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BREXIT: How many Brits have left Spain and how many are staying?

Choosing between Spain and the UK is a dilemma on the minds of thousands of Britons who up until now have been able to enjoy life between both countries without limitations. But what does the official data say about British arrivals and departures in Spain as the Brexit deadline fast approaches?

Published: 22 December 2020 12:56 CET
BREXIT: How many Brits have left Spain and how many are staying?
A busy Rambla (pre-Covid) in Barcelona, a province which in 2019 was home to 14,000 British residents. Photo: Nikolaus Bader/Pixabay

For some Brits in Spain, it’s a no-brainer: Spain has been their home for years and they will continue being residents here after Brexit. 

For others who hadn’t previously registered, the decision hasn’t proved as easy, now that they have health cover and income requirements to meet for residency and the need to commit to one country has forced them to think hard about the future during these uncertain times.

And then there are the Brits who have decided to move to Spain for the first time as a result of Brexit, hoping that a life here as EU residents will be better than what awaits them in the UK.

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There are these scenarios and many more being played out currently, but is the balance tilting in favour of more residency registrations or cancellations?

How many are registering?

According to the website of Spain’s Secretary of State for Migration, the number of UK citizens with Spanish residence permits increased by 8.2 percent from June 2018 to June 2019.

The rate then increased a further 5.8 percent from June 2019 to June 2020, a rise of 19,977 British residents.

“More than 50,000 British citizens have applied for the new TIE card,” Hana Jalloul stated in a video message on December 23rd.

No official national body has published more figures since the summer, but regional and provincial authorities have.

Málaga’s government for example published data from their migration offices on November 11th 2020 which reported that 2,692 UK citizens had applied for residency there since July 6th, a marked upward trend.

Similarly, by mid- November, a further 3,000 Britons on the Balearic island of Mallorca had received their TIE card since July 7th, the day after the residency document’s launch. That’s out of a total of 5,000 applications, with 60 slots being made available daily over the five-month period.

In neighbouring Menorca, which only has a population of 96,000 (4,000 of whom are British residents), a further 300 UK citizens have applied for residency since the summer.

How many have left?

This information is harder to come by in official sources and would rely on the premise that all Britons leaving Spain for good before Brexit were cancelling their green residency documents, a document which doesn’t expire but will no doubt eventually be replaced by the TIE, which does.

That means that until then it may be hard to get an accurate idea of how many Britons have left over the course of the last year and since the Brexit vote, as it would depend on factors such as whether it’s residency documents or padrón registration at town halls which is used.

However, a recent article in Spain’s ABC newspaper titled “I’m going back: 50,000 Britons return to the UK due to Brexit” argued there has been a downward trend in UK residents in Spain in recent years.

Comparing National Statistics Institute (INE) data of Brits registered as residents in Spain from 2014 (two years before Brexit vote) and from 2019, the numbers did drop from 300,000 to around 250,000, although they had already gone down to 256,000 by 2016.

Did Brexit really spur thousands of Brits to stop being residents in Spain or could other measures such as the asset declaration law that was passed by the Spanish government in 2013 have had a bigger impact?

How many Brits are now registered as residents in Spain?

Spain’s Secretary of State for Migration reported that as of June 30th 2020, there were 366,498 UK citizens with a “certificado de registro” or “tarjeta de residencia” (both residency documents) in Spain, the third biggest foreign population group in the country after Romanians and Moroccans.

Their average age is far higher than for most other foreigners in Spain – 53.9 – and there’s an almost 50/50 split between men and women.

Alicante (86,407 UK residents), Málaga (63,571) and the Balearic Islands (29,532) hold the highest number of British residents in Spain.

However, the latest data from Spain’s National Statistics Institute states that there are 250,392 Brits registered in Spain, more than 100,000 fewer than the State for Migration’s figures.

Although INE are yet to publish any data from the whole of 2020, and the evidence suggests the numbers of Brits will be higher, it’s the fact that INE uses primarily local census information from the town halls (padrón address registrations, birth, deaths etc) rather than migration documents that could account for the stark difference.

READ ALSO: El Padrón: Your need-to-know guide about registering with the town hall

The drop in recent years of Brits registered as having their home address in towns and cities in Spain could have been also a result of their unwillingness to fill in asset declarations, or as a result of missing the deadline, or other fiscal and other matters, rather than solely because of Brexit.

Many took themselves off the padrón but carried on living in Spain.

Come January 1st 2021, Brits here will have to stay above the radar as third-country nationals in all circumstances, so only then will we get a true picture of how many have chosen to make or keep Spain as their main home.  

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GIBRALTAR

Why has Gibraltar still not reached a Brexit deal with Spain?

With yet another round of Spain-UK negotiations set to begin more than eight years since the Brexit referendum, Gibraltar is still without a deal and a November deadline looms over any treaty. Why has it proven so hard to break the deadlock?

Published: 17 September 2024 13:38 CEST
Why has Gibraltar still not reached a Brexit deal with Spain?

On Thursday September 19th, Spain and the UK resume talks on Gibraltar’s post-Brexit status, and has been the case since 2016, uncertainty is still the prevailing feeling.

The British Foreign Secretary David Lammy recently received his Spanish counterpart, José Manuel Albares in London. Both did their diplomatic duties and talked up the prospects of a deal, with Lammy stating he hoped for an agreement that would ensure greater “prosperity and security for the people of Gibraltar.”

Albares, for his part, understandably centred any hypothetical deal on a “shared prosperity between Gibraltar and the 300,000 Andalusians connected every day in their normal lives”.

READ ALSO: Gibraltar demands Spain return stolen concrete block in new diplomatic spat

Though Lammy and Albares discussed the Rock, no formal negotiations or deal can be struck without EU oversight, so the meeting also included discussion of bilateral issues and international concerns such as the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

The meeting between the two Ministers was therefore a preamble to yet more formal treaty negotiations in Brussels on Thursday. Since Brexit came into effect at the end of 2020, Gibraltar has essentially existed in legal limbo with no formal treaty.

Border controls have been fudged ever since, leaving locals and Spaniards across the border faced with inconsistent rules and forcing travellers to find creative ways to bypass rules and get over ‘La Línea’. 

Why hasn’t a deal been reached?

So why all the meetings and pre-meetings and endless rounds of negotiations? How is it possible that Gibraltar is still without a Brexit deal all these years later?

A recent piece in El País by Rafa de Miguel, the daily’s UK and Ireland correspondent, perhaps put it best: “The amount of warm words in any political statement is inversely proportional to the progress in the negotiations.”

The reality is that, however many handshakes and photo opportunities and positive attitudes expressed between Spain and the UK on a bilateral level, these are ultimately irrelevant as nothing can be signed without the EU’s approval. 

This is further complicated by the fact that this makes any deal dependent on four way negotiations between Spain, the UK, the EU, and Gibraltar.

Each of these parties has their own individual set of needs, preferences and motivations. The EU won’t want to be seen to give Gibraltar, and by extension the UK, any special treatment for fear of emboldening other member states who desire bespoke arrangements when it comes to border controls and customs checks.

In light of Germany recently reimplementing land border checks, something some say is a direct violation of Schengen rules, this will be especially sensitive in these latest rounds of negotiations. 

Spain has long made territorial claims on Gibraltar dating back to the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, when the overseas territory was first ceded to the UK, and will want to come out of negotiations with something that can be perceived as a political victory, likely an increased Spanish role in border patrols.

Fabian Picardo, Gibraltar’s Chief Minister, has ruled this out definitively over the last few years, citing concerns about British sovereignty.

The UK government in London will also have worries about British sovereignty, but will balance this with the knowledge that Gibraltar negotiations are also an opportunity to reset relations with Europe more widely, something the new Starmer government has repeatedly stated since coming into power.

READ ALSO: ‘It’s time to reset Britain’s relations with Europe’, says UK foreign secretary

Some reports, however, suggest that despite the positive musings coming from London, negotiations have stalled and that Lammy has no intention of signing anything that would deviate from Gibraltar’s needs and concerns.

Political tensions were increased recently when Gibraltar demanded Spanish far-right party Vox return a concrete block stolen from British waters, and the Euro 2024 winning Spanish football team made international headlines when it celebrating by singing ‘Gibraltar es Español’ (Gibraltar is Spanish).

READ ALSO: ‘Gibraltar is Spanish!’: How Spain celebrated Euro 2024 heroes

Despite wanting to improve relations with the EU, Lammy is expected to reiterate the Labour government’s unwavering commitment to the “double lock” on sovereignty, sources told El País.

Perhaps most pressingly, however, is the fact that these new negotiations now have a deadline: the enforcement of new Schengen Area border rules come into force on November 10th and a treaty must be finalised before then. 

READ MORE: Hard border? What we know so far about new Gibraltar-Spain checks

Schengen Zone rules mean that there are two major outstanding points in treaty negotiations: firstly, the sore point of Spanish border guards on British soil, something Gibraltar rejects outright, and also the question of who would run Gibraltar’s airport, which is located on the isthmus between Spain and the British territory, an area Madrid claims was never included in Treaty of Utrecht.

The most contested aspect of negotiations is Madrid’s demand that Spanish agents should be allowed to carry out checks on passengers arriving at Gibraltar airport and that they should be armed and in uniform.

For many Llanitos (Gibraltar locals) this is an intolerable idea and one Picardo rejects outright: “There will be no Spanish boots on the ground,” he has said repeatedly.

On the other hand, Spain argues that no specific protocol can be designed for Gibraltar and that if it wants to join the border-free European area, it must accept Schengen rules.

Spanish boots on British soil is a particularly visceral point for many Gibraltarians of a certain age. In June 1969, Spanish dictator Francisco Franco closed the border gate between Gibraltar and La Línea de la Concepción, cutting the tiny overseas territory off from the world, separating Spanish-British families and forcing Gibraltar to source food from elsewhere on the planet. 

It was eventually reopened in December in 1982 but those 13 years have taken deep root in Gibraltar’s historical memory and is now embedded into the Llanito collective imagination and identity.

For many on ‘The Rock’, the idea of Spanish border guards on British soil, whether it be in the airport or elsewhere, is simply unacceptable under any circumstances. 

Tax could also prove to be a sticking point. Gibraltar has no VAT, but Madrid has argued that if it wants to benefit from fluid border movement, its tax rules must be brought into line with EU rules.

Of course, there’s also both the domestic and international geopolitical contexts to consider here too. All parties – Spain, the UK, Gibraltar and the EU – have been distracted by other events in recent years.

Spain has been preoccupied by political tension, snap elections and the Catalan amnesty, while Britain suffered the almost cartoonish political instability of the outgoing Conservative government and treaty talks were postponed after the general election in July.

Added to this is the fact that the mediating party, the EU, has had its hands full with the war in Ukraine and surging far-right parties across member states, a trend that interestingly both the UK and Spain buck as the only major European states with centre-left governments.

Talks resume on Thursday September 19th, over 8 years since the Brexit referendum.

In British politics, the UK’s exit from the EU now seems strangely absent from debate, as though the issue is over and the country has finally begun to move on — but for Gibraltarians and the thousands of Spaniards who cross the border and work there everyday, Brexit is still an open-ended question.

READ ALSO: ‘Starting now’: New UK govt wastes no time in Gibraltar post-Brexit talks with Spain

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