This paper analyses the demographic decline experienced by Spain's 84 main mountainous districts, which cover more than 20 per cent of the national surface and had 15 per cent of the country's total population in 1860. In Spain, mountain depopulation took place later than in other, more advanced European countries. However, once it started, the process was very intense in comparative perspective. Depopulation became a general phenomenon during the second half of the twentieth century as a consequence of significant shortcomings in rural welfare – these shortcomings were related in turn to low degrees of economic diversification and high levels of pertalty on the access to basic equipment and services. Furthermore, depopulation acted as a mechanism for economic selection because it contributed to the disappearance of the traditional peasant economy and the «default» emergence of more diversified patterns.
