Urban Flight or Stagnation? Patterns of Residential Migration in Post-COVID Spain

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the media in different countries reported a mass flight from cities, due to a combination of pandemic fears, the search for better living conditions and rising home working. This chapter investigates internal migration flows in Spain, using data aggregated by municipality from the population register over 2011 to 2021, capturing both the peak pandemic year and initial recovery period. As well as trends over time, we apply GIS to assess migration dynamics across space: categorising municipalities based on commuting proximity to core cities. To understand the nature of migration trends, we break down its components into outflows versus inflows. Our results crucially reveal how changes in 2020 at the peak of the pandemic do not support a common narrative of ‘urban flight’ but were mostly driven by a stagnation of rural outflows alongside more stable inflows to larger cities. However, looking at 2021, there is evidence of an increasing trend towards suburbanisation and expansion of metropolitan city boundaries – particularly for the largest cities – reflecting a shift in preferences even within a context of high mobility.