[Reproduced from my own earlier answer under a profile now deactivated] SEMANTICALLY speaking, Spanish "gente", like English "people", names a "collective", a (large) group of human beings. There are other nouns that name collectives, instead of individuals or substances. For example, in English, we have "army", "clergy", "audience", "public", "readership", etc., and, of course, there are Spanish equivalents ("ejército", "clero", "audiencia", "público").The difference between Spanish "gente" and English "people" is that "gente" is grammatically SINGULAR in number and FEMININE in gender, whereas "people" is grammatically PLURAL in number and has NO grammatical gender. Hence, "gente" can be constructed with "la" or "mucha" (also singular and feminine), as in "La gente está preocupada" or "Mucha gente está preocupada", but not with "mucho", "muchos" or "muchas", which fail to match its number, its gender, or both. Noun phrases like "*mucho gente", "*muchos gente", "*muchas gente", or "*los/las gente", and sentences like "*La gente estáN preocupadOS/AS" are all ungrammatical.
I hope this resolves your doubts.