Historic record for the number of Spaniards living abroad: there are now almost 2.8 million

A total of 2,790,317 Spaniards resided abroad on January 1, which represents a new historical record. This is included in the latest Register of Spaniards Resident Abroad (PERE), prepared by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) and whose historical series begins in 2009 with data for each January 1st. They are 1.7% more (47,712 people) than in 2022.

The historical record indicates that 1,471,691 Spaniards lived abroad in 2009. Since then, this population has always increased year after year. For the first time, 1.5 million were exceeded in 2010 (1,574,123); the two million in 2014 (2,058,048), and the 2.5 million in 2019 (2,545,729). However, in recent years there has been a slowdown in departures of Spaniards to another country, since between 2010 and 2015 there were interannual increases of between 6.07% and 8.17%; this trend has since softened.

By continent, 58.7% of the people with Spanish nationality registered in the PERE on January 1 had established their residence in America; 37.7% in Europe, and 3.6% in the rest of the world. The largest increases in registrations over the past year occurred in Europe (32,589 more) and America (19,698 more). In relative terms, the main increases occurred in Europe (3.2%) and Oceania (1.3%). There are 23,845 more women than men living abroad; they reside more in America, Europe and Oceania, while they settle mainly in Africa and Asia.

30.3% of Spaniards residing abroad were born in Spain; 58.3% in their current country of residence, and 11.3% in other nations. 15.1% are under 16 years of age (50.5% in Europe); 62.8%, between 16 and 64 years old (57.1% in America), and 22.1%, at least 65 years old (74.5% in America).

new registrations

Of the new registrations made during the past year, most corresponded to residents of the Americas (56.8%) and those born in the country of residence (59%). The foreign countries in which more people of Spanish nationality lived on January 1 were Argentina (477,465), France (297,142) and the United States (192,766). Among the States with more than 10,000 residents, the largest increases in relative terms of people with Spanish nationality occurred in Colombia (9.6%), Panama (5.9%) and the United States (5.3%).

On the contrary, the Spanish population decreased in seven countries: Venezuela (-2.8%), Peru (-1.6%), Morocco (-0.9%), Chile (-0.7%), Argentina ( -0.6%) and Ecuador and Uruguay (0.1% in both). In absolute terms, the highest increases in the Spanish population over the past year were registered in the United States (9,763), Mexico (7,122) and France (7,109). On the contrary, the countries where the number of Spaniards fell the most in absolute terms were Argentina (2,694 less) and Venezuela (-3,869).