Number of Spaniards living in UK rises 10% in one year

More than 12,000 Spaniards moved to the UK in 2017, swelling the number of Spanish citizens in the country to 128,000.

Brexit, what Brexit? One of the chief fears from the UK’s decision to leave the EU was that the country would become a far less attractive place for people to move to. And while net immigration has indeed fallen since that June 2016 vote (in large parts due to improved economic conditions in other EU countries, such as Portugal, Hungary, Spain and Poland), thousands of EU citizens are still exercising their right to free movement by settling in the UK…

And one of the largest groups remains Spaniards. The latest data by Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE) has revealed a 10% increase in the number of Spaniards who moved to the UK in the past 12 months.

This equates to a total of 128,000 Spanish nationals now officially residing in the UK, predominantly in the larger cities of London, Birmingham, Manchester and Bristol.

The INE data also shows that the UK’s popularity among Spaniards is rising faster than in any other country around the world. Of those nations with at least 10,000 Spaniards residing in them, the increase of 12,000 new faces in the UK last year was the highest globally.

That said, the 128,000 Spaniards in the UK pales into comparison with Argentina, where more than 450,000 Spaniards live. There are also 253,000 Spaniards in France, and more than 130,000 in the USA, Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela.

Currently, the official Spanish diaspora is 2.48 million, which is a massive one million increase globally since 2009. The years between then and now were tough in Spain, save for the past 24 months, so such an exodus was to be expected.

As Spain’s economy improves, however, that figure is likely to steadily reduce, but it obviously won’t disappear altogether: while Spain is perhaps one of the finest countries in the world in which to live, as British expats know all-too-well, once you’ve put roots down in another country it can be hard to uproot them again.