Exact number of Brits in Spain still unknown

Many Brits who own a holiday home in Spain do not live there permanently, but do spend a large portion of the year in Spain.

Is it two million? More? Less? Maybe 750,000? The exact number of Brits who live in Spain remains unknown, official sources have said, largely because of the difficulty in registering and recording who lives where, and for how long.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn last week claimed that there were “nearly three-quarters of a million British people living in Spain” when he waded into the EU Referendum debate…

The BBC was quick to question that figure, and ran a report attempting to figure out just how many Brits really do live in Spain. The most official data from European statistics agency Eurostat finds that 306,000 UK-born people are registered as permanent residents in Spain, but most other metrics put that figure far higher.

While the oft-stated ‘750,000’ figure is somewhat of an educated guess, there are suggestions that more than 1.5 million Brits live at least part of the year in Spain, chiefly on the Costa del Sol and the Costa Blanca.

According to the BBC, one third of Brits registered as residents in Spain claim the UK state pension, which would appear to tally with previous studies that have shown that retirees make up a large percentage of British expats in Spain.

In terms of holiday travel and property, Brits are Spain’s biggest customers, and more than six million visited the country last year. Then there are the Brits who live and work in Spain but have not registered as residents at their local town hall – some estimates suggest that this group may in fact be larger than the group who have registered.

Either way, Spain remains the home-from-home of choice for many, many Brits, and the reasons why are stunningly obvious, whichever way you want to look at it.