Spain’s population grows to almost 47 million inhabitants

The number of inhabitants officially registered at town halls through out Spain has grown over the last year by half a million to 46,661,950. According to provisional figures published today by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) the growth in the Spanish population is mainly due to the growth in the number of foreign inhabitants (329,929, compared to 174,199 respectively). The number of immigrants officially living in Spain has gone from 5.2 million to 5.5 million in a year and now accounts for 12% of the population (a growth of 1% since last year).

Nevertheless, since last year the number of immigrants registering at town halls in Spain has fallen by half. Over recent years the number of immigrants registering as official residents grew between 600,000 and 750,000 a year.

Out of the total number of people registered at town halls 49.5% are men and 50.5% are women – the numbers for foreign residents is similar 53.

1% are men and 46.9 are women. According to ages 15.5% of the Spanish population is under 16 years old and 43.3% is aged between 16 to 44 years old with 41.2% aged over 45 years old.

Immigrant population in Spain: According to the official figures there are 5,598,691 immigrants living in Spain – 6.3% more than last year. Out of these Rumanians are the largest number (796,576), followed by Moroccans (710,401) and Ecuadorians (413,715). Last year the number of Rumanians living in Spain grew by 64,770 while the number of Ecuadorians fell by 3.3%. The number of Bolivians living in Spain also fell by 15,351 and the number of Argentinians living in Spain fell by 4.7%.

EU Nationals in Spain: The largest group of immigrants living in Spain are those from other EU countries. This group represents 40.5% of the total number of foreign residents in Spain.

In January 2009 there were 164,000 more EU citizens officially registered at town halls in Spain than last year – out of these the biggest increases were as follows: 21,643 more Britons, 17,123 more Italians, 10,380 more Bulgarians and 9,410 more Germans.

The regions where the foreign population grew the most in 2008 were Catalonia (80,402), Andalucía (44,814) and the Comunidad de Madrid (37,752). On the other hand, the areas which saw the lowest increases were Ceuta (1,202), Melilla (1,934) and Extremadura (2,156)