Palma.—The Balearics bucked the national trend during the first six months of this year.
While the size of the Spanish population has continued to shrink since 2012, the Balearic population grew by 5,898 between January and July of this year.
On 1 July, the total Balearic population stood at 1,121,739, 0.53 percent more that at the same time last year when the 1,115,841 people were registered as residents of the region.
When the economy was booming in the early 2000s, Spain took in an average of 700,000 immigrants per year, peaking in 2007 with 1 million.
But after the financial crisis hit in 2008, the real estate bubble burst, the economy went into recession, and the Spanish unemployment rate rocketed.
Currently almost a quarter of the population is out of work and it is more than double that for people under the age of 25.
As a result, fewer foreigners looked to Spain, and increasingly more Spaniards began leaving.
The southern European country has now become a net source of emigrants, as its population is shrinking for the first time in 75 years.
Balearic population boom