Regionalizing spain's continuous and discontinuous settlement

The expected increase of the world's population will be accompanied by a growth of the rural part. Some of the latter will be reflected in expansion of the inhabited area into the uninhabited. To provide knowledge for efficiency of this expansion a classification of the areally continuous and discontinuous settlement of Spain is delineated. The Continuous Settlement Region is in the north, east of a Léon-Bilbao line, north of the latitude of Toledo, and split in two by a NE-SW line through Teruel. The rest is the Discontinuous Settlement Region comprised of four occurrences of Inner Fringe Zone near the country's corners, two of the Middle Fringe Zone, and three of Outer Fringe Zone. Though new rural settling began in Spain in 1907 the principal effort has been during the past two decades under the National Colonization Institute whose work has been concentrated in the Inner Fringe Zone. It is there that continuing study is needed to provide guides for new rural settling elsewhere in the world.