Foreign Population in Spain Rises By 23 Percent in a Year
Expatica, Jan. 17, 2006
MADRID — Foreigners now make up 8.5 percent of the Spanish population of just over 44 million, according to the latest figures.
The population has risen by 910,000 in just under a year — an increase of 2.1 percent.
There are now 3,730,610 foreigners registered in the country out of a total population of 44,108,530 people.
The number of foreigners has risen by 696,284 since February last year, an increase of 22.9 percent.
In comparison, the number of Spaniards has only gone up by 214,562 or 0.5 percent.
Catalonia saw the biggest rise in population (181,887) followed by Andalucia (162,281), then Madrid (159,314) and Valencia (149,145).
Spain’s Mediterranean coast continued to see a rise in population as did its principal cities, Madrid and Barcelona.
The Balearic Islands has the largest proportion of foreigners (15.9pc), then Madrid (13.1pc), Valencia (12.4pc) Murcia (12.4pc), Catalonia (11.4pc), the Canary Islands (11.3pc) and Rioja (10.3pc).
Those areas with the smallest number of foreigners were Extremadura (2.3pc), Asturias (2.5pc), Galicia (2.5pc), the Basque Country (3.4pc) Castilla y León (3.6pc) and Cantabria (3.7pc).
Moroccans are the biggest group by nationality in Spain with 511,294 registered with the authorities, followed by Ecuadoreans (497,799), then Romanians (317,366) and the Colombians (271,239).
After that the number of Britons now stands at 227,187, followed by Argentineans (152,975) and Germans (133,588).
Romanians are the fastest increasing group of foreigners in Spain. A total of 109,406 new people registered with authorities in the past year.
There were 90,738 new Moroccans, 52,377 more Britons and 45,602 more Bolivians.
The number of Chinese, Bulgarians, Colombians and Argentineans also increased substantially.
The figures came from the National Institute of Statistics.
