Malaguenos by Adoption
June 28th, 2006
The figure for Granada is the highest in Andalucia: 40 per cent of the population come from other provinces in Spain or abroad
Malaguenos by adoption. It’s a phrase that is commonly heard to refer to people who have come from other provinces, and even from abroad, but are working here and bringing credit to the province of Malaga. Now population studies have revealed that these people constitute an important percentage of the population of the province, and their numbers are increasing.
Figures published by the Andalusian Institute of Statistics show that last year almost 35 per cent of the inhabitants of the city of Malaga, around 200,000 people, were born outside the province.
This trend has been growing in recent years, especially as far as the arrival of foreigners is concerned. It is a result of the vast amount of economic and urban development on the Costa del Sol, as well as successful appeals for foreigners to register with the local authorities. The figures were especially given a boost when the opportunity was given for many illegal immigrants to get legal papers in the country.
In five years the number of people living in the city of Malaga who were born outside Spain more than doubled. It went from 20,000 in 2000 to almost 45,000 in 2005. However in the same period the number of people from other provinces in Andalucia and other parts of Spain remained stable. Around 50,000 people living in the city of Malaga come from other municipalities in the province, 45,000 from other provinces in Andalucia and a slightly higher number, 45,700 from the rest of Spain.
The high percentage of the population from elsewhere is much more marked on the Costa del Sol. Because there are no hospitals in many towns the point of reference is not being born in the town where one lives, but in the same province, and this is considered as being “local”.
On this basis in Marbella, where the number of people on the census is 125,000, only 45 per cent were born in the province and almost 31,500 are foreign. In Fuengirola the figures are even more marked: forty per cent were born locally and 21,000 outside the province or abroad. The figures are similar in Benalmadena : 60 per cent of the population come from outside the province (14,000 of them from abroad).
Torremolinos is a special case; the residents who live in the town but work in the city of Malaga and the foreign residents form a large percentage of the total. Even so, 55 per cent are local.
Nonetheless, the fact that so many citizens of other EU countries fail to put their names down on the census means that real figures everywhere are even higher.
Full story from SUR in English
