Population of Spain now more than 45 million people
The percentage of women is higher than that of men
A. Prdanos
The SUR
June 29, 2007
One in every ten inhabitants of Spain was born outside this country. The massive arrival of immigrants over recent years has changed the demographic make-up of the country, which now has a foreign population of 4.48 million people out of an overall population of 45.12 millions, making up 9.9 per cent of the countrys inhabitants. These figures are based on municipal population figures from the beginning of 2007, and they also show that there are more women than men in Spain, the figure being 50.6 per cent against 49.4 per cent for men.
The figures, released provisionally by the National Institute of Statistics, show that Spain is now one of the countrys of the world with most immigration, the immigrant figure having multiplied by almost ten over the past decade, from 542,000 in 1996 to almost 4.5 million today. They now represent ten per cent of the overall population, against 1.38 per cent ten years ago.
Immigration is the primary factor in this massive population growth. During 2006, the number of registered Spaniards grew by 0.17 per cent, amounting to a figure of 70,000, while in the same period, the number of registered immigrants grew by 8.17 per cent, which was a figure of 338,000. Of these, 19.26 per cent came from other European Union countries, especially Rumania, Poland and Bulgaria.
The last amplification of the European Union to 27 nations also changed the ranking of countries with large immigrant populations., whether legal or otherwise. The constant arrival of Rumanians to Spain approximately 525,000 of them means that Europeans are now the biggest immigrant group, amounting to 1.7 million in total. The other big European groups are the British, with more than 314,000 in number, 164,000 Germans and 135,000 Italians .
There were 200,000 Bolivian immigrants to Spain in 2006, In spite of the difficulties they have in coming here, while the Rumanians increased their numbers by 118,000 in the same period, and 39,000 more British citizens came to Spain in 2006.
Among the non- European Union immigrants arriving in Spain, the Moroccans are the biggest group, with 576,000 in number. They are followed by the Ecuadorians, more than 421,000 of them, and almost 259,000 Columbians. Further down the ranking were the Bolivians and Argentinians, 140,000 of whom came to Spain in 2006.
