Immigration in data

There are two ways of counting immigration. One counts people born in another country, whether or not they have Spanish nationality; the other, people of foreign nationality, wherever they were born. This article uses the first whenever it can, because it allows countries to be compared and does not change when someone becomes a citizen. Some statistics, such as the Labour Force Survey by region or Eurostat's over-qualification data, only exist by nationality; we say so in each chart.

Eight countries are ahead of Spain in foreign-born population: Luxembourg (51.5%), Malta, Cyprus, Ireland, Austria, Sweden, Germany (20.5%) and Belgium. France (14.0%) and Italy (11.8%) are below. Since 2015, the share has risen 6.6 points in Spain, the fifth largest rise in the EU, after Malta, Germany, Luxembourg and Ireland.

In Germany and France, the employment rate of the foreign-born is more than 11 points below that of people born in the country (11.5 and 12.4 points). In Spain the gap is much smaller, but not only because immigrants are doing better: also because the employment rate of people born in Spain (73.3%) is below the European average for the native-born (77.2%). That of the foreign-born has risen 10.9 points since 2015, when it was 58.7%.

Having a job does not mean working in what you studied. Among employed people with higher education, 32.7% of Spaniards work in a job that does not require it: the highest share of the 20 EU countries with data. Among foreign nationals, 46.4%. The gap between the two (13.7 points) is somewhat smaller than the EU average (16.9 points, with 36.9% of foreign nationals and 20.0% of nationals). The highest shares of over-qualified foreign nationals are in Greece (72.9%), Estonia (56.4%) and Italy (54.8%).

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On 1 January 2026, 10.0 million people born in another country lived in Spain, according to INE's provisional figure. Four regions are home to almost two in three (66%): Catalonia (2.1 million), Madrid (1.8), the Valencian Community (1.4) and Andalusia (1.2). As a share, after the Balearic Islands (29.3%), Catalonia (26.1%), Madrid (25.7%) and the Valencian Community (25.5%) come the Canary Islands (24.1%). In the north and west the shares are much lower: Asturias (12.6%), Castile and León (12.9%) and Galicia (13.2%).

In the last year with data, unemployment among people of foreign nationality was 15.3%, against 9.2% among Spanish nationals. Where they differ least is in the Canary Islands (13.1% against 12.4%), a region with high unemployment for everyone. Where they differ most, leaving aside Ceuta and Melilla, is in Navarre (20.0% against 5.9%), Asturias (17.1% against 8.0%) and the Basque Country (15.3% against 6.3%). In small regions the survey sample is small and these differences have a wide margin of error.

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Arrivals have not been steady. Between 2002 and 2009, the foreign-born went from 5.7% to 13.5% of the population. With the crisis, the figure stalled and then fell slightly, to 12.7% in 2015 and 2016. Since 2017 it has been rising again, and faster since 2023. The population of foreign nationality follows the same curve, lower down (14.6% in 2026). The gap between the two lines corresponds to people born abroad who hold Spanish nationality, net of foreign nationals born in Spain.

All of Spain's population growth since 2013 is due to the foreign-born. The population born in Spain peaked that year, at 40.5 million people, and has fallen every year since, to 39.6 million in 2026. The foreign-born population has gone, over the same period, from 6.2 to 10.0 million.

Where they come from has changed too. Between 2005 and 2019, the largest group were people born in other European countries, mostly in the EU. Since 2020 it has been people born in South America: 3.7 million on 1 January 2025, almost five times more than in 2002 (0.8 million). By country, the first is Morocco (1.17 million), followed by Colombia (0.98), Venezuela (0.69), Romania (0.52) and Ecuador (0.47).

The foreign-born are, above all, people of working age. On 1 January 2026 they were 25.5% of the population aged 15 to 64, against 6.8% in 2002. Among people born in Spain there are 38.8 people aged 65 or over for every 100 aged 15 to 64; among the foreign-born, 11.1. For the whole population, the figure is 31.7. The ratio of older people to people of working age is one of the factors behind pension spending. But immigrants age too: between 2004 and 2026, the ratio for the foreign-born has gone from 7.0 to 11.1.

See also: Demographics and pensions: an ageing country

Policy file: the 2026 extraordinary regularisation

1. What it is. An exceptional route to a one-year residence and work permit, intended for foreign nationals who were already in Spain before 1 January 2026 without a permit, or who had applied for international protection before that date. It is governed by Royal Decree 316/2026, which amends the 2024 Immigration Regulation.
2. Who and when. The Council of Ministers approved it on 14 April 2026 and it was published in the official gazette (BOE) the next day. Applications could be submitted from 16 April to 30 June. Applicants needed at least five consecutive months in Spain and no criminal record and, under the general route, to have worked or want to work, to live with minor children or other dependent relatives, or to be in a certified situation of vulnerability. According to the government, there have been six earlier processes since 1986, with almost 1.3 million people regularised.
3. What should happen. People who already live and work in Spain should move into the formal economy, contribute to Social Security and pay taxes. Its critics point to the risk that it encourages more people to arrive irregularly, the so-called «pull effect».
4. What we compare it with. There is no official data on its results yet. The most studied precedent is the 2005 regularisation.

What research says about 2005: Ferran Elias, Joan Monras and Javier Vázquez-Grenno (Journal of Labor Economics, 2025) study that process, in which almost 600,000 people obtained a residence and work permit. They find that social security contributions rose by at least 4,000 euros a year for each regularised worker, that the wages of low-skilled native workers in the formal sector rose and that arrivals did not increase. Also that some of those regularised later returned to the informal economy. It is a single episode, in the middle of an economic boom, and need not repeat itself in the same way in 2026.

On the effect of immigration on the economy, the Bank of Spain estimates in its 2025 Annual Report that the arrival of immigrants would explain around half of GDP growth and more than two thirds of the rise in employment in recent years. Measured per person, the effect is smaller: between 2022 and 2024, the foreign population contributed between 0.4 and 0.7 points to annual growth in GDP per capita, which was 2.9% (Cuadrado and Regil, Economic Bulletin, 2025). These are accounting breakdowns, not causal estimates, and they do not say what the long-term fiscal balance will be when today's immigrants draw their pensions.

What this data does not say. Population figures do not distinguish between people with a residence permit and people without one, so they cannot tell how many people are in an irregular situation. Each year's arrivals and departures cannot be followed in a long series either: INE changed the way it measures them in 2021 and, for that same year, the old statistic counted some 529,000 immigrations from abroad and the new one some 888,000. And unemployment by region is measured by nationality: it cannot tell how much of the gap with Spaniards is due to age, education, sector or how long they have been in Spain.

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