The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic is showing dramatic impact across the world. Public health authorities attempt to fight against the virus while maintaining economic activity. In the face of the uncertainty derived from the virus, all the countries have adopted non-pharmaceutical interventions for limiting the mobility and maintaining social distancing. In order to support these interventions, some health authorities and governments have opted for sharing very fine-grained data related with the impact of the virus in their territories. Geographical science is playing a major role in terms of understanding how the virus spreads across regions. Location of cases allows identifying the spatial patterns traced by the virus. Understanding these patterns makes controlling the virus spread feasible, minimizes its impact in vulnerable regions, anticipates potential outbreaks, or elaborates predictive risk maps. The application of geospatial analysis to fine-grained data must be urgently adopted for optimal decision making in real and near-real time. However, some aspects related to process and map sensitive health data in emergency cases have not yet been sufficiently explored. Among them include concerns about how these datasets with sensitive information must be shown depending on aspects related to data aggregation, scaling, privacy issues, or the need to know in advance the particularities of the study area. In this paper, we introduce our experience in mapping fine-grained data related to the incidence of the COVID-19 during the first wave in the region of Galicia (NW Spain), and after that we discuss the mentioned aspects.

The CoVID-19 pandemic is showing a dramatic impact across the world. To the tragedy of the loss of human lives, we must add the great uncertainty that the new coronavirus is causing to our lives. Governments and public health authorities must be able to respond this emergency by taking the appropriate decisions for minimizing the impact of the virus. In the absence of an immediate solution, governments have concentrated their efforts on adopting non-pharmaceutical interventions for restricting the mobility of people and reducing the social contact. Health authorities are publishing most of data for supporting their interventions and policies. The geographic location of the cases is a vital information with exceptional value for analysing the spatio-temporal behaviour of the virus, doing feasible to anticipate potential outbreaks and to elaborate predictive risk mapping. In fact, a great number of media reports, research papers, and web-browsers have presented the COVID-19 disease spreading by using maps. However, processing and visualization of this sort of data presents some aspects that must be carefully reviewed. Based on our experience with fine-grained and detailed data related to COVID-19 in a Spanish region, we present a bunch of mapping strategies and good practices using geospatial tools. The ultimate goal is create appropriate maps at any spatial scale while avoiding conflicts with data such as those related to patients’ privacy.

The coronavirus pandemic is causing a huge impact around the world. Its real magnitude presents very important regional differences, which are appreciable in the number of infected and victims in the different countries. The outbreak of the pandemic and the ignorance of the virus mean that, even today, there are many unknowns about essential aspects related to it. In this sense, geographic knowledge can help answer many questions from the territorial analysis of the data. The objective of this article will be to analyze the behavior of the coronavirus pandemic within the Spanish region of Galicia. The authors of this study propose a multiscale analysis that allows deciphering the most common propagation patterns. For this, we have high spatial resolution data that has been provided by the competent authority under confidentiality. The results of this work allow us to represent and interpret the territorial impact of the pandemic, understanding its behavior as far as possible, allowing future dynamics to be predicted.

En la actualidad existe una amplia y diversa variedad de metodologías que permiten el estudio de la delimitación de las áreas urbanas, desarrolladas tanto desde organizaciones como la Unión Europea o individualmente desde cada país. Sin embargo, en este trabajo se exponen los criterios seguidos para identificar y delimitar las áreas urbanas de dos países: España y Portugal. Se trata de un trabajo a escala de la Península Ibérica donde España y Portugal se estudian como un todo. Por lo que el objetivo principal es delimitar de un modo homogéneo y comparable, las áreas urbanas que se encuentran en este territorio del sur de Europa. Las principales fuentes de información utilizadas son publicaciones y estadísticas del Ministerio de Fomento de España, del Instituto Nacional de Estadística de Portugal y de la Comisión Europea.

The Health system in Spain is considered one of the most valued public services by the population. In fact, during the first decade of the 21st century, Spain became a health tourism destination for people from central and northern European countries. In addition to the health infrastructure, the quality of medical and nursing care stands out. Something similar also happens with the Spanish pharmaceutical system. However, there are some characteristics that should be addressed from a Geography perspective. The pharmacies’ legal system does not consider them to be of public interest. One is when some of the main activities are the sale and distribution of medicines that are partially paid for by the Administration, that is, Social Security. In the same activity, the public function is combined with the private interests of the pharmacy owners to provide a balanced territorial service. One of the conclusions demonstrates how the borders that are sometimes created by the Administration are not always the most efficient in relation to the characteristics of the territory, nor do they provide the best service to the population and, therefore, create territorial imbalances within a country. To reach our conclusions, we carried out an exhaustive study of the pharmacy legislation in the EU and in Spain, as well as Geography of Health and theories of territorial location. We combined this information with statistics on the territorial characteristics of Spain. This allowed us to confirm the peculiarities that exist within the governance of the distribution of pharmacy offices in Spain.

Antes de la crisis se hablaba de la fortaleza de los sistemas productivos locales como espacios generadores de riqueza, corresponde ahora analizar el comportamiento de estos territorios frente a la crisis económica iniciada en 2008 y que ha afectado a todos los sectores económicos. El presente trabajo reflexiona sobre los planteamientos teóricos que apoyan la explicación de los sistemas productivos locales en la literatura geográfica española y, se utiliza la metodología de estos trabajos para determinar si se pueden considerar sistemas productivos locales a municipios rurales gallegos que poseen una industria del mueble significativa. Así como observar en estos casos como les ha afectado la crisis. Para ello se combinan fuentes de información cuantitativas y fuentes de información cualitativas tras la realización de entrevistas semiestructuradas a los diferentes agentes que interactúan con la industria del mueble en Galicia.