The Economic and Financial Capitals of Spain: Their Significance in the Structuring of the Urban System

The concept of the global city has enjoyed enormous prestige in the academic world in recent decades. Faced with a restrictive interpretation of this name, global cities have proliferated across all continents, to refer to large cities that play a central role of economic command and decision-making in a significant region of the world. For this reason, this expression is analysed for the Spanish case, based on an obvious question: Can Madrid and Barcelona be authentic global cities due to their central role in certain financial, business and creative activities? Undoubtedly, these two capitals have served as a reference node for the banking, energy, creative or telecommunications sectors throughout Latin America and the Mediterranean world. Both concentrate a large part of the headquarters of the main Spanish transnational companies and are essential to define the economic-financial capitals of the country. However, a review of the headquarters of the largest Spanish companies also shows the importance of regional metropolises such as Bilbao, Valencia or Seville, which have consolidated their position as secondary centres of economic power in Spain. The analysis of this Urban Geography of Capitalism of the largest nation in the Iberian Peninsula will occupy the attention of this chapter.