After nearly three weeks in Spain I was aware of how different life is here than it appeared to be in Spain.

• Charity Shops: my local high street has about a quarter of it made up with charity shops. I don’t think I saw any while I was in Spain. Of course, without familiar “brands” I don’t know if I would recognise them as such. Or perhaps Britain has become unusually dependent on charity retail.
• Small Traders: There appeared to be many more small business selling goods. I suppose cities with a denser population, small shops living underneath a six story appartment block would get the equivalent footfall of a small housing estate in the UK.
• Empty Streets: it looked like streets were just busier in Spain with more pedestrians. Maybe its the denser population agin meaning that more people move around a smaller space. It made things feel alive. Here the streets are much emptier in residential areas, indeed, even shoping districts seemed to have less life to them.
• Fewer Cars: my supposition is that with a denser population living in cities built before cars were common place have more walkable facilities and fewer parking facilities, and what’s not walkable can be accessed more readily by bus or metro. I’m not saying that the streets weren’t bnusy with cars, just that the volume didn’t seem to correlate to the idea of how many people lived in the area.
• Lack of Trees: we think of England as being a green and pleasant land, yet our streets are only lined with trees in “posher” areas. Barcelona has gone through a stratgy of re-greening the city by closing some streets to cars and making them pedestrian only with green spaces. Even the streets with cars have been planted – I think that was done since my last visit maybe twenty years ago. Other cities were on a spectrum of greening.
• Flags: I realised that Spanish flags don’t make me tense in the way English ones do. Fairly or unfairly, when I see the Cross of St George being flown here my brain doesn’t hear “national pride”. It hears “you might not be welcome”. That’s probably as much a reflection of Britain’s political climate as the flag itself.
• Rubbish: Spanish streets seemed much cleaner. Indeed, in some areas the cleaners were out first thing washing the streets in the busier areas! There certainly wasn’t litter – my own area of Southampton is terrible for litter.
• Self Checkouts: thanks fuck I didn’t encouter a single self checkout in Spain!
• Crap Cycle Lanes: having seen the way that cycling is championed in Spanish cities, I was ashamed of our pathetic efforts to introduce safe cycle routes into the UK. Our lanes are frequently too narrow and often completely unprotected by any kind of physical barrier. Spanish cities seemed to have many more dedicated and protected cycle lanes – like they actually want people to cycle places.
• Houses with Gardens: with so many people living in apartment blocks, private gardens are rare … and I love my garden!
• Fitness: this is less to do with any kind of difference in the lifestype between Pain and the UK, but I do a lot less walking and a lot more sitting! That’s what happens when you have to work!
• Eating: I am eating way more here than I did in Spain! I get hungry (or is it bored?) by mid-morning and I need something. Again mid-afternoon I am hungry. I last thing at night I get peckish. In Spain I was eating a breakfast croissant, I might have an empañada or roll for lunch, and maybe the same again or maybe something larger for tea. I would have only one treat per day.

Some of those thoughts led me to think about my life – especially fitness and snacking. I don’t know how to fight my brain when it gets bored or its “time” for a nibble.

Some of those thoughts led me to ask a few questions about the demographics of Spain and the UK. I was convinced Spain was more densely populated than Britain. It isn’t. Britain is almost three times as densely populated. So why did Spain feel busier? That question turned out to be far more interesting than the answer I’d expected.

National Demographics

Country	Population	Area	Average density
UK	69.7 million	243,610 km²	286/km²
Spain	49.1 million	505,990 km²	97/km²

So Spain has more space and less of it filled with people.

UK Cities

United Kingdom	Population	Area	Density
London	8.9 million	1,572 km²	5,670/km²
Birmingham	1.15 million	267 km²	4,300/km²
Glasgow	635,000	175 km²	3,630/km²
Liverpool	503,000	112 km²	4,490/km²
Bristol	483,000	110 km²	4,390/km²

Spanish Cities

Spain	Population	Area	Density
Madrid	3.4 million	605 km²	5,600/km²
Barcelona	1.7 million	101 km²	16,800/km²
Valencia	840,000	135 km²	6,200/km²
Seville	685,000	141 km²	4,850/km²
Zaragoza	683,000	973 km²	700/km²

You can see that the whole of the UK is skewed towards London – no other city comes close to it. Madrid is the largest, but only twice the size of the next city down. London is nearly eight times the size of Birmingham.

Barcelona is bloody dense city. Zaragoza has a large rural hinterland in its municipality … but despite the apartment blocks versus house and gardens, the population density of cities is comparible!

Car Ownership

Country	Passenger cars	Cars per person
UK	~41 million	0.59
Spain	~26 million	0.53

Spain has fewer cars, but roughly the same number of cars per person.

Transport Demographics

Measure	UK	Spain
Urban population	~84%	~81%
Motorways	~4,000 km	~17,000 km
High-speed rail	~110 km	4,000+ km (largest network in Europe)
Median age	~41	~45
Average household size	~2.36	~2.5
Life expectancy	≈81.3 years	≈84.2 years

I came home thinking Spain was crowded, densely populated and somehow more chaotic than Britain. The figures told a different story. What I was really seeing wasn’t population density at all. It was the result of decades of different choices about how cities should work. Britain gives us more private space. Spain seems to invest more in public space. Neither is perfect, but after three weeks there I found myself wondering whether we’ve been optimising our towns for the wrong things.