The number of foreign residents in Spain has broken the six million mark (6,007,553) for the first time after increasing by 3.6% last year, according to official data.
These statistics include foreigners from third countries or migrants, EU foreigners or their family members, and British nationals and their family members with documentation based on the agreement between the two countries after Brexit. The number of Britons with a residence permit ot new TIE card rose from 65,891 in 2020 to 181,585 in 2021.
Overall, the cumulative growth of the resident foreign population in the past five years is 19% and in 2021 there was an interannual increase similar to the years prior to Covid-19 (207,093 people, almost 4%), which is just over one point above the growth produced in 2020, but still below that observed in the year immediately prior to the pandemic.
The growth experienced last year is mainly due to there being 81,369 more people with residence permits, i.e. migrants from third countries whose year-on-year growth stood at 3.6% and the new 115,694 Britons or family members documented under the Brexit model, who have experienced a growth of 176%.
52% of foreigners residing in Spain are male and the average age is 40. The Romanian community is the largest, with 1,093,231 residing in the country, followed by Moroccans (829,992), British (407,628), Italians (377,143) and Chinese (231,019).