Anthropometrics have been widely used to study the influence of environmental factors on health and nutritional status. In contrast, anthropometric geography has not often been employed to approximate the dynamics of spatial disparities associated with socio‐economic and demographic changes. Spain exhibited intense disparity and change during the middle decades of the 20th century, with the result that the life courses of the corresponding cohorts were associated with diverse environmental conditions. This was also true of the Spanish territories. This paper presents insights concerning the relationship between socio‐economic changes and living conditions by combining the analysis of cohort trends and the anthropometric cartography of height and physical build. This analysis is conducted for Spanish male cohorts born in 1934–1973 who were recorded in the Spanish military statistics. This information is interpreted in light of region‐level data on gross domestic product and infant mortality. Our results show an anthropometric convergence across regions that, nevertheless, did not substantially modify the spatial patterns of robustness, featuring primarily robust north‐eastern regions and weak central‐southern regions. These patterns persisted until the 1990s (cohorts born during the 1970s). For the most part, anthropometric disparities were associated with socio‐economic disparities, although the former lessened over time to a greater extent than the latter. Interestingly, the various anthropometric indicators utilised here do not point to the same conclusions. There have been some discrepancies found between height and robustness patterns that moderate the statements from the analysis of cohort height alone regarding the level and evolution of living conditions across Spanish regions. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.