Spain Sees Increase in Emigrants Over the Past Decade

New emigrants coming to Spain now take the proportion of non-Spanish residents to just over 12 percent. The number of emigrants registered as living in Spain has already increased more than sixfold over the last 10 years, according to figures released by the National Statistics Institute.

Some 5.6 million non-Spaniards were registered as living in the country last year. This accounts for 12 percent of the population. This is a huge increase of more than 400,000 on 2008. Emigration helped the population reach 46.7 million in 2009. This is up from 40.5 million that was seen in 2000 during a time when the country had only 924,000 emigrants officially registered.

At the start of the 1990's, the population was made up almost entirely of Spaniards. Emigrants accounted for less than 1 percent of the population. However, over the past decade, the country has seen a huge influx from emigrants from all over the globe. Of course, it does seem that most of the emigrants come from European countries or north Africa and South America.

The professor of sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid, Jpaquin Arango, said that emigrants had occupied half of the jobs created in Spain between 2000 and 2008. He went on to say that emigrants have arrived in the millions - largely due to the availability of new jobs in Spain compared to other places in the world. There were some 5 million jobs created in Spain between 2000 and 2008. Many of these 5 million jobs ended up being in a favorable sector for emigrants, like construction, health care or hospitality.