List of place name to 1 January of each year. Methodology

Introduction

The country is divided administratively into Autonomous Communities, provinces, municipalities and other territorial local entities below municipal, whose delimitation, denomination, organisation and competences are described and regulated in detail in the legislation in force on local regimes.

From a statistical point of view this division is insufficient to get to know in what form the population in the municipalities is in. It must go down to a subdivision of the same, that does not possess any official character but is very traditional: the collective and singular population entities as well as the nuclei and scattered of the latter.

Population entities

A Singular population entity is understood to be any habitable area of the municipal terminality, inhabited or exceptionally inhabited, clearly differentiated within the same and which is known by a specific denomination that identifies it without possibility of confusion.

An area is considered habitable when there are habited dwellings or in a condition to be inhabited.

An area is considered clearly differentiated when the buildings and dwellings belonging to the same area may be perfectly identified on the ground and whole area is known by a denomination.

Consequently, the seasonal residential urbanisations and areas may be singular population entities even when they are inhabited for certain periods of the year.

No dwelling may belong simultaneously to two or more singular entities. A municipality may consist of one or more singular population entities.

If in a municipality there do not exist clearly differentiated areas the municipality will be considered a unique entity.

As an intermediate unit between the singular population entity and the municipality there exist, in some regions groups of singular entities (parishes, brotherhoods, councils, standing committees and others) that make up a collective population entity with its own personality and markedly historical origin.

The singular and collective population entities must not be confused with the local territorial entity below municipality (lesser local entities), defined by Law 7/1985, of 2 April, Regulator of the Local Regimen Bases as a unit for management, decentralised administration and political representation within the municipality.

Population nuclei and scattered

A population nucleus is considered to be a set of at least ten buildings, that are made up of streets, squares and other urban roads. As an exception, the number of buildings will be less than 10, as long as the population that lives there exceeds 50 inhabitants. Included in the nucleus are those buildings that, being isolated, measure more than 200 metres from the exterior limits of the mentioned set while in the determination of the said distance the land occupied by industrial or commercial installations, parks, gardens, sports areas, cemeteries, car parks and others must be excluded as well as canals or rivers that may be crossed by bridges.

The buildings or dwellings of a singular population entity that may not be included in the concept of a nucleus are considered as a scattered.

A singular population unit may have one or more nuclei or even none at all, if all this is found in a scattered.

No dwelling may belong simultaneously to two or more nuclei or to a nucleus and a scattered.

Updating

Traditionally the relation of population entities and nuclei of each terminal municipality were updated at the time of the Register Population Censuses and Renewals.

Law 4/1996 of 10 January, by which the modification of Law 7/1985 of 2 April, Regulator of the Local Regimen Bases and Regulation of population and territorial demarcation approved by Royal Decree 2612/1996 of 20 December is carried out, established a new continuous management system of the Municipal Register that meant the informatisation of all Municipal Registers and its coordination by the National Institute of Statistics.

According to this system, the town councils issue the INE with a copy in IT support of the Municipal Register made up in the renewal of 1996 as well as the monthly variations that occur to the data in their Municipal Registers. The INE then carries out the appropriate checks to detect existing errors and avoid registration duplications occurring among them.

In agreement with article 76 of the quoted regulations the Town Councils will revise, once a year, the relation of population entities and nuclei and will send them to the National Institute of Statistics who will publish them annually.

The population of each one of the population units will be obtained directly from the existing files in the INE that contain the recording of the Municipal Register.

This publication contains the systematised and coded relation of entities, nuclei and groups of each one of the municipalities and population broken down by the sex of each one of them.

The technical difficulties for more than 8,100 town halls to computerise their Municipal Registers (around 5,000 municipalities have less than 1,000 inhabitants) meant that some municipalities would not have sent their registry files until 2002. Even though a municipal population was obtained, it could not be obtained at levels below municipal.

In these cases the population of these population units appears as ..

Coding

The code of population entities and nuclei is made up of eleven corresponding digits, the first two correspond with the province code and the three following ones with that of the municipality within the province, the sixth and seventh to the collective entity within the municipality, the eighth and ninth to the singular entity within the collective one if existing or within the municipality in the contrary case. The two final ones correspond with the nucleus or scattered, the code for the latter being 99.

Population entity codes were assigned by alphabetical order within each municipality during the 1981 population census and maintained up to now. A code correlating to the last one existing has been assigned to the newly created entities while the codes of entities that have disappeared have not been reused unless an entity existing after 1981 has been registered for which the code that was existing on that deregistration date has been assigned.

The population nuclei were recoded in 1991 in alphabetical order within each singular entity.

In the same way as for the entities a code correlating to the last existing one has been assigned to the newly created nuclei. The nuclei codes have not been reused.

For more information on coding, check the following link 'interpretation of results'.

Methodological Changes

For the reference periods up to January 1, 2023, the List of Places provided information on the number of registered persons in each population unit, according to the census database obtained as a result of the coordination of municipal registers carried out by the INE. The population figures in the List of Places during this period coincided with the Official Population Figures published by the INE.

A methodological change was introduced as of January 1, 2024, consisting of the use of census information instead of Municipal Registers information. From this date on, the population figures in the List of Places coincide with those of the Annual Population Census.

Dissemination plan

The listing is published of the entities, nuclei and dispersed items for each municipality, as well as the population broken down by sex for each one of them.

Frequency of dissemination

The results of this operation are disseminated annually.