Spain has a total of 70 functional urban areas (AUF), or metropolitan areas, as defined by the European Union. Each AUF is formed by a city and all those municipalities that form its functional environment.
To determine if a municipality belongs to a functional urban area, the criterion used is that of employment: if 15% or more of its employed population moves to the reference city for work reasons, then it belongs to that AUF.
In 2017, the Spanish functional urban areas with the largest population were those of Madrid (6.71 million inhabitants), Barcelona (4.96 million) and Valencia (1.72 million), according to the latest data in the report Indicators Urban published by the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
The fourth position corresponded to Seville (1.54 million), while Bilbao (1.03 million) was the fifth.
The rest of the Spanish metropolitan areas already have less than one million inhabitants. After the first five were Malaga (858,731 inhabitants), Zaragoza (756,296), Palma de Mallorca (678,611), Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (630,413) and Murcia (624,658).
The following graph shows the ranking of the 70 Spanish functional urban areas according to their population in 2017:
Música clásica sobre la arena de la playa en dos citas con las batutas de…
The first session of the cycle on the regatta organized by 'The New Barcelona Post'…
The hospital's managing director, Manel del Castillo, and the pharmaceutical company's director in Spain, Leticia…
Generalitat y Ayuntamiento impulsarán dos equipamientos de 'Casa de les Lletres' con un proyecto literario…
Leticia Beleta, director of Alexion Pharmaceuticals in Spain and Portugal, will talk to Dr. Manel…
We all have a friend who never leaves the Gràcia neighborhood. Well, I'll tell you……