More than Four Million Foreigners live in Spain
February 20th, 2007
According to the National Institute of Statistics, (INE) the number of foreigners registered on the population census in Spain has passed the four million mark. The figure represents 9.3 per cent of the resident population.
The most recent population census carried out on January 1st 2006 counted a total of 44,709,000 inhabitants, of whom 4,145,000 were foreign.
With regard to the previous year, the number of foreigners registered on the census increased by 415,000, representing an annual variation of 11.1 per cent.
The provisional figures released by the institute also revealed that the number of residency cards granted to foreigners reached 2,739,000 in 2006 in comparison with the 1,977,000 cards handed out the previous year.
Interestingly, the number of foreign residents has gone from 2.3 per cent in 2000, (924,000 people) to 9.3 per cent (4,145,000) in the last count, in just six years. In 2001 there were 1,371,000 foreigners on the population census; 1,978,000 in 2002; 2,664,000 the following year; 3,034,000 in 2004 and a total of 3,730,000 in 2005. In the period (2005-2006) the biggest increases were noted in 2005 with a total of 696,000 new foreign residents, and 686,000 in 2003.
With regard to the regional recipients of the new residents, 22 per cent of the foreign population resided in Cataluña; 19.3 per cent in Madrid; 16.1 per cent in Valencia; 11.8 per cent in Andalucía; 5.6 per cent in the Canaries; 4.6 per cent in Murcia; four per cent in the Balearics; 3.2 per cent in Castilla-La Mancha; 2.6 per cent in Castilla y León; 2.5 per cent in Aragón; 2.1 per cent in the Basque Country; 1.8 per cent in Galicia; 1.3 per cent in Navarra; 0.8 per cent in La Rioja; 0.7 per cent in Asturias and Extremadura; 0.6 per cent in Cantabria and 0.1 per cent in Ceuta and Melilla.
The provisional INE figures also revealed that 53.5 per cent of foreigners on the population census in 2006 were male and the remainder (46.5 per cent) female.
The average age of the foreign resident was situated at 33 years in comparison with the average age of 41 years average of the Spaniard, and 28.8 years of African citizens. The average age descended even further for those residents of Central and South American origin: 30.7 years. The oldest average age registered for foreign residents was for German (48.3 years) and British citizens (48).
Madrid is the province with the highest percentage of foreign residents over Spanish nationals (13.3 per cent) followed by Alicante (20.1 per cent) and Almería (17.4 per cent).
