PROPERTY SEARCH
PROPERTY SEARCH
Foreigners drive Spain's biggest population boom in history
Spain is now home to more than 49.4 million people and almost 20% of them were born somewhere else
Spain’s population has reached a record-breaking 49,442,844 people after growing by 105,488 in the third quarter of 2025. The figures, released by the National Institute of Statistics this week, confirm that the country has more residents than ever before.
The record rise has been fuelled almost entirely by people born outside Spain. Over the past year, the population has grown by 474,454, even as the number of Spain-born residents continues to fall.
There are now around 9.8 million people living in Spain who were born abroad, which means roughly 19.9% of the population is foreign-born.
Of these, nearly three million have since taken Spanish nationality, while the rest make up a growing community of more than 7.1 million foreign residents. During the last three months alone, that group expanded by 78,937 people, compared to an increase of 26,551 among those holding Spanish citizenship.
The most common newcomers were from Colombia, Spain’s largest source of new arrivals, with 32,100 Colombians choosing to make the country their home. They were followed by Spaniards returning from abroad (24,500), Moroccans (23,400), Venezuelans (20,500) and Peruvians (16,000).
Italians, Algerians, Argentinians, Ukrainians and Romanians also featured strongly in the statistics.
What might come as a surprise is that the British no longer feature among the top nationalities, partly because many long-term residents have taken Spanish nationality since Brexit and because the community is growing more slowly than others. In addition, most newcomers to Spain are younger people arriving for work or to start a new life, rather than retirees like many of the British who settled years ago.
On the other side of the balance sheet, departures from Spain were led by Spanish nationals, with 9,100 people leaving the country, followed by 8,200 Colombians and 7,900 Moroccans.
Every autonomous community saw its population increase during the third quarter, as did the North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. The largest rises were recorded in the Valencian Community (0.40%), Aragon (0.36%) and Castilla-La Mancha (0.34%).
Image: Freepik
