Spain: Million Immigrants Given Residency in 2007
Nearly one million foreign citizens were granted permanent residency in Spain last year, bringing the official total, not counting illegal immigration, up to almost four million non-nationals residing in the country. According to government figures, Moroccans are the biggest immigrant population in Spain with around 650,000 of its citizens living there, followed by Romanians (604,000), Ecuadorians (396,000), Columbians (254,000) and British citizens (199,000). People from EU member countries made up 39% of Spain’s total foreign population in 2007, followed by South Americans (30%) and Africans (21%).
The Spanish tourist board believes that tourism is the driving force behind its country’s rising immigration and revealed that a record 59.2 million tourists hit Spanish shores in 2007 – a rise of 1.7% y-o-y.
The board’s statistics also showed that the Costa del Sol is still the most popular destination for tourists and that the Andalucian region also grew in popularity. It noted that UK citizens were still Spain’s biggest tourist group accounting for 27.5% of all foreign visitors, however, arrivals from North America have risen by 22% in 2007, totalling 1.1 million tourists from the continent.
Low cost airlines accounted for a significant proportion of carriers travelling to Spain, flying 24 million tourists to the country in 2007 – a 34% rise y-o-y. Ryanair led the way carrying 5.4 million passengers followed by easyJet with 4.2 million. Malaga was the principal entry point accounting for 3.6 million passengers travelling via budget airlines, while six out of every ten tourists ended up holidaying on the Costa del Sol.
Comments
Lenox - a comment on: March 17, 2008, 9:48 am
Spain’s tourism policy is firmly controlled by hoteliers. So many millions of tourists, at five days each in Spain… equals… well, not very much actually, as the holidays are paid for in England, or Germany or wherever. The hotels attempt to keep their customers ‘on site’ to not go out and spend their small purses in the local community. Despite what we read, the hotels don’t to much for the Spanish economy. The staff in those hotels, by the way, these days are all Rumanians…
But European residents are living here all year long. Despite never staying in crap tour-hotels and therefore not being of interest to ‘the experts’, we are pumping money into the economy twelve months of the year. We buy houses, cars, washing machines, food, clothes, drink, go out to restaurants, stay in Paradores, visit the interior of Spain, go to Granada, Cacares, Cuenca and Badajoz. We will stay here in Spain and not decide to ‘do the Caribbean’ next year. We will decorate and improve our surroundings. We will join in our community activities and strengthen our adopted pueblo.
The Spanish have only the haziest idea of how many we are. There is a big difference between the 199,000 Brits quoted in the article above and the estimated one million Brits living in Spain according to the British Foreign Office.
While the hoteliers won’t admit it - one residential tourist here is worth to Spain more than 200 trippers.
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