Figures from the Spanish National Institute of Statistics (INE) have revealed that the Spanish population increased by over 50,000 people last year, with all of the growth driven by immigration.
The number of Spanish citizens fell by 21,920 people last year, while the number of foreigners increased by 72,410, leading to an overall population increase of 50,490 for a total of 47,435,597 inhabitants of the country.
The number of Spaniards in Spain remains under 42 million, while the number of foreign nationals living in the country is now over 5.5 million. The province of Almeria recorded the most foreign residents, at 21.8 per cent of the overall population, El Mundo reports.
The provinces of Girona and Alicante also have migrant populations over 20 per cent.
Over the course of the first year of the Wuhan virus pandemic, Spain’s birthrate fell by over five per cent, while the mortality rate increased by 18 per cent.
The Spanish birthrate is said to sit at just 1.19 children per woman — down from 1.24 in 2019 and is the lowest the birth rate has been since the 1990s. Spain has not had a replacement birthrate of 2.1 children per woman since 1980.
The figures also highlight Spain’s demographic shift, which former Spanish foreign minister Josep Borrell –now the High Representative of the European Union — commented on in 2019, arguing that mass migration could solve Spain’s supposed problem of an ageing population.
“Europe’s demographic evolution shows that unless we want to gradually turn into an ageing continent, we need new blood, and it doesn’t look like this new blood is coming from our capacity to procreate,” said the Socialist Workers’ Party politician.
Mass migration has been a driving force of population growth across much of Europe for years as birth rates have lowered or remained at low levels in many countries.
In 2019, mass migration accounted for nearly 90 per cent of the population growth in Belgium, for example, while in Sweden the figure was 73 per cent that year.
The following year, Sweden saw its lowest population growth in 15 years — largely blamed on travel restrictions which prevented immigration to the country at the same scale as usual.