During the year 2022, a total of 181,581 foreigners residing in Spain acquired Spanish nationality, which is 26% more than a year earlier. Of these, 45% were under 20 years of age. Specifically, 44,689 of the 181,581 people naturalized last year were under 10 years of age and 24,524 were between 10 and 19 years of age.
And of those children and adolescents, more than 95% acquired the Spanish passport by choice, not by residence, because it is a group that was mostly born in Spain and that their parents already had nationality. Among nationalized children under 10 years of age, 76% were born in Spanish territory, according to data from the Statistics on Acquisitions of Spanish Nationality of Residents published today by the INE.
Regarding the nationality of origin of those who acquired Spanish nationality last year, INE data indicate that three out of ten were Moroccans. Specifically, 55,463 of the 181,689 nationalized had a Moroccan passport and 23,335 of them had been born in that country.
They are followed by nationalities of origin Colombia (11,125 naturalized) and Ecuador (10,845), which also coincide with the most frequent countries of birth of those who acquired citizenship after Spain and Morocco.
On the other hand, three out of every ten people who in 2022 were considered Spanish had always resided in Spain. The remaining 70% had previously resided in another country and had arrived in Spain, in a very high percentage, in 2007. In other words, they have taken about 15 years to acquire Spanish nationality, a condition that grants them the right to live indefinitely in Spain, to vote and benefits such as free movement and work within the European Union.
Half of the foreigners who managed to be considered Spanish for all administrative purposes last year resided in Catalonia and Madrid, where 48,901 and 41,456 cases of nationalization were recorded respectively.
At the other extreme, Extremadura (760) and La Rioja (1,083) were the autonomous communities with the lowest number of acquisitions of nationality among their residents.
But if it is compared with the foreign population residing in each territory at the beginning of 2022, where they have most intensely opted for Spanish nationality is in Murcia (4.7% of foreigners acquired it last year), the Community of Madrid (4 .5%) and the Basque Country (4%).
On the contrary, the lowest percentages occurred in Extremadura (2.1%), Canarias (2.2%) and Andalucía (2.2%).
This increase in nationalized foreigners (26% more than last year) and the rise in the arrival of immigrants are the key to the fact that the resident population increased by 136,916 people in the first quarter of this year and that Spain exceeded 48 on April 1. 19 million inhabitants, the highest number on record.
