palma de Mallorca 474,035
  Granada 472,638
  San Sebastián 402,168
  Tarragona 406,042
  A Coruña 403,007
  Valladolid 400,400
  Santander–Torrelavega 391,480
  Córdoba 323,600
  Pamplona 309,631
caption: Main metropolitan areas in Spain (2018)
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