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The latest research and development (R&D) framework programmes of the European Union (EU), “Horizon 2020” and “Horizon Europe”, have significantly increased the resources available to promote science and innovation in Europe. However, the strong competitiveness of the research teams and their search for excellence may cause inequality in the spatial distribution of investment effort in R&D. The aim of this paper is to analyse the geographic distribution of R&D spending in the EU. A greater concentration of funds is observed in the most advanced and dynamic economies, capable of promoting more competitive research teams and projects. Through an empirical analysis, estimated by a spatial convergence model, it is found that EU R&D funds are preventing cross-regional convergence in Europe by driving growth mainly in wealthier regions. Based on these results, it seems relevant to consider spatial correction mechanisms for the distribution of R&D resources so that they achieve greater territorial cohesion in Europe.

Regional studies on religiosity are non-existent in Spain and infrequent or non-existent in the Europe regional sphere, but not between countries. This article shows the regional variability in Spain of people who identify themselves as believers. It is argued that religious identification (believers) in Spain is regionally heterogeneous and that the regional effects associated with religiosity are altered by other ascriptive variables, gender, age, and educational attainment. 124 barometers have been merged, files from the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS) of Spain from January 2013 to May 2022, monthly, except Augusts, obtaining a sample size of 402,868 interviewees (394,906 identify themselves as religious or non-religious).

The objective of the study was to analyze barriers to access to health care in Chile reported by international migrants residing in the metropolitan region of the country and associated factors. For this purpose, a digital survey on vulnerabilities and resources of migrant communities in Chile to face the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic was applied. A descriptive and stratified analysis was performed by demographic and socioeconomic variables, type of health provision and migratory status. As results, immigrants from Haiti reported the highest percentage of barriers to health care access, after adjusting for socio-demographic variables and migratory status.

The BBVA Foundation has recently published (January 2023) the report on capital endowments in Spain and its autonomous communities corresponding to the period 1995-2022. This report is the latest in a long relationship between the BBVA Foundation and the Ivie that has lasted for more than 25 years. In these years, a database on investment and capital stock has been built following the most established and recognized methodologies at each moment of time. The last methodological change was implemented in the edition prior to this one. The initial year of reference for the database is 1964. Despite the fact that a long historical series is available, in the report that is being reviewed now it has been decided to focus on the most recent period, the one that begins with the 1995 expansion.

The structure of audio-visual television production in Andalusia is complex, particularly the composition of the business fabric of the television system in the autonomous community, insofar as it depends, to a large extent, on public television, Canal Sur Televisión. The aim of this study is to approach the reality of audio-visual production companies specialising in television to find out whether Andalusian public television is fulfilling its public service function and, above all, whether it is a matrix that generates the regional industrial and business fabric. The methodology is based on a simple structural approach, using professional empiricism and participant observation, where the techniques used were qualitative and quantitative: content analysis, direct observation and participant observation, bibliographic techniques, in-depth interviews (using the key informant tool) and surveys. All this took place during the years 2020, 2021 and 2022. The results point to the fulfilment of the obligation to promote the development of the Andalusian audio-visual fabric and that of audio-visual production companies, as observed in its regulations.

The current network of protected areas in Spain has been a product of the transfer of political responsibilities from the State to the autonomous regional governments that began in the 1980s. Among other outcomes, this institutional re-arrangement triggered an unprecedented development of public policies and legislation in the field of nature conservation. In these pages we will trace the contours of a genealogy of what we would call the “institutionalization” of nature conservation, through the diachronic, comparative analysis of three case studies and their specificities: Catalonia, Andalusia and the Valencian Community. We will then expand our analysis to Portugal and, eventually, to the current international context wherein neoliberal conservation policies are expanding nowadays.

Since the 2008 global economic crisis, the neoliberalization of nature and space, and consequently of environmental and planning policies, have exacerbated significantly. From infrastructure megaprojects, mining, fracking, waste disposal and land grabbing to shrinking access and loss of public green spaces, uneven gentrification and urban regeneration policies, public spaces, and natures within and beyond cities have been appropriated, privatized, commoditized, profoundly transformed and degraded with the aim to overcome recession and boost urban development. Despite the varying degree of success in pursuing urban growth, this has disproportionally affected people along lines of class, ethnicity, and gender, deepening environmental, social, and spatial inequality in many places across the globe. By drawing on my long-term research on biodiversity offsetting, the key argument I aim to advance in this essay is that since the 2008 financial crash, we have been witnessing the emergence of an increasingly symbiotic relationship between neoliberal conservation policies, infrastructure expansion and uneven urban development. This has been accompanied by the reframing of non-human nature as a movable amenity and has been intertwined with the new territorialities that the profound changes in global urban and economic geographies have brought about. This shift aims to legitimize and render common sense the idea that nature, either a protected area, a forest, an endangered species, or an urban green space, can be simply (re)located and (re)created where the interests of particular sections of capital dictate. Crucially, the underlying argument is not only that non-human nature should not be considered a barrier to infrastructure expansion and urban growth but perfectly compatible with it.

The official designation of protected areas in the Valencian Community (Spain) was initiated in the mid-1980s by the first government of the region through the creation of various classes of protection. The process was executed in an expeditious manner following the devolution of environmental management by the Spanish state in 1984. It was carried out in the absence of an adequate legal framework on the regional level; in the context of social mobilization in defence of the moves, as well as varying degrees of local opposition; and parallel to an extensive and expanding urbanization of the coastline. Into this context of legitimization of democratic political powers and shifting approaches to eco-system conservation was then added the concept of urgent protection, but without the sufficient resources and management tools to accomplish it. This paper presents the keys to understanding the initial processes of institutionalization of protected areas in the Valencian Community (Spain) through interviews with the holders of the principle political and managerial positions at the time.

Depopulation is a consolidated research topic and more recently it is also important for governments. In this context, we propose an alternative methodology of emerging patterns to reveal significant trends and nuances of the population decreasing in Spanish municipalities between 1998 and 2021. To this goal, we use conventional sources, such as the Municipal Register of Inhabitants. Our results demonstrate a cold-hot bipolar systemic behavior, more balanced in its surface dimension than in the demographic one. It confirms two realities north-south in the depopulating Spain. Cold spots are concentrated in the northern half of the country with intensifying and consecutive patterns. Finally, the study provides a scalable methodology that is replicable in other periods and/or territories.