Now that more than three years have passed since the pandemic broke out, many of the questions that arose then can be answered. One of them is the impact of Covid-19 in more densely populated urban areas and the resulting urban exodus. Lockdown and restrictions on mobility might alter housing and environmental needs, thus modifying the determinants of residential mobility (Duque-Calvache et al., 2021). The appearance of more flexible forms of employment and the growth of teleworking caused rural and less populated settings to gain in popularity, leading to speculation about the possibility of a large number of urban dwellers moving to these areas.

Although several studies have been carried out on the overall effects of the pandemic on human mobility, especially internal migration (González-Leonardo et al., 2022), no in-depth analysis has been conducted to date on the mobility that occurred in Spanish big cities during the two-year period 2020-2021, or on the sociodemographic profiles of those who changed their place of residence.

This article pursues a twofold goal. First, to determine whether an urban exodus actually took place, and if so, to what extent it has persisted over time. To this end, intermunicipal residential mobility data was sourced from Residential Variation Statistics (INE: National Statistics Institute) and municipal registers of changes of address. Second, on the basis of the data contained in the 2021 Population Census, to examine the characteristics of those who, during the first year of the pandemic, left the big cities, specifically the six Spanish municipalities with a population of over 500,000: Madrid, Barcelona, València, Seville, Zaragoza, and Málaga.

It is important to stress that only the core municipality of each metropolitan region is analysed, as these municipalities display the highest population density, and therefore can be expected to witness the largest urban exodus.

During the course of the pandemic, significant changes were observed in the migratory flows of Spanish core cities. Prior to the analysis of the phenomenon of urban exodus, the internal flows of all six municipalities studied are presented by type (immigration, emigration and migratory balance) (fig. 1). It should be noted that internal migration is taken as meaning all changes of residence between Spanish municipalities, without taking into account flows with abroad.

The results indicate that moves into Spain’s main core cities were the type that showed the most notable changes after the pandemic. The impact was greatest during 2020, when there were 19% fewer moves into the six municipalities studied, whereas in 2021 they returned to pre-pandemic levels. On the other hand, as of 2020, moves away from the core municipalities increased at a rate of nearly 7% a year; hence, in 2020 the migratory balance was especially negative in Spain’s main core cities, with population losses that tripled pre-pandemic figures. This alteration would not have occurred without the outbreak of Covid-19. In 2021, the negative balance was less intense, but losses continued to be higher than in the years prior to the pandemic.

Moves away from the core cities are analysed below. It is examined whether an urban exodus actually existed, and, if so, where to, when, and what profiles were involved in it.

Changes in residential patterns with regard to outflows from the most populated Spanish municipalities during the first year of the pandemic can be summed up in four main points (fig. 2).

• A decrease in outflows towards the closest and most densely populated metropolitan municipalities, in the cases of Madrid, Barcelona, València and Málaga. In Barcelona, for example, rates of outflows to the most immediate municipalities fell by 20.2% with respect to 2019.

• A slight rise in moves to suburban areas, more notable as the distance from the core city increased. In Madrid, for example, outflow rates towards municipalities located 20-40 km from the capital rose by 6.0%.

• A widespread decline in long-distance moves to other urban areas, except in the case of Madrid, where they increased. This dynamic is related to the deceleration of interurban migration for reasons of relocation of human capital, which was a very notable factor in the years leading up to the pandemic. The case of Madrid may be due to the return of adults, especially younger adults, to their municipalities of origin.

• A highly significant rise in moves to rural municipalities, specifically those located at a medium distance from the main core cities.

With regard to the last point, it should be mentioned that a more detailed territorial analysis reveals that the main rural destinations tend to be well connected with the urban areas. The largest increase in immigration occurred in the municipalities along the Mediterranean and the easternmost Cantabrian coastal strips, those of the Catalan and Aragonese Pyrenees, and those of the Central Range and other provinces surrounding Madrid (González-Leonardo et al., 2022).

The results suggest that second homes, previous links with the area (migratory background, for example), environmental and tourist appeal, and “atypical registration” (not necessarily reflecting a real change of address but rather a temporary move or a strategy to evade restrictions on mobility, which were particularly strict during the first year of the pandemic) played a key role.

In 2021 there was a certain degree of return to the territorial patterns that were at work before the pandemic, especially in the later months. Outflows from the major core cities continued to be higher than pre-pandemic levels, although they also recovered their appeal for immigration, as observed earlier.

Figure 2 shows that in the second year of the pandemic three main trends can be discerned:

• An increase in the intensity of outflows from all six core cities analysed to their metropolitan municipalities, particularly those located at medium distances. In València, outflows to municipalities with a population of over 10,000 located 10-20 km from the metropolitan centre increased by 15.4% with respect to 2019; in Seville, by 19.6%, and in Málaga, by 20.4%.

• A tendency for long-distance interurban mobility to converge with pre-pandemic values.

• A drop in rates of emigration to rural municipalities in comparison with 2020, although levels were still higher than those recorded in 2019. In Barcelona, for example, emigration rates to rural municipalities lying 80-160 km away were 22.5% down on 2020, although still 67.6% higher than in 2019.

Despite the changes brought by the pandemic in the residential context, it cannot be considered that any in-depth modification has occurred in the prevailing patterns that residential mobility has shown over recent decades. In this respect, most moves continue to be within urban areas.

If changes of address within the core city are added to the intermunicipal moves analysed above, the picture obtained is highly illustrative. Thus, although in the municipality of Madrid there was a significant increase in moves to municipalities with a population of under 10,000, these moves still represent only a small percentage of the total number of changes of residence occurring in the city. In the two-year period 2020-2021, flows to these municipalities represented 8.0% of the total, as opposed to 6.2% in 2018-2019. In Barcelona, the increase in the relative importance of these moves was practically identical (fig. 3).
 

Who led the rise in moves into less populated areas? At the onset of the pandemic several hypotheses were considered, in some cases contradictory ones. On the one hand, it was thought that the growth of teleworking might encourage job flexibility and increase the residential mobility of certain groups, generally the more educated. On the other hand, it was speculated that the periods of lockdown and mobility constraints might cause households with more precarious housing conditions to reconsider their residential strategies.

The data provided in Residential Variation Statistics do not allow an examination of the socioeconomic profile of those who changed their place of residence, but the first data to have been released recently from the 2021 census does allow such an examination. However, since the reference date is 1 January 2021, residential changes can only be analysed up to 2020. The results support those hypotheses that focused on an increase in mobility by more advantaged social groups. In the wake of the pandemic, the percentage of people with tertiary level educational attainment increased in almost all moves, but especially those away from the two big cities to less populated municipalities (fig. 4).

Thus, 38.5% of residents of municipalities with a population of under 10,000 who moved there from Madrid in 2018 or 2019 had completed higher education, while among those who did so in 2020 the figure topped 47.6%. As regards employment status, a change along the same lines was observed, with a notable rise in the presence of the active population (people in work plus unemployed) in moves to municipalities with a population of less than 10,000. However, this percentage fell slightly in interurban moves.

As new data on residential behaviour is collected and analysed, it is observed that the most significant changes occurred only in the early months of the pandemic. Contrary to what was first claimed, large densely populated urban cores will continue to be important poles of attraction and retention of population. Nevertheless, the pandemic has left its mark. It shows, in particular, in the greater drift – increasingly involving socioeconomically more advantaged groups – towards suburban areas and non-urban locations at a medium distance from the big cities. These flows are closely related to the evolution of teleworking and other semi-distance forms of employment, so the likelihood of them persisting in the coming years is very high.

After having traced territorial patterns of residential mobility during the pandemic, future work should focus on their implications, with particular emphasis on the sociospatial perspective; i.e., how different social groups are distributed within metropolitan regions. Far from reducing differences, the pandemic has exacerbated the social inequalities that already existed in cities. In this respect, given the increasing involvement of local middle classes in suburban drift, it is essential to track any socioeconomic gaps that might become more acute at metropolitan scale. It is also necessary to study the ongoing processes of gentrification at a time when Mediterranean core cities are more appealing to highly transitory transnational professionals (López-Gay, 2023). In this respect, it is important to gain a deeper understanding both of the mechanisms involved in the movement of more vulnerable population groups and of the rationales concerning immobility and the possibility of remaining and taking root in an area in the post-pandemic context (Barañano et al., 2022). There is also scope for research on the relationship between residential itineraries and access to social infrastructure and the structuring of social and community networks (Gomà and Blanco, 2022).

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