Favored Quarters

[Former President tack50]

Borrowing from Batista, here are my guesses for the 10 largest Spanish cities:

Madrid: Unclear. The richest areas in the city proper would be the neighbourhoods of Salamanca, Retiro or Chamberí in the Northeast. However, right after you cross the area delimited by highway M-30, income drops like a rock. Plus, the eastern suburbs like Coslada, Torrejón de Ardoz or Alcalá de Henares are fairly middle class. Meanwhile it is the western suburbs that are where the super rich live.

In Madrid if anything it makes more sense to talk of an "unfavoured quarter", southern Madrid is very firmly poor.

Barcelona: West. Barcelona has a much clearer favoured quarter. This one goes from the Eixample (just nord of the old city), which is upper middle class, and follows "Diagonal Avenue" to the west, up until the mountais. The wealthiest part of the city is just on the foothills (Pedralbes, Sarriá, etc). It is such a distinct area that "Upper Diagonal" is often used as a synonym of the rich people of Barcelona and what not.

Valencia: East. In the city proper, starting in the old town (which unlike in Madrid and Barcelona is fairly wealthy, especially in the eastern half), you go east to neighbourhoods like Eixample or El Pla del Real. It is worth noting that in terms of suburban areas, the rich ones in Valencia are to the northwest (there is a sort of V shape, but the western half is more like middle class until you are well outside city limits)

Seville: South. The richest parts of Seville seem to be the southern half of the old city, and the neighbourhoods just outside it (Los Remedios, Nervión). Worth noting that if you go too far south you get to Las 3000 viviendas, which is the poorest and worst neighbourhood in all of Spain arguably.

Zaragoza: South. The favoured quarter here is fairly clear. It starts just outside the old city, and goes south along Paseo de la Gran Vía.

Málaga: East. In the area immediately next to the city centre, there doesn't seem to be a clear pattern. However once you start getting to even slightly more peripheral neighbourhoods, the east gets very wealthy, very fast.

Murcia: North. Again a very clear one.

Palma de Mallorca: West. This is a weird one because the city centre is richer than any area surrounding it. However when you head east, you get to the poorest neighbourhoods and it never picks up from there. Meanwhile, when you head west there is a middle class area and then super rich suburbs.

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: East. This is a very clear one. Las Palmas is a very mountainous town, and the coastal areas on the east are the ones that are very clearly richer than the inland ones. There is a rich strip all the way from Ciudad Jardín to the old city in Triana. Meanwhile, inland neighbourhoods on the hills and mountains are way poorer (Schamann, San Juan, Las Rehoyas, etc)

Bilbao: West. Bilbao is a weird one because the city centre does not coincide with the old town. In any case, the rich areas are to the west of the old town. (Abando, Indatxu)

So overall it is:

1 North
2 South
3 West
3 East
1 Unclear

So interestingly Spain doesn't really seem to have a preference of East vs West. I guess perhaps it is because Spain never really had much industry to begin with? (so the prevailing winds argument is much weaker).

[Former President tack50]

So interestingly Spain doesn't really seem to have a preference of East vs West. I guess perhaps it is because Spain never really had much industry to begin with? (so the prevailing winds argument is much weaker).

Neither does Italy, though in our case it's because there are (almost) always hills that have oriented the choice. Though Milan is completely flat but the result was instead just a radial distribution, and even using the suburbs doesn't change much, because they are mostly poorer than the main city in all directions although there are outliers.

Also lol Spain has so many rich suburbs apparently.

I mean, there are also lots of poor suburbs too; and I would argue suburbs as a whole are often poorer or on par with the city.

In general Spanish rich people tend to live in 1 of 2 kinds of places:

a) The city itself, in fancy buildings from the 19th century "ensanches" that most cities had (or sometimes the old medieval city centre). I think this is the better definition of "favoured quarter". Places like this include Barcelona's "Upper Diagonal" or Madrid's Salamanca neighbourhood.

b) Far away from the city in suburbs with big detached housing (a rarity in Spain), private schools, etc. Places like this would most notably include Madrid's western suburbs (Las Rozas, Majadahonda, Pozuelo, Boadilla, etc); but I think they exist in every city.

[Former President tack50]

What is interesting is that, although the PP obviously dominate such wealthy areas, Vox got a clear second place in many of them (of course except in Barcelona and Bilbao). They seem to be fairly unique among European far right parties in managing to win a decent amount of the traditional well-off conservative vote (their best areas though seem to be the Madrid exurbs (what is the income level of these?) and the coastal regions of Andalucia and Murcia). Would I be correct in suspecting that this anomaly among European nations is at least partially due to historical patterns of support for Francoism, and the more recent polarising debates on Catalan independence?

I am not sure, but I think you would be correct yeah. Vox tends to do better than your usual far right party among the "old money" people, and worse than your usual right populist party among more working class people. Though this got reduced quite a bit in the November 2019 election, Vox's gains were concentrated among poorer areas

Coastal Andalucia and Murcia can be explained due to muslim immigration. Those areas have high muslim immigration which causes quite a bit of conflict. Eastern Andalucia also has the highest concentrations of roma gypsies in Spain as well (though Murcia is average). The town of El Ejido in Almería province is still the home of the worst "race riots" in Spanish history (back in 2000)