Spain had a total population of 46,698,569 inhabitants as of January 1, 2018, 0.3% more than the previous year, according to the advance figures from the Census that the National Institute of Statistics (INE) has just published.
Of this total, 41,979,151 people (89.9%) have Spanish nationality and 4,719,418 are foreigners (10.1% of the total).
During 2017, the number of Spaniards registered in the census decreased by 20,174 people, while the number of foreigners increased by 146,611 inhabitants (3.2% more than the previous year). The percentage growth was much higher among the non-EU population (+5.1%) than among citizens belonging to the European Union (+0.2%).
In Spain, the number of foreigners had been increasing from 1998 until 2011, when 5.8 million residents of other nationalities were reached. From that year on, the number of foreigners began to decrease, standing at 4.6 million in 2017. Last year, after five years of decline, the number of foreigners increased again.
By country, the largest number of foreign residents in Spain come from Morocco (769,050, 16.3% of the total foreign population). The second country is Romania (673,017), the third United Kingdom (240,934), the fourth China (215,748) and the fifth Italy (206,066).
Average age of the foreign population
The average age of the total population registered in the Padrón is 43.1 years. In the case of Spaniards, it is 43.9 years, while the average age of foreign citizens is considerably lower: 36 years. By nationality, those with the highest average age are the British (53.5 years), Germans (49.3), and French (42.7). In contrast, the youngest are Honduran citizens (30.4 years on average), Moroccans (30.8), and Pakistanis (31).