On January 1, Spain had 48,593,909 inhabitants, according to provisional data from the Continuous Population Statistics (ECP) published yesterday by the INE. This is the largest number of residents in the entire historical series of this organization.
The population grew by 507,548 people in the last year due almost entirely to the arrival of foreigners. People born in another country (a total of 8,775,213) already represent 18% of the population of Spain. However, the number of foreign residents is lower (6.5 million, 13.4% of the total inhabitants) due to the processes of acquiring Spanish nationality.
During the last three months of 2023, mainly Colombians (42,600), Venezuelans (27,300) and Moroccans (25,800) arrived. And 19,500 Spaniards who lived abroad also returned. In the same period, 10,400 Spaniards, 9,500 Moroccans and 8,100 Romanians left, to name only the most numerous migrations.
Last year all the autonomies except Extremadura gained population, although they did so very unevenly. The Valencian Community (1.9%), Madrid (1.87%), Balearic Islands (1.7%) and Catalonia (1.5%) grew well above the average (1%). Murcia and the Canary Islands also exceeded this percentage, while the rest were below, and Galicia (0.24%), Castilla y León (0.26%) and Asturias (0.27%) were the ones that registered the lowest growth. .
Yesterday Eurostat data was also published that confirms the rapid aging of Spanish society. Half of Europeans are already over 44.5 years old, which means that the average age of the population has increased by 2.3 years in the last decade. And in the case of Spaniards, this increase amounts to 4 years, which places Spain as the second country – along with Greece, Slovakia and Italy – that has aged the most since 2013, only surpassed by Portugal, where the average age has grown 4.4 years.
However, Spain is not the oldest European society. Half of the population is over 44.2 years old, less than the community average and far from the 48.4 years of Italy (the highest average age in the EU), and the records of Portugal, Bulgaria, Greece , Croatia and Germany. Italy, Greece and Germany also have the highest proportion of people over 80 years old (all above 7%). Spain is within the community average: 6%.
And if the focus is on the group of people over 65 years of age, in Spain they make up 20.1% of the population, below the 21.3% European average, but 2.4 points more than a decade ago.
