Studies in demographics dynamics in La Rioja from population series, 1580-1900

Abstract

The preparation of long-lasting parish series in a large sample of Riojan villages comes to extend our knowledge about the marked particularises of the local dynamics of the Spanish population during the demographic Ancien Règime. These series prove the weak increase typical of an agricultural economy. Its most dynamic period was that of the liberalization of the land market carried out by the liberal middleclass during the first part of the XIX century. In general terms, the lines and rhythms held by the Riojan population had a great parallelism with those known for large regions of the inland Spain, particularly the plateau of Duero.

At a regional level, these series reflect the great disparity of lines among the mountain villages, of cattle economy, and those of the Ebro valley, devoted to agricultural tasks. From the middle of the XVIII on, the first ones suffered a decline of the traditional activities linked to the transhumance. In the last ones, it is possible to find, at a time, very different behaviours among those villages more connected to the market –regional heads, wine-producing populations– and those which had a simple subsistence agriculture.