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Where do Spain’s Irish residents live?

An increasing number of Irish nationals are making Spain their home. Where are the majority based in 2023 and what Irish associations can they join in 'España'?

Published: 9 September 2020 10:51 CEST
Updated: 17 March 2023 10:46 CET
Where do Spain's Irish residents live?
Most Irish nationals registered in Spain choose coastal locations as their new homes. Photo: Vicente Viana/Pixabay

Spain’s Irish community number 19,491 according to the latest figures from Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE), which makes them the third largest English-speaking group in Spain behind Brits (more than 400,000) and Americans (41,950).

The number of Irish nationals who reside in Spain has increased by 2,822 compared to 2022’s stats, continuing with the upward trend seen over the past five years.

READ ALSO: Spain holiday homes – Which nationalities favour which coastal regions in Spain?

There’s an even distribution of Irish men and women in Spain, with the majority aged between 40 and 60. 

Where do most of them live?

Spain’s Irish community favours coastal locations generally but also the country’s two biggest cities – Madrid and Barcelona.

Of Spain’s 50 provinces, Málaga is home to the biggest Irish community with 3,494 Irish nationals. Next is Alicante province in the eastern Valencia region, where 2,916 reside.

Barcelona, with 2,472 Irish nationals, and Madrid with 2,021, are the third and fourth provinces with the biggest Irish representation in Spain.

Map of Spain’s provinces showing where the biggest Irish population groups are in 2023, with the darker coloured ones showing where most of them live. Map: padron.com.es
 

They also like Spain’s islands. A total of 885 live in the Balearic Islands where Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza are.

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria province (which includes the islands of Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote) is home to 1,658 Irish nationals and the next-door province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Tenerife, La Gomera, La Palma and El Hierro) is where 807 live.

READ ALSO: Why are there so many Irish street names in Spain’s Canary Islands?

Other worthy mentions are Murcia (550), Almería (522), Cádiz (350) and Granada (307), all coastal provinces in Spain’s sizzling south, Valencia province (845) next to Alicante and Girona (266) and Tarragona (243) in Catalonia.

If you’re wondering what brings Irish people to Spain, the following interview-based article covers exactly this, as well as advice for other Irish nationals considering Spain as a possible home away from home.

READ MORE: The charms and challenges of life in Spain for its Irish residents

What associations can Irish people in Spain join?

According to the Irish embassy in Spain website, there are a number of groups and organisations Irish people can join if they want to meet their fellow countrymen and women.

These include the  Irish Club in Marbella, CARA, the official Irish/Basque Association, Irish in Barcelona, Valencia Irish Cultural Association, Asociación Española de Estudios Irlandeses and Irish Community in the Balearics. 

There are also a number of Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) clubs dotted around mainland Spain: Madrid Harps, Costa Gaels GAA, Eire Og Sevilla GAA, Galician Gaelic Games Association, Sant Vincent GAA Valencia, Barcelona Gaels GAA Club, Celta Malaga GAA, Gaélicos do Gran Sol GAA and Zaragoza GAA, Gaelic Games Andalucia GAA. 

What about Irish tourists in Spain?

According to Spain’s Tourism Ministry, Spain continues to be the number one holiday destination for Irish residents, closely ahead of France, Italy and Portugal.

A total of 2.08 million Irish tourists visited Spain in 2022 (including repeat visits), spending on average €1,240 on their vacations. The Canary Islands (30 percent) and Andalusia (22 percent) were their favourite holiday locations.

READ ALSO: Swapping Dublin for Madrid – The right escape from Ireland’s cost-of-living crisis?

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STATS

Spain’s population inches closer to 49 million with 900 new residents a day

Amid falling birth rates and an ageing society, foreigners are pushing the Spanish population to record highs.

Published: 10 May 2024 09:31 CEST
Spain's population inches closer to 49 million with 900 new residents a day

The Spanish population increased by almost 1000 people per day to start off the year, spurred almost entirely by the arrival of migrants.

Spain’s population increased by 82,346 people during the first quarter of 2024, a rate of a little over 900 per day on average, meaning that the total population reached 48,692,804 on April 1st, the highest figure in history.

This is according to population data recently released by Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE).

In annual terms, the total estimated population growth was 459,615 people in the last year, 0.95 percent overall, a slight slowdown after six consecutive quarters with inter-annual rates above 1 percent.

READ ALSO: Older and more diverse: What Spain’s population will be like in 50 years

These figures confirm the pre-existing trend that without the influx of immigrants, Spain’s population would be decreasing. This is largely due to the combination of an ageing population and declining birth rates. By 2035, around one in four (26.0 percent) of Spaniards are expected to be 65 or older. That figure is currently just 20.1 percent of the total population, and by 2050 it could rise to 30.4 percent.

This is compounded by the fact that fertility rate figures have all but flatlined in Spain. In 2023 Spain registered just 322,075 births, reflecting “a 2.0 percent fall on the previous year”, an INE statement said, with a spokesman confirming it was the lowest figure since records began in 1941.

Spain’s fertility rate is the second lowest in the European Union, with the latest figures from Eurostat showing there were 1.19 births per woman in 2021, compared with 1.13 in Malta and 1.25 in Italy.

A recent study by the Bank of Spain estimates that the country will need up to 25 million more immigrant workers by 2053 in order to combat demographic ageing and maintain the ratio of workers to pensioners in order to support the pension system.

READ ALSO:

During the first quarter of the year, the native Spanish population actually decreased by 3,338 while the foreign population increased by 85,684 people.

8,915,831 people, or 18.31 percent of the total population in Spain, were born in other countries.

The main nationalities of immigrants arriving in Spain were Colombian (39,200), Moroccan (26,000) and Venezuelan (22,600). In contrast, of those who left Spain in the first three months of the year, 10,000 were Spanish, 9,900 Moroccan and 8,000 Romanian.

On a regional level, in this period the population grew in 12 regions, as well as in the autonomous city of Melilla, and decreased in five regions and Ceuta.

The largest increases were in Madrid (+0.44 percent), Melilla (+0.40) and the Valencian Community (+0.36), while the population decreased in Aragón (-0.19 percent), Extremadura (-0.12), Castilla y León (-0.06 percent), Asturias (-0.05 percent), Cantabria (-0.03 percent) and Ceuta (0.02 percent).

With regards to year-on-year increases, population increased the most in the Valencian Community (+1.79 percent), Madrid (+1.72) and the Balearic Islands (+1.62) and only decreased in Extremadura, by 0.13 percent.

READ ALSO: Nearly half of Barcelona’s residents aged 20 to 39 are foreign

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