From needs to choices

For the period 2000–2005, Spain had the lowest fertility rate in western Europe and the seventh lowest in the world, just ahead of the collapsing demographies of the ex-Soviet republics (Economist, Pocket World, 19). The average number of people per household fell to 3.2 (Economist, Pocket World, 217). Unsurprisingly the family was in a state of flux. One academic commentator on Spain writes of the “new diversity of … modern models” of the family: democratic, single parent, dysfunctional. After the decline of the authoritarian patriarchal family “duty has given way to reciprocal forms of cooperation based on choices as well as needs” (Jordan, 79). According to census data, 65% of households were now nuclear families, 12% single people, 10% single parents with children, 7% extended families, and 4% unrelated people cohabiting (Jordan, 80). What is striking is that elderly people tend to remain in their homes for as long as possible and, unlike in northern Europe, there is little unmarried cohabitation. Family formation is postponed, contributing to the low birth rate.

Demography thus intersects with housing. With home ownership very high, Spain has the lowest proportion of renters in the European Union, at just 20% (Jordan, 112). The great majority, some 84% in urban areas, live in flats or apartments. These homes are relatively small by European standards and have “high levels of noise pollution, lack of light and space [but] far higher levels of contact with neighbours.” Surprisingly, perhaps, most Spaniards express satisfaction with their living arrangements, even though commentators see “growing segmentation [and] more widely separated wealthy and impoverished residential zones,” previously atypical of Spanish cities.

On November 6, 2002 the Wall St Journal noted that over the past twenty years real-estate prices had risen faster in Spain than in any other European country (Vitzthum). While the population density for the nation as a whole was only 80 per square kilometre (comparable to the impoverished states of sub-Saharan Africa), the density of Madrid was, at 21,000 per square kilometre, exceeded only by Tokyo. The Journal noted the negative effects of these prices not just on the birth-rate, but also on labour mobility (and thus stubbornly high unemployment) and indebtedness.