I apologise if this is the wrong place to ask this question, but I have often heard the claim that Galicia contains half the villages in Spain or that Galicia contains an extraordinary amount of small villages.
What would be the historical trends for this to occur?
I'm Galician and I don't even know to be honest
Theory 1: A lot of those villages might have traditionally been just minor farmer communities.
Theory 2: Maybe some berbers hid away in small remote places to survive the Reconquista and thats why Galician villages are so spread out.
Theory 3: Its just a consequence of being a less fertile farming region where the first attempts to industrialize with linen where canceled out by the protectionism that Spain decided to put on Catalonyan and Basque industry. [related article]