Spain has never had more inhabitants. As of July 1st 2024, the country had 48,797,875 residents. 

According to the country’s national stats body INE, Spain added an extra 67,367 people to its population in the second quarter of 2024.

A study by Statista estimates that in four years, Spain will have surpassed the 50 million people mark. 

Spain is currently the fifth most populous country in Western Europe after Germany (83 million), the UK (67 million), France (64 million) and Italy (58 million), so its growing population won’t necessarily mean that it moves up in the tables. 

What this rising population does do is reduce fears of what Spain’s ageing population and low birth rate would mean for the future of the country. 

So what bucked the previous trend? Foreigners, this year mainly Colombians, Moroccans, Venezuelans, Italians, Argentinians, Hondurans, Ukrainians, Paraguayans and Hondurans. 

Even Spaniards are returning home in greater numbers – 20,600 in Q2 2024. 

Fourteen of Spain’s 17 autonomous communities gained population, except for Castilla León (-0,03 percent), Andalusia (-0,03) and Extremadura (-0,05).

Hoy el INE publica datos de la Estadística Continua de Población. Un breve hilo con algunos datos:

La población de España desde 2T2018 se ha incrementado un 4,5%. La población nacida en España se ha reducido un 1,5% mientras que la extranjera aumentó un 43%. Por edades pic.twitter.com/tf0Kf9JC30

— Jon González (@JongoCervantes) August 7, 2024

Those that decry that migrant numbers have gone up by 43 percent since 2018 and that Spain is becoming ‘too’ multicultural should first consider the benefits.

Of 6.63 million foreigners living in Spain, 78 percent are working and contributing taxes to the social security system, the highest rate in Europe. 

This in turn pays the pensions and public healthcare of an ageing Spanish population that is expected to have the longest life expectancy in the world in the next 20 years.

Foreigners also have more children than Spaniards (1.35 compared to 1.12), which guarantees another generation of homegrown workers in two decades’ time.

Immigration may bring with it some negative side effects to Spain, most of which are overblown by far-right commentators, but currently the benefits clearly outweigh aspects such as a lack of integration, radicalism and crime by a small percentage of migrants. 

OPINION: Young black stars mirror migrants’ contribution to Spain

Now onto something completely different. Farmers in the green northern region of Asturias are up in arms due to the noise complaints they’re receiving from new residents who’ve moved there from the cities.

Cadenas de vacas con gomas o cuadras insonorizadas: las «surrealistas» exigencias a los ganaderos para no molestar a los nuevos residentes https://t.co/ZS9At7W5Mr

— La Voz de Asturias (@lavozdeasturias) August 9, 2024

One livestock farmer on the outskirts of Llanes has been taken to court because a family that had moved to a house next to his field couldn’t stand the noise the cows were making.

Believe it or not the judge sided with the urbanites, and the farmer has had to soundproof the cows’ chains and bells.

Something similar has happened in Navia, where a milking parlour (for the city folk, that’s where cows get milked) which started work early has also been ordered to soundproof the premises and machinery after a complaint by a new neighbour.

“The problem is that people who go to live in rural areas don’t want to adapt, they want the countryside but without the countryside,” coordinator of the Asturian Rural Union (URA), Borja Fernández Fernández, told local daily La Voz de Asturias.

“They want to have farms with cows but without manure and without noise.”

Describing the situation as “surreal”, Fernádez argued “tourism is put on a pedestal” as well, and that farming should receive the same protection, if not more, given its importance to the region. 

“It’s as if I moved to Madrid and complained about an ambulance’s siren,” complained Rosa Gutiérrez Nicolás, head of another agricultural association.

As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a trend which saw Spaniards move from the cities to the countryside in search of more space and peace. In fact, 61 percent have considered doing so, according to a recent survey by property portal Fotocasa.

However, Spaniards are by and far city dwellers (81 percent lived in urban areas in 2021) and the shift to the countryside is often not as suited to their lifestyle, as much as they built up the utopian rural living in their minds.