The largest city in Spain is Madrid, with a population of about 3.3 million, followed by Barcelona (1.6 million), Valencia (790,000), Seville (690,000), and Zaragoza (670,000). Together with Málaga, Murcia, Palma, Las Palmas, and Bilbao, these ten cities form the backbone of urban Spain, a country of roughly 47 million people spread across the Iberian Peninsula, the Balearic Islands, and the Canary Islands.
The Ten Largest Spanish Cities
Spanish urban geography is dominated by two giants, Madrid and Barcelona, after which population drops off sharply. Here is the ranking by city-proper population:
- Madrid — about 3.3 million. The capital and the largest city in Spain.
- Barcelona — about 1.6 million. The capital of Catalonia and Spain's leading Mediterranean port.
- Valencia — about 790,000. A major port on the eastern coast.
- Seville — about 690,000. The capital of Andalusia in the south.
- Zaragoza — about 670,000. The capital of Aragón, on the Ebro River.
- Málaga — about 580,000. The gateway to the Costa del Sol.
- Murcia — about 460,000. A southeastern agricultural and university city.
- Palma — about 420,000. The capital of the Balearic Islands, on Mallorca.
- Las Palmas — about 380,000. The largest city of the Canary Islands.
- Bilbao — about 350,000. The industrial and cultural heart of the Basque Country.
These figures count residents within municipal boundaries. Metropolitan areas tell a bigger story: Greater Madrid is home to roughly 6.7 million people, and the Barcelona metropolitan region to more than 5 million, so well over a quarter of all Spaniards live in or around these two cities alone.
Madrid and Barcelona: The Two Giants
Madrid sits almost exactly in the geographic center of Spain on the Meseta Central, the high inland plateau. At about 667 meters above sea level it is the highest capital city in the European Union, which gives it cold winters and hot, dry summers. As the seat of government, the royal court, and the headquarters of most major Spanish companies and banks, Madrid is the country's undisputed economic engine.
Barcelona, by contrast, faces the Mediterranean and looks outward to Europe and the wider world. It is the capital of Catalonia, a region with its own language and strong cultural identity. Famous for the architecture of Antoni Gaudí, including the still-unfinished Sagrada Família, Barcelona is a powerhouse of tourism, design, technology, and trade, and its port is one of the busiest in the Mediterranean.
The Coastal and Regional Capitals
Below the top two, most of Spain's big cities are regional capitals or major ports. Valencia, the third largest, is known for its futuristic City of Arts and Sciences and as the birthplace of paella. Seville, the largest city in southern Spain, preserves a stunning Moorish and Gothic heritage, including the Giralda tower and the largest Gothic cathedral in the world.
Zaragoza anchors the northeast between Madrid and Barcelona, while Málaga has transformed from a beach-holiday gateway into a thriving cultural and technology hub. Bilbao's reinvention is equally striking: once a heavy-industry port, it became a model of urban renewal after the Guggenheim Museum opened in 1997.
Island Cities and the Spread of Spain
Two of the ten largest cities lie on islands, reflecting how Spain extends far beyond the mainland. Palma is the capital of the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean, a major tourism center on Mallorca. Las Palmas, on Gran Canaria, is one of two capitals of the Canary Islands, an Atlantic archipelago closer to Africa than to Europe. Their presence in the ranking shows that Spanish urban life is not confined to the peninsula.
Roughly 80 percent of Spain's population lives in urban areas, and the country's cities have grown through centuries of Roman, Moorish, and Christian history. Many were founded more than 2,000 years ago, which is why even mid-sized Spanish cities are layered with cathedrals, Roman walls, and old quarters. If you enjoy testing how well you know world capitals and cities, try our interactive geography games.
A Capital Placed in the Geometric Centre
Madrid is the highest capital city in Europe at roughly 650 metres, sitting on the Meseta, the high plateau that occupies the middle of the Iberian peninsula. It was a minor town when Philip II moved the court there in 1561, chosen in large part because it sat near the exact geographical centre of the kingdom.
That centrality was then reinforced deliberately. The Spanish road network radiates from Puerta del Sol, where a marker sets kilometre zero for six national highways, and the high-speed rail system built from 1992 follows the same hub pattern, which is why travelling between two provincial cities often means passing through the capital.
The plateau also gives Madrid a continental climate unlike the coasts: cold winters and summers that regularly exceed 40C, in a city with no river of any size and no sea within 300 kilometres.
Barcelona and the Grid That Was Never Finished as Designed
Barcelona's Eixample district is one of the most studied pieces of urban planning in the world. Ildefons Cerda laid it out in 1859 as a grid of octagonal blocks with chamfered corners, intended to have buildings on only two sides of each block and gardens in the middle.
Property pressure filled the courtyards and raised the heights, so the density is far greater than Cerda intended, but the chamfered corners survive and give the district its distinctive appearance from the air.
The Sagrada Familia has been under construction since 1882 and remains unfinished, making it one of the longest-running building projects anywhere. Antoni Gaudi is buried in its crypt, and seven of his works in and around the city are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Spain Is a Country of Several Languages
Castilian Spanish is official nationwide, but Catalan, Basque and Galician are co-official in their respective autonomous communities, and the cities on this list divide along those lines.
Barcelona and Valencia sit in Catalan-speaking territory, Bilbao in the Basque Country, and A Coruna and Vigo in Galicia. Basque is a linguistic isolate with no known relation to any other language on earth, which makes it the oldest surviving language in western Europe.
The political consequences are live. Catalonia held an independence referendum in October 2017 that the Spanish state declared illegal, and the constitutional question has dominated national politics since.
The Coast Emptied the Interior
Spain has one of the most extreme internal population imbalances in Europe. The coasts and the capital hold the great majority of people, while large parts of the interior have depopulated so severely that the term la Espana vaciada, the emptied Spain, has entered political vocabulary.
Provinces such as Soria, Teruel and Cuenca have population densities comparable to Lapland, and some have fewer residents now than a century ago. Rural depopulation accelerated in the 1960s as people left for Madrid, Barcelona and Bilbao, and for northern Europe.
The coastal growth has a different driver: tourism and residential development from the 1960s onwards turned Malaga, Alicante, Palma and the Costa del Sol into year-round urban regions with large foreign-resident populations.
Seville, Granada and the Andalusian Inheritance
Southern Spain was under Muslim rule for periods ranging from a few decades to nearly 800 years, and the cities there carry the architecture of it. The Alhambra in Granada, the Mezquita in Cordoba and the Alcazar and Giralda in Seville are among the most visited monuments in the country.
Seville became enormously wealthy after 1503, when it was granted the monopoly on trade with the Spanish Americas, and the Archivo de Indias there still holds the documentary record of that empire. The monopoly later moved downriver to Cadiz as ships grew too large for the Guadalquivir.
Cordoba was, in the tenth century, plausibly the largest city in western Europe and a centre of learning where Arabic, Hebrew and Latin scholarship met. It is now a provincial city of a few hundred thousand, well down this list. More on the regions these cities belong to is in our Spain country guide.
Common Questions About Spanish Cities
What is the biggest city in Spain?
Madrid is the biggest city in Spain, with a population of about 3.3 million in the city proper and around 6.7 million in its wider metropolitan area. It is also the national capital.
Is Barcelona bigger than Madrid?
No. Barcelona, with about 1.6 million residents, is Spain's second largest city. Madrid has roughly double Barcelona's city-proper population, though both have large surrounding metropolitan regions.
How many people live in Spain?
Spain has a total population of approximately 47 million people. The country is highly urbanized, with about 80 percent of residents living in towns and cities.
What is the largest city in southern Spain?
Seville, the capital of Andalusia, is the largest city in southern Spain, with a population of around 690,000. It is famous for flamenco, its grand cathedral, and the Alcázar palace.
Is Madrid or Barcelona bigger?
Madrid, and by a clear margin: roughly 3.3 million in the municipality against about 1.6 million for Barcelona. The gap narrows on metropolitan measures but Madrid remains larger either way.
Why do Spanish cities eat so late?
Partly habit and partly clocks. Spain sits geographically in the Greenwich meridian zone but has kept Central European Time since 1940, so the sun is roughly an hour later than the clock suggests. Solar noon in Madrid falls close to 2pm in summer, which is when lunch happens.
Which Spanish city has the most visitors?
Barcelona receives the most international tourists of the large cities, enough that overtourism has become a live political issue there, with restrictions on new hotel licences and short-term lets.