The metropolitan area of Valencia in the global system of cities: The effects of the economic crisis on the network of financial links of multinational firms

This article examines how the current economic crisis has impinged on multinational firms' networks of ownership-subsidiarity relationships, considered by the scientific literature as one of the main factors that facilitate the globalization of cities. The case study is the Metropolitan Area of Valencia (Spain); a second-level centre of world economic networks that has been hard hit by the crisis since 2008. The analysis of public data sources on multinational firms for two significant dates, 2010 and 2013, shows that the economic crisis has caused a setback in the insertion of the Valencia metropolitan area in these networks, increased its dependency relationships, and reoriented the relationship network of firms toward new geographical areas, especially Latin America, as a strategy for survival.