Foreigners Double Spain’s Population Increase

As Spaniards get older and have fewer children, new data has revealed that foreigners are driving almost all of the population growth in Spain.

According to provisional data from INE’s Continuous Population Survey, of the 537,611 people added to the Spanish population in the last year, 524,087 of them were foreign nationals while the number of Spaniards increased by just 13,524 people.

This increase is evenly spread geographically, with the foreign population growing in every province in the country while the Spanish population grew in just 18 of Spain’s 50 provinces and the autonomous city of Melilla in North Africa.

Spain’s growing immigrant population

Due to this boost in numbers, Spain’s immigrant population has now reached 6.34 million people, 13.1 percent of the total population.

The population of Spaniards is slightly more than 42 million, equivalent to 86.9 percent of the total.

In the second quarter of 2023 the largest population increases overall in relative terms were in the Balearic Islands (0.58 percent increase), Cataluña (0.51 percent) and Madrid (0.45 percent).

Romanians, Italians and Germans are the biggest EU population groups residing in Spain, whereas when it comes to non-EU nationals Moroccans, Colombians and Britons make up the majority.

Where are most foreigners in Spain?

As of July 2023, the provinces with the highest proportion of foreign nationals were Alicante (22.9 percent), Almería (22.4 percent) and Girona (21.8 percent).

The lowest proportion are in Jaén (3.4 percent), Córdoba (3.5 percent) and Badajoz (3.8 percent).

In the last year, the foreign population grew most in A Coruña (16.7 percent), Lugo (15.44 percent) and Asturias (15.11 percent).

Looking to the future

The Spanish economy has long depended on the tourism sector for a large part of its GDP. But looking into the medium-term future, Spanish demography will also come to rely on foreigners in a different way. These won’t be holidaymakers, these will be immigrants coming to live and work in Spain.

The trends outlined by the INE statistics are set to accelerate in the coming years, according to demographic projections, and will be necessary as Spanish society becomes older and has fewer children.

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