Spanish or the Spanish history that starts at the end of the seventeenth century, the population of Spain had decreased in relation to what existed at the beginning of the century. By the 1590s the age of demographic expansion of the sixteenth century was over. At that time, the population was about 8.4 million souls. By 1717 it had fallen to 7.6 million.

The rest of Europe also experienced a demographic recession, or stagnation, in the seventeenth century, but nowhere did it begin as soon, last as long and reach such proportions as in Spain. War, famine and plague were not exclusive phenomena of the seventeenth century; birth control, although not unknown, was hardly practiced and the birth rate was high, as it corresponded to the period, despite the incidence of celibacy. A demographic deficit of this magnitude, which occurred in the first half of the century, can only be explained by the exceptional concurrence of a series of adversities.

The secular demographic trend was not the same in all parts of Spain. Most regions, outside Castile, experienced a demographic stagnation, rather than a net loss of population. In Valencia, the expulsion of the Moors lowered the population of about 450,000 souls to 300,000 and in the middle of the century that void had not yet been filled when the province suffered the scourge of the plague. At the end of the century, Valencia had some 350,000 to 400,000 inhabitants.3 Catalonia, like other regions of Spain, suffered the effects of plague and famine.

The principality was a battleground from 1640, losing Roussillon in 1659, and French immigration, an important phenomenon in the previous period, was reduced in the second half of the century.

Consequently, in 1700 the population of Catalonia was about 400,000-450,000 inhabitants and thus did not exceed that of 1600.4 Aragon, where the Moors were less numerous than in Valencia, recovered more quickly from their expulsion, but the difficult economic conditions they precipitated a downward demographic trend from 1650.

Spanish

The relative immunity of Navarre and the Basque provinces from the great epidemics of plague was offset by their primitive economy, which forced the emigration of a large number of second-born people, and there the population remained stationary, being about 350,000 inhabitants throughout the century. In the 1590s, the population of the non-Castilian regions amounted to about 1,785,000 inhabitants. A century later that number had fallen slightly.

But the worst part was reserved for Castile, and within it to its central core.

The peripheral provinces-Galicia, Asturias, Andalusia, and Murcia were less affected by depopulation. Some regions, for local reasons, did not follow the general demographic model of Castile. For example, the province of Mondoñedo, in Galicia, experienced a demographic increase of 15-20 per one hundred between 1587 and 1631, and an even greater growth later, although with an interruption between 1650 and 1669.5 The most vulnerable region was the arid and sterile central plateau, which was the one that bore the demographic deficit most rigorously. Both Castilla la Vieja and Castilla la Nueva and Extremadura suffered significant population losses.

The disaster was absolute. Undoubtedly, there was a certain migratory movement towards the less depressed regions and towards overseas, but the truth is that a large part of these disappeared Castilians died because of hunger or disease or in war, and the adverse economic conditions delayed the demographic recovery.

The disaster was also sudden. It began in 1590 and sixty years later the worst of the crisis had passed. At the beginning of this period, the population of Castile was about 6,600,000 inhabitants. Between 1591 and 1614, terrible outbreaks and the expulsion of the Moors reduced their number by about 600,000-700,000 inhabitants, about ten per one hundred. In 1630-1632, plague and famine caused new and important losses.

Spanish Civil War

From 1640, the civil wars, along with the famine and epidemics of 1647-1652, reduced the population of Castile to its lowest point and it was then that Andalusia experienced the worst catastrophe. In 1665, the population of Castile barely exceeded five million, a figure that also shows those made at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

After the terrible years of 1677-1683, when diseases and climatic adversities struck Castile again, the population tended to stagnate, with a slight upward trend.

The Spanish were at the mercy of diseases and the elements.

The underlying cause of the demographic recession was an abnormally high mortality rate, and the main lethal agent was epidemic outbreaks. Smallpox, typhus, dysentery, and other malignancies contributed to higher mortality rates.

But the biggest enemy was plague, bubonic plague, transmitted by flea-infected rats.

The virulence of the disease was reinforced by two endemic factors in Spanish life. The periodic crises of subsistence, the fate of a people who neglected agriculture, caused extreme malnutrition, and weakened resistance to infection and, on the other hand, the excessive population agglomeration in the cities, which caused overcrowding, the existence of slums of workers and neglect of hygiene, turned the Spanish cities into a perfect breeding ground for the disease.

Spanish outbreak of the pandemic

The outbreak of 1596-1602, the largest epidemic of the period, devastated northern and central Spain, as well as Andalusia. From December 1596, he ravaged Santander, to whose port he arrived aboard ships from the Netherlands. In 1597, the infection reached San Sebastian and began to spread through the interior inexorably.

Over the next three years, the plague spread throughout Old Castile and New Castile, affecting Bilbao, Aranda de Duero, Burgos, Segovia, Madrid, Valladolid, Toledo and dozens of smaller towns and villages, until it reached central and southern Spain.

The plague struck after a series of crop failures and food shortages hit communities already weakened by poverty and depression. In some cities its impact was catastrophic. Santander lost 2,500 inhabitants out of a population of 4,000.

For its part, Valladolid lost about 6,500 inhabitants, eighteen per one hundred, in four months, Madrid 3,500, 10 per 100 of the population, only in a period of eight months throughout 1599.

There can be no doubt about the social distribution of mortality.

The rich and the powerful fled to other parts of Spain or isolated themselves in the safety of their rural properties, while most of the victims were from the poor and malnourished sectors.

Altogether, some 500,000 people died because of plague from the north.8 The outbreak that followed, the great plague of 1647-1652, hit the eastern part of Spain and Andalusia. He first entered Valencia - from Algiers - where 30,000 people died.