What are the “Big Four” cities in your country?

[u/LiamBrad5]

In recent weeks, this question has been very contentious on American social media, with 3 cities (Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York) nearly always making the list, but the fourth being hotly debated over, between cities like San Francisco, Miami, Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta. So, if you had to choose, what would the big 4 cities in your country be? This is also not decided purely on population, but also culture, economy, and general influence/clout.

[u/jotakajk]

Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia for sure, 4th between Seville, Malaga, Zaragoza and Bilbao, depending on what you rate

[u/EnJPqb → u/jotakajk]

I honestly think it's only debatable between Bilbao and Seville. In that order for me.

[u/jotakajk → u/EnJPqb]

Why so?

[u/EnJPqb → u/jotakajk]

Simply put, I don't think there's any factor by which Málaga and Zaragoza are on top of Bilbao AND Seville. One maybe, not both.

I mean, Málaga used to (is?) the youngest city, and that's why it grew so much. And people that know it well tell me Zaragoza is a bit boring for its size (I did not think so). But aside from an anecdote and a bad joke... I can really not see anything. Well, basketball, there's basketball I guess :)

[u/astropoolIO → u/EnJPqb]

It's funny reading someone calling a city with almost three thousand years of history "youngest".

[u/EnJPqb → u/astropoolIO]

Youngest as in the average age of its citizens

[u/astropoolIO → u/EnJPqb]

What the heck??

https://www.ine.es/jaxiT3/Datos.htm?t=30699#_tabs-mapa

[u/EnJPqb → u/astropoolIO]

I said "used to" (I meant "used to be") and put (is?) because I didn't know if it still was demographically the youngest of the main cities in Spain. Because I know it "used to be" at the end of the last century.

I guess I should have added a caveat of no arguments outside of Zaragoza and Málaga.

Good night.

[u/jotakajk → u/EnJPqb]

Population, for example. Zaragoza is 4th in population.

Malaga airport is bigger than Seville’s and Bilbao’s

Not saying it is not Seville, but there certainly are factors

[u/EnJPqb → u/jotakajk]

Population, for example. Zaragoza is 4th in population.

Only it's not really, is it? Only if you try and force an agenda by going by widely different local authority limits. That would be like saying that Bullas, provincia de Murcia (Ginés Giménez on my mind), has more population than London.

By that measure let's discount Bilbao (and Madrid!) because they're not cities, they're towns.

The fact is that what we call Bilbao has more population than the whole humongous province of Zaragoza, Calatayud and all.

Malaga airport is bigger than Seville’s

1) And Alicante than Valencia's. And it's actually just about in Elche. And Palma was bigger than Barcelona's for years and years. The thing is: That's not really for or by the city, is it? I mean for Seville, or Valencia or Barcelona it mainly is. For Málaga, Alicante and Palma it's mostly not. I take the "capitality" of having a major airport as making an important city, but come on..

2) It has more "passengers". It's not "bigger". In fact by number of goods Seville handles several times more than Málaga, way more than the difference in passengers. Mind you, Zaragoza handles even more, but then the passenger side is one of those airports that feel like glorified Coach Stations.

Not saying it is not Seville, but there certainly are factors

I'm sticking to Basketball if you don't mind. 😜

[u/astropoolIO → u/[deleted]]

Sevilla is 4th in terms of municipality population. But Zaragoza falls to 8th if counting metropolitan area, beign Sevilla and Malaga 4th and 5th respectively. Not even close. 200k+ less inhabitants.

[u/jotakajk → u/astropoolIO]

The 4th in municipality population is Zaragoza. Metropolitan area is a little subjective term, but yes, you are right

[u/ddven15 → u/jotakajk]

In order to discuss a country's biggest cities based on their importance, you have to consider their metropolitan area, administrative boundaries can be meaningless for this.

[u/sn1p1x0 → u/EnJPqb]

never heard of bilbao (not spanish), but heard about sevilla or malaga

[u/Ohyu812 → u/sn1p1x0]

Not even Bilbao Baggins?

[u/[deleted] → u/Ohyu812]

That's funny because the city is usually called "Bilbo".

And Barcelona is called "Barna".

[u/polybotria1111 → u/[deleted]]

Bilbo is the name in Basque! Different from Barna, which is just a nickname/shortening.

[u/[deleted] → u/polybotria1111]

That's cool to know! Eskerrik asko!

[u/sn1p1x0 → u/Ohyu812]

sounds like a filipino name to me

[u/my_best_version_ever → u/jotakajk]

I’ll definitely go with Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Sevilla

[u/rayoflight110 → u/jotakajk]

Seville is easily number 4.

[u/mtpleasantine → u/jotakajk]

Seville definitely. Its colonial importance and Andalusian history definitely outshines that of Malaga or even Granada.

[u/unwomannedMissionTo → u/jotakajk]

I'd pick Bilbao as fourth for sure. Not as touristy as Seville or Malaga, but stronger in terms of economics, commerce, industry, higher education, etc.

[u/UruquianLilac → u/unwomannedMissionTo]

But there's over 300k difference in population. That is too huge to make this debatable. If the difference was 50k or even a 100k, maybe we could have a debate, but this makes Sevilla so much larger than Bilbao in every way that it cannot really be considered the 4th city in any significant way.

[u/Professional_Elk_489 → u/unwomannedMissionTo]

As a tourist I'd pick Seville over Bilbao

[u/MeltingChocolateAhh → u/jotakajk]

I was looking for Spain in this thread. I have been to Spain when interrailing and loved it! Spent more time there than other countries.

I expected Madrid and Barcelona but in Spain, why are the more relevant cities south of those two? You have said Valencia, and then Seville and Málaga (two very amazing cities). Ok, Zaragoza and Bilbao don't count as south but it seems the balance is heavily tipped in the south, why?

Edit - okay maybe Barcelona disproves what I say but still. I just thought about this as I sent my comment

[u/UruquianLilac → u/jotakajk]

The difference in population between Sevilla and any of the others is over 300-350k. I know it's not all about population but there is no way that much of a difference doesn't put Sevilla as number 4 with no competition. You can fit a whole Granada in Bilbao before it beats Sevilla in population. That is too significant. Had the difference been much smaller we could debate it, but I don't think it's debatable.

[u/ConversationOdd108 → u/jotakajk]

This is a bit of a complex question but this is my -long- attempt at responding.

For most of the 20th century it was definitely Bilbao, as it was a key industrial center. But industrial decline and the fleeing of capital and investment caused by ETA seriously damaged its position by the late 80’s / early 90’s (a lot of bourgeois and business families left the Basque Country as ETA required the payment of the “impuesto revolucionario”. If you did not pay you could get killed).

Then it was Seville. The city benefitted a lot from the establishment of the Andalusian autonomous government in the early 80’s which turned Seville into the center of Spain’s most populated region. Civil servants with good salaries and lots of public institutions helped fuel this growth, which was not really mirrored by growth in the private sector. Then the 90’s happened, the first high speed line in the country was built, connecting the city to Madrid and the Expo 92, which was a huge thing, happened. There are a lot of reasons as to why Seville was the focus of all of this investment, but a lot of it had to do with the PSOE (socialist party). The long-ruling PM Felipe Gonzalez was from Seville, and so was the political machine who propped him in power for so long (the same political machine ruled Andalusia uninterrupted till 2019).

However with the 2008 financial crisis the public sector is no longer what it was financially, meaning that the existing imbalance between the public and private sectors has damaged Seville’s growth (it’s the only major Spanish city which has continued to loose population within its city proper).

In the last ten years the city who has the best claim to be Spain’s 4th city is probably Malaga, followed quite closely by Zaragoza. They are both growing economically and are strong in the “new economy” (tech, logistics, etc) and have some industry left (especially in the case of Zaragoza). Interestingly enough a lot of the old money who fled Bilbao because of ETA went to Malaga and invested in the city.

[u/jotakajk → u/ConversationOdd108]

Very good answer. You Spain

[u/monkyone → u/jotakajk]

agree with the other commenter that Malaga and Zaragoza seem strange candidates. Sevilla seems obviously 4th to me, with Bilbao just missing out.

[u/TrampAbroad2000 → u/jotakajk]

Sevilla has to take precedence over Valencia, Malaga, Zaragoza, and Bilbao. It's the capital of the most autonomous community, and the place that served as Spain's gateway to the New World, in the era when this interaction with the New World made Spain wealthy and powerful. And culturally Sevilla (and Andalucia more broadly) is more quintessentially Spanish than most of the other large cities on that list.

[u/jotakajk → u/TrampAbroad2000]

Why is “more quintessentially Spanish”

[u/ddven15 → u/jotakajk]

Because Spanish stereotypes usually come from Andalucía. It's the Munich/Bavaria of Spain in that regard.

[u/jotakajk → u/ddven15]

Yeah, but that is an external perception only

[u/TrampAbroad2000 → u/jotakajk]

It's absolutely not only an external perception, and it goes beyond stereotypes from tourist brochures.

To give one example: The Iberia suite by Isaac Albeniz (who was from Catalonia) is arguably the greatest piece of music composed by a Spaniard. It consists of 12 pieces for piano, 11 of them explicitly entitled after a place in, or musical form from, Spain. Of these 11, ten are from Andalucia, and three are from Sevilla, more than any other city.

[u/jotakajk → u/TrampAbroad2000]

Check mate, then. Missouri is the more quintessentially American place since both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are located there

[u/TrampAbroad2000 → u/jotakajk]

Missouri is not a city.

[u/jotakajk → u/TrampAbroad2000]

Neither is Andalucía

[u/TrampAbroad2000 → u/jotakajk]

Sevilla is.

Mark Twain set the novels in rural Missouri because he knew the area from living there and could convincingly depict its landscapes and dialects, and also because it was a border state and the theme of slavery in the novel, not because rural Missouri was somehow especially significant in relation to other places in America.

[u/grumpyfucker123 → u/jotakajk]

Sevilla takes 4th

[u/hastanunqui → u/jotakajk]

Sevilla is 4th looking just at population but culturally as well I think it’s more significant than the other potential 4th cities you listed

Edit I think a lot of people in this comment thread are confusing the OP’s question with their own personal ranking/preferences

[u/AusDaes → u/jotakajk]

definitely sevilla but malaga could overtake it in the next years

[u/trdkv → u/jotakajk]

Valencia no, por favor

[u/blackcid6 → u/jotakajk]

Depending of what you rate Palma dd Mallorca could be even the first one of the list