There is nothing here! Unequal access to services and rural resentment in Spain

The rural-urban divide in political attitudes and behaviour has gained increasing attention in recent years. One of the key unresolved debates in this regard has to do with which contextual factors fuel higher levels of place-based resentment among rural populations. Within this framework, this paper examines whether disparities in access to essential services—healthcare, education, roads, and internet—in rural municipalities shape residents’ levels of rural resentment. For this purpose, official statistics data on access to services across the territory and data from a novel survey in Spain on satisfaction with services and levels of place-based resentment of rural inhabitants are matched. The results reveal that disadvantageous inequalities in access to services are associated with higher levels of rural resentment. Moreover, they also show that these effects are partially mediated by the satisfaction with the services. More broadly, the findings of this article remind us of the importance of turning to daily events and the reality of the territory to develop explanations of current relevant phenomena such as the rural-urban divide.