MADRID: The central Spanish statistics institute, released figures showing that the population of Spain has declined for the third consecutive year, falling by 170,392 individuals during the year to a level of 46,600,949.
On January 1st this year, the census counted 46,600,949 inhabitants in Spain, of which 41,882,085 were Spanish and 4,718,864 were foreign nationals. Amongst the foreign population, EU citizens decreased by 114,304 to 1.94 million, whilst the number of non-EU nationals fell by 190,319 to 2.77 million. The biggest losses by ethnic group were observed amongst the Rumanians (45,864), Ecuadorians (42,636) and Columbians (30,919), whilst the number of Russians, Chinese and Ukrainians rose, by 3,126, 5,310, and 2,317, respectively.
This clearly illustrates that the fall in population is caused by the fact that 304,623 foreigners have either left Spain or deceased, while the number of Spaniards returning to Spain after living abroad over the past year was only 134,231 (0.3%) resulting in a 170,392 head decrease in the population of Spain.
