ABSTRACT
Metropolitan areas have become the main benchmarks in globalised capitalism. For Spain's central government, 'metropolitan area' means the grouping of municipalities created by a regional government in areas of high urban concentration for the management of one or more common services. In 1978, the system of Spanish cities was classified into two international metropolitan areas, six national-regional metropolitan areas, and seven areas undergoing metropolitanisation. In the 1960s and 1970s, in the middle of the growth and consolidation of a city model that repaired breaches and compensated for inequalities, setting up forms of metropolitan government in delineated areas was chosen as a way to improve management and service delivery and gain territorial coherence. The 'return' of the city as a political player has taken place in a post-industrial scenario which is very different from that of the 1980s. Since then, and in Spain too, urban dynamics have been dominated by powerful processes of dispersion, decentralisation and segregation.
