The Spanish population grows by 135,186 people from April to June, 98.4% born abroad

The Spanish population grew by 135,186 people in the second quarter of the year, an increase of 1.12% year-on-year, which was 98.4% due to the increase in those born abroad, since Spanish natives only increased by 2,094 people, according to data released this Tuesday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE).

This increase brought the total population of the country to 48,345,223 inhabitants, a historical record, which allows the INE to anticipate that in the whole of 2023 demographic growth will amount to 537,611 people. In the first half of the year, the population has grown by 281,529 individuals, so the second semester is expected to be somewhat weaker for demographic growth.

Despite the fact that 133,092 of the new inhabitants were born in another country, not all of them are foreigners since 32,698 of them have already acquired Spanish nationality. In total, Spain has 8.45 million people born in other countries, of which 6.33 million are foreigners and 2.12 have acquired nationality.

The main nationalities of the immigrants who arrived in Spain in the second quarter of the year were Colombian (with 37,700 arrivals in Spain), Moroccan (21,500) and Spanish (19,900), since some natives residing abroad decided to return to country. While the most numerous emigrant nationalities were Moroccan (with 6,700 departures, which leaves the net gain at 14,800 residents), Romanian (5,700) and, again, Spanish (5,500).

The population grew in all the autonomous communities, as well as in the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, but the greatest increases in relative terms occurred in the Balearic Islands (0.58%), Catalonia (0.51%) and the Community of Madrid (0.45%).