The article deals by which Montevideo reaches a very high level of primacy in terms of the rest of the urban and rural systems in Uruguay. It sets off with a description of the colonial heritage, the rural quality of the society during the first years of independent life and an increasingly rapid urbanization process that begins by the second half of the XIX century, from which it seems interesting to point out the extremely high level of primacy reached by Montevideo. This hierarchical order seems to be reproduced at different spacial levels of the country and seems to reinforce inter-regional inequalities. Montevideo, by concentranting more than 50% of the country's population, concentrates most of its economic activity and leaves the rural hinterland as an inmense depopulated "ranch".