Owing to their inextricable link with capitalism and modernity, urban spaces have been at the centre of modern European thought about identity and territory. In the Galician context, however, debates about identity, modernity and space have developed along particularly fluid lines, with the urban not always occupying centre stage. This, of course, has much to do with living conditions in a fragmented and contested territory which, until the 1980s, was basically rural and still characterized on many levels by pre-industrial economic practices and values. A brief summary of how this situation has been dramatically transformed was presented in an article published in the Galician cultural magazine Grial (Seoane Pérez, Pérez Caramés and Otero Millán 2012). According to this report, in 2012 Galicia's administrative map showed the existence of 30,000 settlements, which is half of the Spanish total, although Galicia only occupies 6 per cent of Spain's territory (2012: 46). The process of urbanization of a traditionally rural society has therefore been fast-paced, with current figures showing that ‘2.2% of the municipalities gather 25.7% of the population, while 63% of municipalities only gather 16.6% of the population’ (González Laxe 2012: 20). The same thing can be said if we look at this shift from an economic perspective. The coastal cities of Vigo and A Coruña concentrate 36 per cent of the Galician private sector: if we add the other main five ‘towns’ – Lugo, Ourense, Pontevedra, Santiago de Compostela and Ferrol – the figure reaches 62.2 per cent (González Laxe 2012: 21).