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The article reviews the phenomenon of illegal residential allotments developed in most of Spain since the 1960s. Bibliographic, statistical, cartographic and documentary sources are used, which is complemented with the field work developed in the municipality of Córdoba, chosen for empirical testing. It is argued that, given the long trajectory of the process and the socioeconomic vicissitudes, many of these settlements have mutated from their original destination for leisure and second residence towards common residential areas. Based on these sources and the field work, it is verified that, despite the classification as urban or developable land of many of the plots, these have not been legalized; and, on the other hand, the gradual conversion into common residential areas without having been solved the problem of supply shortage, has developed into emergent configurations of precarious urban settlements.