Hidden City: The Footprint of Illegal Urbanisation in Spain

1 HIDDEN CITY: THE FOOTPRINT OF ILLEGAL URBANISATION IN SPAIN Abstract The spread of urban areas throughout the country, as well as the sprawl processes that it involves, have been a recurring theme in the growth of most Spanish cities over the last few decades. These phenomena have been studied extensively from various perspectives and disciplines, though this has generally been carried out without a detailed analysis of the origins of the settlements that comprise them. It is this aspect, in this case, based on its connection to the planned/unplanned origin of new urban developments connected to this city growth model, that can become a key element for isolating the various related processes and helping us to understand their different dimensions. In certain cases, the surface area of the urban developments that arise without planning is so large that they manage to compete in significance with the established city. This phenomenon has been called the formation of the hidden city. The main aim of this study is to describe and analyse the problem of the illegal urban developments that have been carried out in Spain since the 1960s and 1970s. This will be carried out considering that it is connected to urban sprawl and suburbanisation processes that characterised the growth of cities in this spatial context during that time period. Secondly, we will show the effects of this illegal urban development on the territorial structures of the municipality of Cordoba, one of the most affected by this type of process. Keywords: Suburbanisation, Illegal urbanisation, urban sprawl, hidden city, illegal parcelling 1. INTRODUCTION The spatial extension of the city, which now appears dissociated from demographic growth and therefore obeys different rationales, has become a greatly significant territorial mutation, both from a quantitative and qualitative point of view. In the first case, this is due to the large amount of resources consumed (especially space) by the shift from a compact Mediterranean city model towards more dispersed urban forms, forms that emulate, in a certain way, the urban systems of the Anglo-Saxon sphere. And, from the qualitative point of view, because these transformations have entailed the alteration of a great number of highly connoted landscapes, and their substitution by others that are described, in the best of cases, as banal and anodyne; to which we should add the loss of complexity of the urban structures associated with the new monofunctional urban residential settlements that give rise to them. The speed with which this has happened, especially during the last expansion cycle of the economy, together with the great superficial extension reached, has caused the development of a spatial organisation that is much more tense and complicated than the pre-existing one. 1.1 New and not-so-new approaches to urban growth 2 The coexistence of modern urban developments associated with new approaches to city growth and the processes of decentralisation of productive activities towards the periphery of the city has resulted in the emergence of more diverse and confusing spaces. In these spaces, a mixture of uses and activities of all kinds, together with the survival, in many cases, of agricultural activities and a cluttered natural environment, make up the everyday landscapes in which a large part of the population builds its living environment; it is its residential space, its recreational dimension, its routine, its uniqueness and its identity. In this context, it is particularly important to look at the origins of the urban settlements that have gradually shaped the periphery of the population centres and have accentuated the image of the dispersed city. This is because a significant percentage of these settlements have formed outside of urban and territorial planning. The difficulties associated with identifying the origin of these urban transformations - planned/organic, legal/illegalthat have been colonising the territory in locations more or less distant from the city limits may be behind the lack of this distinction. This has led to the fact that studies aimed at characterising them, first in the context of the phenomenon of second homes from the 1950s onwards and, already in more recent stages, linked to the new dispersed and low-density residential models, have failed to discern their origin. However, the latter is a crucial issue, given that the consequences of all kinds that unplanned urban settlements can have on the urban systems and territorial structures in which they are inserted are radically different from those associated with regulated procedures. This element justifies the need to study how the former processes are related, not only to modern processes of suburbanisation and urban sprawl, but also to those of second homes and even to the access to housing of the classes with less economic resources. The beginning of illegal land parcelling has been documented in Spain since the end of the sixties and, above all, throughout the seventies and eighties of the 20th century. It is a process that emerged as a cheaper or more popular version of the existing second home developments, which targeted the more affluent classes and which, especially from the fifties and sixties onwards, began to take on special significance in the metropolitan environments of the country’s main cities. Therefore, illegal parcelling would, at least in the initial stages, cover the demand for second homes and leisure areas of a growing working class that was beginning to have its basic needs covered and that also had three important resources: free time, the ability to save money and its own means of travel. The reasons why displacement spread in such a notorious way, and even led to specific legislative initiatives to counteract it in certain regions, are varied and complex. Among them would be the fact that the promoters of these pseudo-urbanisations managed to put plots of land on the market at prices that were affordable for the economy of large sections of the lower-middle classes. However, there were also social reasons, especially in relation to what Gaviria Labarta (1971) would call the chlorophyll ideology, alluding to the need to regain contact with nature coming from the same working class that, a few decades earlier, had been inhabiting the suffocating neighbourhoods that emerged during the developmentalist period. All this takes place in a socio-political context in which the new democratic local corporations created after the dictatorship lack the capacity to break with a dynamic inherited from previous periods of certain disregard for urban planning regulations which, moreover, at that time offered few instruments to prevent the development of this type of territorial transformation. Over the years, some of these issues would gradually be resolved, while local councils and planners themselves would try to channel an increasingly important demand for a type of property product -the rural plot, but at affordable priceswhich, moreover, did not easily fit into the successive regulatory frameworks put in place. 3 1.2 Objectives, methodology and sources The main objective of this paper is to highlight the uniqueness of the phenomenon commonly known in Spain as illegal urbanisation. As will be shown in this study, the phenomenon is unique because it is a special type of urban settlement with characteristics - especially in its origins – in that this type of zone arises sui generis (i.e., in the absence of urban planning). Moreover, this variety of urban area exhibits structural features, such as lack of infrastructure, basic services, public facilities and equipment, etc., which differentiate this type from the other settlements that are more typical of most Spanish cities´ peripheries. In terms of methodology, the research is proposed as a theoretical review that deals with the main elements involved in the process analysed: illegal urbanisations or plots, second home developments and, more generally, the urban sprawl in which these can be found. To this end, a bibliographical review, fundamentally but not exclusively made up of scientific works, is proposed. The sources used are, therefore, scientific works that have been published since the beginning of the phenomenon, around the 1950s, until the present day. There are also those other reports/inventories, etc. prepared by the public administrations concerned with the phenomenon and which have sought to analyse and diagnose it. Finally, the different documents that form part of the city’s municipal urban development plans have been used as case studies to highlight some of the hypotheses and goals proposed. 2. THE CITY FRAGMENTS The evolution of the transformed surface area (artificial surfaces as referred to by Corine Land Cover) in Spain over the last few years has been one of the most important processes of the countries of the European Union (Lois González, Piñeira Mantiñan, and Vives-Miró 2016). A large part of the transformed territory is associated with the development of new urban settlements or the growth of existing ones; a fact that, although it has not been exclusive to Spain, has become a unique case in the European context due to several factors. This is fundamentally due to two elements: 1) the speed with which it has occurred, especially coinciding with the last expansion cycle of the economy, and 2) due to the extraordinary extension of the land surface transformed by this type of process. In this sense, data show that, for the period between 1990 and 2018, Spain went from 6,384.13 km2 of land occupied by artificial surfaces (type 1 - level 1Corine Land Cover) to the current 12,549.77 km2; in other words, the surface area has practically doubled. Furthermore, it is worth noting that around 60% of this transformation relates to urban structures, and a significant proportion of these are dispersed, while simultaneously making up over 70% of all the urban structures identified in 2018. However, and logically, this process of intense land artificialisation has not been homogeneous throughout the country; on the contrary, it is strongly polarised, associated with the growth of the main urban agglomerations (Figure 1). 4 Figure 1. Evolution of artificial areas in Spain between 1990 and 2018. Source: Corine Land Cover. Prepared by the authors The above data highlights a fact that is widely accepted by the scientific community: the progressive abandonment of the traditional model of a compact Mediterranean city towards others that are more sprawling. These new forms of city growth are relatively modern, especially in the context of southern European countries; new urban forms that produce new landscapes and, of course, a different way of living. On the other hand, in Spain, many of these new urban developments have been carried out outside urban and territorial planning, as well as the current regulatory framework, generally under the formula of so-called illegal urbanisations. In this context of accelerated changes in all areas, a model of city expansion will begin to consolidate. However, as indicated in the previous section, this model is not new; what is new is both its pace and its intensity. This is what has been described as the process of urban sprawl. 2.1 Forms of dispersed urban growth In 2006, the European Environment Agency published the report Urban sprawl in Europe. The ignored challenge where it draws attention to certain major changes that were taking place in the growth model of most European cities (European Environment Agency 2006). In this sense, it warned of the risks, both social and environmental, of this model of urban expansion in cities that had traditionally preserved a compact urban model until practically the 1950s (ibidem, p. 5). It also showed that the cities of the south of the continent, among others, were those especially suffering from this change of model. 5 For Lois González, Piñeira Mantiñan and Vives Miró (2016), the data on the artificialisation 1 of land in Spain in the period 1987-2006 show not only that it was one of the countries in Europe -together with Portugal and Irelandwhere the urbanised surface area grew most (ibidem, p.11), but also show the unequal pace at which it did if the periods 19872000 and 2000-2006 are analysed. Beyond the striking nature of the data, it is important to highlight the way in which this expansion took place 2 . In that sense, the authors point out that, for the Spanish case, the following could be observed: ... a model that relied on urban sprawl, which separated and expanded different parts of the city across the territory and required powerful transport infrastructures to communicate them and ensure their functioning. (Ibidem, p. 9) Valdunciel (2013), among others, agrees with this diagnosis, clearly stating that “... the real estate bubble was based on an expansive urban development model” (p. 709). The urban sprawl model is one that, as noted above, has been strongly criticised by the European Environment Agency because of the negative consequences it entails. Beyond these general questions, which are widely accepted by the scientific community, it is important to highlight in this work the proposal to characterise the different types of urban development in which these growths have emerged in the territory. The aim is to conceptually situate the phenomena of illegal parcelling and urbanisation within one of the proposed types. The establishment of types is an issue that has not been sufficiently well treated by the scientific literature or, at least, not in the sense of characterising the different types of urban settlements that have been created by the process of accelerated urban expansion developed during the last decades. This does not mean that the issue of urban sprawl has not been dealt with extensively by the geographical discipline from its most diverse perspectives, both theoretical and applied to specific case studies, and fundamentally in relation to large metropolitan areas, where its effects have been felt most acutely. For some authors, continuing to use the idea of the city begins to pose serious problems of a conceptual and methodological nature (among others, López de Lucio, 1979; Nel·lo i Colóm, 1998; Roca Cladera, 2003). For his part, López de Lucio (1979) indicates that the use of this term to refer to the majority of those existing in Spain and the rest of Europe began to pose certain conceptual problems (p. 25); and this, as the author goes on to say, is due: ... to its radical transformation, to the rupture of the framework of collective and cohesive life that it always meant, to its dissolution or dispersion in a multitude of functionally homogeneous, socially “classified”, spatially distant units, and whose only nexus of union is provided by a complex transport network ... (ibidem) 3 The author is establishing a definition of what cities would be like at the end of the 1970s, both from a morphological and a sociological point of view. In this context of change, López de Lucio considers that it is possible to clearly demarcate three types of city: the classical city, prior to the Industrial Revolution; the city “... of the beginnings of industrialisation, the “liberal” city of the “urban expansion” and the extension plans ...” (ibidem) and, finally, the one he calls the contemporary city. The characteristics of the first two are well known, although, in terms of the second, it is worthwhile to consider some of the aspects mentioned, since they are causally related to the theoretical postulates of this work. In this sense, the 1 According to the authors, this is understood as “... occupation of the same [territory] for residential, business or major public work purposes at the expense of natural and/or agricultural areas” (ibidem, p. 11). 2 However, the work does not discriminate between planned/legal and unplanned/illegal urban growth, so it is impossible to know the incidence of one or the other. 3 Quotation marks are added by the author. 6 author considers that “... the urban fabric [of the city at the beginning of industrialisation] is beginning to be defined in at least three categories: old town, planned urban expansions, spontaneous suburban or peripheral growth” (ibidem, p. 28). As it is easy to see, this is a much more synthetic classification than that offered by other authors (Capel Sáez, 2002), although, on the other hand, it may help to offer a clearer vision of the city’s expansion process at this stage. Therefore, it could be inferred that the phenomenon of second home developments would be included in what López de Lucio generically calls spontaneous suburban or peripheral growth. And, given that, as will be shown in the following sections, the phenomenon of illegal parcelling and urbanisation is a late temporal expression of second home developments, and an inferior one at the economic level and different at the social level, which would also be included in the aforementioned spontaneous suburban and peripheral growth. Other characteristics that stand out in the work of López de Lucio (1979) regarding the city at that time has to do with the beginning of the hierarchisation of the road system, among the consequences of which would be the physical separation of the three urban models considered. In this way, “... the old quarters are separated from the urban expansions by means of ring roads; the “anarchic” developments on the “outskirts” are separated from the urban expansions by means of outer ring roads or boundary roads, etc.” (ibidem). This shows that, at the end of the 1980s, a clear distinction could be made between the ordered city, or the city with at least some origin in planning, and the anarchic city on the outskirts. Trying to find or establish order in that territorial anarchy will be one of the objectives, both of the successive reforms of the normative framework on urbanism and territorial planning, and of planning in its role as an element used for the implementation of said framework. However, López de Lucio (1979) also establishes the characteristics of the contemporary city, typical “... of advanced capitalism or of the so-called State monopoly capitalism” (p. 29). Among them, the “... indefinite growth, no longer continuous, but fragmented and sprawling, superimposing itself and destroying the surrounding rural space ...” stands out (ibidem), whose main consequence will be the gradual loss of the use of the term city to refer to this new urban reality or, at least, its subordinate use to other aspects that allude to its scale of influence. Some authors have analysed these phenomena from the point of view of “... urban deconcentration ...”, understood as “... the processes of urbanisation sprawl in territorial rings that surround the central nucleus ...” (Mallarach Isern and Vilagrasa i Ibarz, 2002, p. 57). On the other hand, López de Lucio (1979) indicates that these new realities will “... become what has been called, sometimes with clear pride, the city-territory, conurbation, city-region, great metropolitan area, etc.” (p. 29). Although, as Nel·lo i Colóm (1998) points out, these processes would already be, if not anticipated, at least perceived by some poets of the end of the 19th century, and it will not be until the last decade of the 20th century when this phenomenon will definitively manifest itself at its fullest (p. 35). For this author, the socioeconomic and technological transformations that took place throughout the 20th century have led to a physical and functional integration of space “... to such an extent that economic activities and urban lifestyles have spread over the whole territory” (ibidem), which has had the inevitable consequence that the terms city and boundary are now “irreconcilable concepts and the territory has become the cittá sconfinata of which some Italian authors speak” (ibidem) 4 . In this context, Nel·lo i Colóm poses a paradoxical situation, in the sense that this diffuse city where limits are blurred in some way, which is why it is called the city without borders, nevertheless faces a reality that makes it, at the same time, “... also the city of 4 In the footnote accompanying this phrase, the author points to a group of works by Italian authors who have been addressing these topics since the 1990s. 7 borders. Borders and divides that are, in the first place, social and functional and, in the second place, political and administrative” (p. 49). Perhaps it is the latter⁠, the political and administrative borders, that most palpably interfere in the daily lives of the people who live or work in these areas. Issues as common as paying certain taxes, choosing a health centre, the schooling of children, and a great many others, depend directly on the place of municipal registration, more than on the place of actual residence or work. On the other hand, the management of the uses and activities carried out on the territory also has a strong municipal component, given that the local authorities are almost exclusively responsible for town planning. Making the two realities converge is by no means an easy task, even though, at least in the area of land management and planning, there were certain experiences in the sixties and seventies, especially in some of the large urban agglomerations -Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia or Bilbaoto “... create political or management structures on a metropolitan scale that could tackle the various urban planning, infrastructure and service problems that arose on that scale” (Feria Toribio, 1999, p. 312). López de Lucio (1979) also points to other characteristics of this new city. Perhaps the most significant features are those related to the tendency to homogenise the different urban networks or fragments that are sprawled throughout the territory, articulated through a highly hierarchical road system that allows to connect these fragments. Therefore, the author believes that the consequence of all this will be: ... total fragmentation—together with the dispersion and distancing of the different fragments—into multiple unifunctional units, with rhythms and periods of activity and vitality, users and residents, a shape and environment that are clearly differentiated and minimally related. (p. 30) Finally, this author shows that one of the invariants of most of these new city fragments that spread around the territory in what Pie i Ninot and Navarro (1988) call territorial measles (p. 57) will be that of low density; an element understood as “... the brake on the evils of the city and a magic formula against land speculation ...” (López de Lucio 1979, p. 32). The element of low density will be one of the issues that would be addressed in depth by scientific research in recent decades. Among them, perhaps we can highlight the work of Francesc Muñoz, who has been researching these issues for two decades (Muñoz Ramírez, 2001, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2010; Nel·lo i Colóm and Muñoz Ramírez, 2007). For him, low density, urban sprawl, monofunctionality or specialisation, fragmentation, etc. are a set of attributes that coexist in the same area and will therefore give rise to what he calls vividly urBANALisation. (Muñoz Ramírez, 2004; 2008) 5 . For Indovina (2007a), the really important issue, beyond the conceptualisation of the phenomenon itself or the related types that can be established, would be to assess ... the impact on the city: what, traditionally, is still considered the city shape is the object of conflict inasmuch as those that for a long time have been considered “fragments”, improper occupations of the territory (of the countryside), have ended up acquiring an urban physiognomy even though they lack all the physical and morphological characteristics of the city, that is to say, even though they lack intensity, density and lack of solution of continuity. (p. 14) The previous statement gives us a glimpse of the inherent attributes that the author considers a city must have, that is to say, those aspects that any settlement, or those fragments 5 The author uses this play of lowerand upper-case letters in the title of his 2006 work, urBANALisation, which corresponds to the publication of his doctoral thesis, to emphasise the banal result of landscapes resulting from this type of urban development. 8 that are used refer to the improper occupations of the countryside (of the territory) 6 must have to be considered properly urban, properly city: intensity, density and continuity (ibidem). But, in addition to these, Indovina identifies another important aspect to classify these settlements as cities: the existence of an adequate level of facilities and the use that the population makes of them (ibidem, p. 18). From the above, we can see that it is possible for urban sprawl to exist without being considered a city and, on the other hand, that a truly diffuse city can exist. However, the author also draws attention to the inadequate use of the term low-density city when it is improperly associated with “... every settlement characterised by low density” (ibidem). However, in order to be able to speak of ... low-density city [it] has to be both a city and characterised by low density; it is defined by the presence of urban complexity (functions and facilities) in a large area and by the urban use of that area by citizens. (Ibidem, p. 18) Therefore, the author again insists on the attributes of the city mentioned above, to which the issue of low density, and the need to occupy a sufficiently large area, are now added. If this were not the case, Indovina states, one would be faced with “... different levels of urbanisation” (ibidem), but not with examples of a diffuse city or a low-density city. Finally, the author states that the ... low-density city and diffuse city are the formulas used in two different languages to name the same phenomenon, although one tends to highlight an element typical of architecture and construction, low density, and the other an element related to the organisation of space, diffusion. (Ibidem) The nuances expressed by Indovina in relation to the use of the terms mentioned are very significant, not only for the conceptual background they entail but, above all, for the theoretical framing of this work. This is so, firstly, because, as has been pointed out, and as we will try to show in what follows, the phenomena of urbanisation and illegal parcelling are encompassed under the more generic phenomenon of second homes and, more specifically, in that of second homes developed in Spain from the 1950s and 1960s. However, since one of the characteristic features of illegal urbanisations is their lack of infrastructure and facilities, it seems logical to think that, given what Indovina has pointed out, the phenomenon that is the object of this research would not be a conceptual fit, at least not immediately, in the area of the diffuse city nor in that of the low-density city. This statement is fundamentally based on the grounds that, at least for this author, they cannot be considered cities, since they lack some of their main attributes. 2.2 Urbanisation of second homes as a precedent to illegal urbanisation in Spain The relationship between the traditional second home developments especially from the 1950s onwards (Ortega Valcárcel, 1975, p. 9; Valenzuela Rubio, 1976, p. 137) and illegal urbanisation or plots has been highlighted by various works (among others, Comunidad de Madrid, 1984b; COPLACO, 1981; Ezquiaga Domínguez, 1983; Garca de Jaln Lastra et al., 1986; Requena Sánchez, 1987; VV.AA., 1983). For its part, the work of Canto Fresno (1983) would be the first to attempt to contextualise this phenomenon on a national scale, highlighting the progress made by Spain with respect to the more developed countries in the European context (p. 83). Other, more limited works such as that of Guarnido Olmedo and Segura Gómez (1989) would address the same issues in the coast of Granada. For authors 6 The element that the author placed in brackets in the original definition has been consciously exchanged to emphasise the location of these fragments in the rural environment. 9 such as Bertolín Corbatón (1983) or Oliva Serrano and Rivera Escribano (2003) the reasons behind this trend would not be unique. Ortega Valcárcel (1975) would point out that the main reasons had to do with the strong economic development experienced by the country from the 1950s and 1960s onwards; but also with the consolidation of a shorter working day, which allowed to use part of the weekend for leisure, and the progressive widespread use of private cars which, together with the modernisation and extension of the road network, allowed for greater mobility and accessibility to spaces increasingly larger and more distant from the city. Along with all of these factors, the progressive increase of a feeling of dissatisfaction with life in the city, with ever greater problems of pollution, traffic saturation, noise, etc., brought with it a need to return to nature (Ortega Valcárcel, 1975, p. 11). This last author draws attention to the appearance of new urban settlements in the rural space; however, at least from the functional point of view, these were not related to the space; a habitat, he adds, “... of an exclusively residential function, of temporary or secondary character, for urban occupants, promoted by urban people, and adapted to the formal demands of the population of the cities” (ibidem). What is relevant about these statements in the context of this work is that they are characterising the traditional second home developments that, especially from the 1960s onwards, will become a distinctive feature of many of the country’s main cities. The effects of this type of process on the territory would be understood differently by the researchers who focused on its analysis. Gaviria Labarta (1971c) finds them to be dangerous because “... the cultural and supra-structural conflicts derived from converting a rural area into an urban area are very important and compromise Society and the State” (p. 205), and even questions whether this is really a necessity [that of the second home] or if, on the contrary, it is a process of manipulation by market agents through its various mechanisms (advertising, consumerism, credit, etc. ) (ibidem). Opposing this position, Valenzuela Rubio (1976) highlights the positive effects, given that, among others, they are “... an effective agent of urban influence” (p. 135), since the settlements that are born as second homes are soon susceptible to “... becoming residential suburbs” (ibidem). All this, she concludes, makes them one of the “... factors with the capacity to shape the region” (ibidem, p. 136). The area with greater consensus addresses the causes behind the emergence of the phenomenon. In this sense, Valenzuela Rubio (1976) considers that they are related to the progressive deterioration of the quality of life in the cities, “... consequence of the chaotic growth of the post-war period” and, secondly, by the also gradual improvement of the economic conditions that results in the increase of the savings capacity of increasingly more ample social sectors (p. 137). The emergence and rapid development of this type of settlement in the more or less remote peripheries of cities was caused by various factors, among which those associated with people’s discontent with cities’ living conditions can be highlighted (among others, GarcíaBellido, 1986; Gaviria Labarta, 1971b; Valenzuela Rubio, 1976). For Gaviria Labarta (1971a), this circumstance gave rise to the yearning of an ample sector of the city population to regain contact with nature, which led the author to coin the term chlorophyll ideology. Based on the analysis of advertisements for housing and urban developments on the outskirts of Madrid, the author notes how the texts refer to the benefits of life in contact with nature in contrast to the harmful effects of the city. Along with these, the work highlights those who seek to establish a more or less direct association between this way of life and the ideas of freedom and permanent leisure; all of this enclosed under a certain utopian halo (ibidem, p. 9). On the contrary, potential users are not warned of the dangerous effects, mentioning only the supposed health -and even sexbenefits and selling a false sensation of embarking on a perennial holiday (ibidem, p. 119). But, along with the purely social aspects of the phenomenon, the author also mentions those of an economic nature, pointing out that the 16 The process of urban sprawl that has characterised the growth of most Spanish cities, which was especially relevant during the last expansion cycle of the economy, has led to the configuration of urban peripheries with highly complex territorial structures. Together with this fact, the speed and intensity with which the process has occurred and the lack of a theoretical corpus of its own has led to the use of terms derived mainly from the Anglo-Saxon sphere, and these are not always correct. This situation has generated, on more than a few occasions, excessive generalisation or explanations that, somehow, have contributed to masking the heterogeneity of the settlements that configure these urban peripheries. This work has shown that the analysis and characterisation of these spaces have not been done correctly; this is because the root of urban nuclei has been overlooked, especially in terms of their legal urban situation. This is a relevant issue, given that the consequences of this circumstance for the territorial structures in which they are inserted are substantially different from those that have followed the guidelines and rules set out both by urban and territorial planning and by the current legal framework. Secondly, the relationship between second home developments and the phenomenon of illegal urbanisation is maintained, and it is stated that the former are antecedents and conceptual and social references of the latter. In this sense, illegal urbanisations emerged in Spain in the mid-1960s and, above all, throughout the 1970s, as a response to a growing demand from the incipient working middle class. This sector of the population, having had its basic needs covered (mainly by having a regular home and a private vehicle), and with free time and the ability to save, felt the need to leave their everyday life in the city -generally in neighbourhoods with high population densities, with a lack of facilities and green areas for recreationto go somewhere outside the city where they could spend their leisure time. The impossibility of accessing second home developments due to the high price of land -and of the final residential productin these areas meant that pseudo-urbanisations gradually appeared on the market, where plots of land were made available to the demanding population at more affordable prices. This was done at the cost of reducing infrastructures and public services until they practically disappeared, as well as the urbanisation of the interior road, which is why the use of the term urbanisation (in its classic meaning) to refer to these new settlements is problematic, since it is precisely the lack of the inherent urbanisation elements that best characterises the settlements. In spatial terms, of all the Andalusian provincial capitals, Cordoba is the most affected by the phenomenon of illegal urbanisation, as almost 8% of its surface area is occupied, on a regional scale, by this type of unplanned urban process; it is followed by Jaén at 2.26% and Malaga and Seville with just over 1%. These figures, provided by the last inventory carried out by the regional administration in 2003, are not enough to show the scope and territorial significance that this has in the municipality of Cordoba. In this sense, research has been able to prove that the total surface area occupied by urban settlements identified as illegal urbanisations currently reaches just over 5,000 ha, a figure that is almost double the 2,860 ha of surface area of the main city centre. In other words, based on this data, it can be stated that the municipality has been forming an unplanned illegal (?) city over the last fifty years, formed by a significant number of semi-urban dispersed settlements that compete in importance with the planned city, at least in terms of surface area, and with certain significance as far as the population is concerned. But, additionally, the illegal character not only of the development process itself of this type of settlement, but also of the construction phase of the buildings or the implantation of diverse uses, makes the idea of clandestine space even more pronounced. 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