Urbex — short for urban exploration — is the practice of visiting, photographing, and documenting abandoned buildings and unused spaces: sanatoriums with empty hallways, factories with machinery still in place, ghost towns where time stopped the year they were abandoned. In Spain, where more than 38,000 abandoned sites are documented, urbex has gone from a niche activity to one of the most active forms of alternative tourism and documentary photography in the country.
What Does Urbex Exactly Mean?
Urbex is the contraction of urban exploration. Although the name evokes a city environment, in practice Spanish urbex covers both industrial and healthcare spaces in metropolitan areas as well as ghost towns in rural interiors, abandoned Andalusian farmhouses, and Asturian mines. What defines urbex is not the urban location but the attitude: entering a space left behind by time, respectfully observing what remains, and documenting it photographically without altering anything.
History of Urbex: From Subculture to Global Phenomenon
The exploration of abandoned spaces is as old as human curiosity, but as an organized practice with its own name, urbex emerged in the 1990s in the large industrial cities of North America and Europe — Detroit, Manchester, Brussels — where deindustrialization had left huge empty factories that photographers and adventurers began to systematically document. The internet and social media globalized the practice in the 2000s; today the Spanish urbex community has tens of thousands of active participants and a photographic output documenting hundreds of new abandonments each year.
Most Popular Types of Abandoned Places in Spain
Spain has a variety of abandonment types unmatched by any other European country:
- Anti-tuberculosis sanatoriums — built between the 1920s and 1950s, closed when streptomycin made isolation unnecessary. Those in the Guadarrama, Sierra Espuña, and Moncayo mountain ranges are the most documented.
- Ghost towns — emptied by reservoirs (Belchite, Aceredo), the Civil War (Corbera d'Ebre), or rural exodus (Ochate, La Mussara). Spain has hundreds of them.
- Industrial factories — cement, textile, and steel factories closed due to industrial restructuring in the 1980s. The Left Bank of the Nervión and the Vallès region in Catalonia are the richest areas.
- Hospitals and psychiatric institutions — emptied by healthcare reforms in the 1980s-90s that promoted deinstitutionalization. The Bétera Psychiatric Hospital and Artxanda Hospital are representative examples.
- Farmhouses and manor houses — the most regionally specific rural domestic heritage in Spain. Asturian Indianos’ houses, Galician pazos, and Andalusian cortijos are the most photogenically powerful types.
- Military installations — coastal batteries, barracks, and defense bases from the 20th century abandoned after armed forces restructuring. Those in Murcia, Bizkaia, and Cantabria are the most accessible.
Is Urbex Legal in Spain?
Urban exploration is not expressly prohibited in Spain, but entering private property without the owner's permission can constitute a crime of trespassing under article 202 of the Penal Code, or an administrative offense under the Citizen Security Law. Legality depends on the ownership of the visited space: publicly owned abandoned places may be accessible without infringement if there are no fences or no-entry signs; privately owned places require the owner's authorization. The practical rule in the urbex community is: if there is a fence, chain, or prohibition sign, do not enter.
The Urbex Code of Ethics
The urbex community has an unwritten but universally shared code of ethics that summarizes in a few rules what distinguishes the responsible explorer from the vandal:
- Take nothing but photographs
- Leave nothing but footprints
- Do not force any access — if it’s closed, it’s not your place
- Do not reveal exact locations of places vulnerable to looting
- Do not explore alone — always bring at least one other person
- Assess structural risks before entering any building
"Leave everything as you found it — the next explorer deserves the same experience."
Basic Equipment to Get Started
You don’t need much to do urbex safely and effectively: closed shoes with thick soles to protect your feet from glass and nails, a powerful flashlight for spaces without natural light, an FFP2 mask for any enclosed space that may contain asbestos (present in almost all constructions before 1980), work gloves, and a camera or phone. Comfortable, dark clothing completes the basic gear — not for concealment but because rusted surfaces and soot stain easily.
Why Spain Is the European Urbex Country
Spain combines the perfect conditions for urbex: more than a century of industrialization and rapid deindustrialization, the largest rural exodus in Western Europe in the 1950s-70s, the densest network of anti-tuberculosis sanatoriums on the continent, towns destroyed in the Civil War that were never rebuilt, and monastic heritage disentangled in the 19th century that has been in progressive abandonment for almost 200 years. The result is a concentration of abandoned places — more than 38,000 documented — unmatched by any other European country in variety or density.
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