Spain is now home to 10 million over 65s – which means two out of every 10 people in the country are of retirement age or older.

Even more surprising is the fact that there are more elderly people living in the two biggest cities of Madrid and Barcelona than there are in all small rural municipalities with dwindling populations.

These are the findings of a recent report by Spain’s Higher Centre for Scientific Research (CSIC), which shows that by 2040, over-65s may represent almost 30 percent of the population.

In Madrid and Barcelona, there are approximately one million elderly people; compared to the 765,446 who reside in the 6,000 rural municipalities of Spain.

Therefore, there are around 250,000 more elderly people in Barcelona and Madrid than in the sum of more than 5,000 municipalities with less than 2,000 inhabitants throughout the country.

While there may be more elderly people living in Spain’s two biggest cities than in villages that fall under the category of ‘Empty Spain’, it’s also true to say that people living in the countryside are likely to be older because of the exodus of young people from rural villages.

A total of 2.6 million people live in rural areas, which means that almost three out of every ten (28.4 percent) are over 65 years old.

By region, there are ten autonomous communities with an ageing rate higher than the national average.

Asturias comes in first place with 27.6 percent of people over 65. This is followed by Castilla y León (26.22 percent), the Basque Country (26.12 percent), Cantabria (23.07 percent), Aragón (22.09 percent), La Rioja (21.52 percent), Extremadura (21. 49 percent), Navarra (20.27 percent) and Valencia (19.97 percent).

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The research also highlights the dramatic increase in the number of octogenarians and centenarians in Spain – most of them women.

People aged 80 or over now represent 6 percent of the population. There are also almost 20,000 people aged one hundred or older in Spain – 1,600 more than last year.

“The rural world continues to depopulate and the extinction of the oldest generations will accelerate this depopulation process in the coming decades,” the report states, which also points out the “very low” proportions of children in rural areas, especially compared to larger towns.

Compared to other EU countries, Spain is the fourth country with the highest number of elderly people, only behind Germany, France, and Italy, but when it comes to the proportion of the population who are older, it comes in seventh place.

According to the Bank of Spain: “Population ageing is one of the greatest structural challenges facing the Spanish economy. Foremost among its multiple effects is its contractionary impact on labour supply, which will foreseeably have major implications on both the functioning of the labour market and the potential growth or sustainability of public finances”.

The report also highlights several projections for the future of Spain. It claims that there will be an estimated 14.2 million elderly people by 2040, which would represent 27.4 percent of the Spanish population which, by then, would be 52 million inhabitants (4.5 million more than now).

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