Report: 20% of Spain’s Population Is Now Foreign-Born

New official information from Spain’s National Institute of Statistics (INE) revealed 20 percent of the people living in Spain was born in another country, with foreign-born population surging over the past few years, the newspaper El País reported on Tuesday.

El País explained that Spain now has ten million foreigners living in the country — which translates to one in five individuals. INE’s statistics, quoted by the newspaper, confirm that foreign-born population in Spain has dramatically grown from 2002 onwards. The amount of foreign-born in Spain increased by two million just in the past three years alone.

The statistics reportedly indicate that roughly half of the foreigners come from the Americas, with 27 percent coming from Europe, 17 percent from Africa, and six percent from Asia.

At a per-country of origin level, Morocco leads the chart with 1.1 million of its national now living in Spanish territory — and amount that, El País pointed out, has duplicated over the past 20 years. Colombia stands in second place with nearly a million, followed by Venezuela in third place with about 700,000 of its nationals now living in Spain.

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El País noted that the Spanish think-tank Funcas estimated that about 840,000 illegal migrants are presently in Spain — a group that in addition to having skyrocketed “eightfold” since 2017, represents roughly 17 percent of all non-EU foreigners presently living in the country per the think-tank’s estimations.

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