Borders, cross-border cooperation and depopulation: the case of the Spanish-Portuguese North-Central Border

Abstract

Background Cross-border cooperation has been (and still is) one of the main assets of the acquis communitiare in everything that refers to cross-border development. In fact, development initiatives aimed at addressing the problems of intra-European border areas could have better results if they were concerted (horizontally coordinated) and executed jointly by the governments, national, and local actors from both border sides, to improve their populations’ quality of life. The study goal is to provide new contributions that enrich critical reflection and debate on the issue of depopulation, in order to propose economic policy recommendations within a framework of cross-border institutional cooperation and inter- and intra-governmental coordination of political actors involved. Methods We prepared a descriptive analysis of its evolution during the period 1960-2020, with three essential variables: a) population evolution border based on the losses or gains verified with respect to 1960; b) critical population mass existing in 2020 based on the indicator of population density (inhabitants per square kilometer), and c) level of population aging based on the indicator percentage of population over 65 years of age over total population. Our descriptive analysis exclusively covers the border municipalities located along the both sides of the Spanish-Portuguese north-central border line, a total of 49 border municipalities (nine Portuguese and 40 spanish). Results The results show the existence of this recessive demographic continuum, which extends to both sides of the border, causes the need to face the depopulating phenomenon from a transnational and European perspective, in the sense that ‘national’ solutions to the phenomenon will not be able to offer answers common and consistent to a phenomenon as complex as depopulation. Conclusions It is necessary to reinforce the existing cross-border cooperation, providing it with greater operability at the level of institutional and administrative coordination, deepening the multilevel governance of the territory.