Spain among the European countries with the biggest foreign population

Of Spain's total population, 17.1% were born in other countries, above the EU average. Luxembourg leads with 50%

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3 April 2024, 9:00

Spain is among the EU countries with the biggest population born outside its national borders. According to a Savings Banks Foundation (Funcas) study based on Eurostat data, 17.1% of the population residing in Spain in 2023 was foreign. Out of the EU-27, it stands tenth.

The document states that "in 2023, the percentage of population born abroad in all European Union countries amounted to 13.3%. Spain is among the European countries with the highest proportion of immigrants, with 17.1% of residents having been born abroad. It is just behind countries with a long tradition of welcoming immigrants, such as Sweden (20.4%) and Germany (19.5%), and ahead of France (13 .1%) and the rest of the southern European countries (Portugal: 16.1%; Greece: 11.3%; Italy: 10.9%)".

Luxembourg is the most prominent EU-27 country with more than 50% (i.e., most of the population was born abroad). It is followed by Malta (28.3%), Cyprus (22.7%), Ireland (21.8%), Austria (21.6%) and Sweden (20.4%). In Germany and Belgium, the proportion of immigrants exceeds 19%, while in Estonia, it reaches 17.2% – one percentage point above Spain.

In eight EU countries, the weight of foreigners is less than 10%: Finland, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Poland. The latter three have the lowest percentages, at less than 3% in all three cases.

Immigration on the rise in Spain

The Funcas study highlights that "since the beginning of the century, Spain has stood out as one of the European countries to receive the most immigration," and that the trend continues to rise. It has grown again in the last year.

According to the latest Spanish Statistics Institute's (INE) Continuous Population Statistics to which the document refers, the population born abroad represented 18.1% in Spain on 1 January 2024, one percentage point more than in 2023, representing 8.8 million people. At the beginning of 2002, the immigrant population barely accounted for 5.7% of the total population.

"This increase – with an all-time high of 8.8 million people – is the result of a steady upward trend over the past two decades. There was only a slight decline in the foreign-born population during the Great Recession – less than one point percentage (from 13.5% in January 2011 to 12.7% in July 2014) – as well as a brief pause in growth during the pandemic. These trends not only reflect demographic changes but also mark Spain's structural potential to attract migration," Funcas highlights.

However, there are big differences between autonomous communities. In 2024, the highest percentages were in the Balearic Islands (27%), followed by Catalonia and Madrid (24%), Melilla (23%) and the Valencian Community and the Canary Islands (22%). At the other end of the table are Extremadura (5.5%), Asturias (10.2%) and Castile and Leon (10.7%).