Key messages
- European immigration is Spain’s earliest and now accounts for a quarter of all immigrants (some 2,400,000 people).
- European immigrants in Spain outnumber Spanish emigrants to other European countries by a factor of two to one.
- It is a highly heterogeneous type of immigration: approximately half come from countries with a higher per capita income than Spain’s. A third of the latter are descended from former Spanish emigrants.
- European immigration from wealthy countries is no longer skewed towards a ‘migration of retirees’, as it was in the 20th century. It predominantly comprises an economically active population, with a high level of education, occupying senior positions at work and earning higher average salaries than their Spanish counterparts.
- Romanian and Bulgarian immigration is declining: almost one third have returned to their home countries over the past 15 years.
- European immigrants’ activity and employment rates are similar to those of native Spaniards, but are slightly lower owing to a lower female activity.
- In total, European immigrants occupy 6.3% of jobs in Spain, but their presence is much higher in the real estate sector (16%), a phenomenon related to their geographical clustering in the most touristy parts of Spain.
Analysis
This analysis is the fifth and last in the series that the Elcano Royal Institute has published on how immigrants in Spain have integrated into the labour market. The first, titled ‘Immigration and the labour market in Spain’, analysed the entirety of the immigrant population and its most striking characteristics from the perspective of its relationship with the labour market, while the next three scrutinised Latin American, African and Asian immigration, respectively, in greater detail. This paper focuses on immigrants originating from Europe, both EU and non-EU countries.
Immigration from European countries with high per capita incomes is one of the earliest in Spain, although analyses of immigration have ignored it for decades on the grounds that it was a non-occupational form of movement, related to retirement and people who were not economically active, whether retired or not, living predominantly on Spain’s coasts and islands. This idea, which in crude terms may have approximated to the reality of the 1970s, 80s and early 90s, has become increasingly inaccurate, not only because of the major contribution to immigration made by people of working age from Eastern European countries but also because of the change in the profile of immigrants from ‘wealthy’ countries such as the UK, Germany, France and Italy. This type of immigration has become increasingly occupational in nature, albeit not motivated by the difference between the levels of wealth in their home countries and Spain, but rather by a range of highly varied causes.
As far back as 2008 the Elcano Royal Institute was already drawing attention to the unwarranted indifference to this type of migration and to the misguidedness of treating it in global terms as ‘leisure-based’ or ‘residential’ immigration. The proportion of the ‘elderly’ is much higher in this group than in any other group of immigrants, but at the same time its bulk is now made up of economic migrants.
As with the previous papers in this series, the chief sources used are the Continuous Municipal Register (Padrón Continuo de Población), the Continuous Population Statistics (Estadística Continua de Población) and the Active Population Survey (Encuesta de Población Activa, EPA) (EPA microdata for the fourth quarter of 2024), all compiled by the National Statistics Institute (INE). Based on such data, the analysis begins by setting out the basic characteristics of European immigrants in Spain, subsequently focusing on pertinent information regarding their integration into the employment market.
A preliminary analysis points to four clearly differentiated sub-groups:
- Europeans from EU member states with lower per capita incomes than Spain’s (Romania, Bulgaria, Portugal, Poland…).
- Europeans from ‘wealthy’ EU countries (Germans, Italians, French… including British immigrants here too).
- Non-EU Europeans from countries with lower per capita income than Spain’s (Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Turkey…).
- The descendants of Spanish emigrants, born in EU countries.
The context: size, evolution, composition and characteristics of European immigration in Spain
It is worth mentioning that the definition of international migrant used by all the papers in this series is the one adopted by the Population Division of the United Nations, namely anyone who lives in a country other than the one of their birth, regardless of their legal status in the country of residence. Thus, according to the most recent aggregated data compiled by the Continuous Population Statistics (INE), the total number of European immigrants in Spain on 1 January 2025 was 2,417,433 people (Figure 1), which accounts for 26% of all immigrants.
After rapid growth in the earliest years of the present century, driven particularly by Romanians and Bulgarians, the 2008 financial crisis curtailed the arrival of European immigrants, only to see a modest recovery and climb once again starting in 2018, in a new influx, this time led by Ukrainians and Russians. Overall, their numbers have trebled over the course of the century, but the much greater increase in immigration from elsewhere (especially from Latin America) has caused their share of the whole, which reached as high as 39% in 2008, to decline. In any event, immigrants from the wealthy EU countries are the most likely to be under-recorded (many do not enrol either in the Foreigners’ Register or the Municipal Register), meaning that their real number may be considerably higher than that shown in the statistics. Such under-registration would basically affect those that are not part of the Spanish employment market. The spread of so-called ‘digital nomads’ in the wake of the pandemic –people who work in Spain for companies located elsewhere, or as freelancers– is a poorly understood and little-measured phenomenon, which is probably not caught by the official records.
Romanians are the largest nationality among European immigrants, with 521,000 residents, followed at some distance by British (281,584), French (219,791) and Ukrainian immigrants (209,592). Annex 1 displays data for all the European countries identified in the Annual Population Census, 2025.
The volume of Romanian and Bulgarian immigration has been in continuous decline over the last 14 years. The Romanian community once numbered as high as 750,000 people (2012), but the improvement of the economic outlook in Romania, the stalling of their prospects in Spain and the shortage of housing has led to 30% of them returning. The same has happened with Bulgarian immigration, which has dropped from 145,000 to 102,000 in the same period (30%). This reversion among the two dominant sources of EU immigration from countries with a lower per capita income than Spain’s is indicative of the strict limits on the opportunities Spain offers to this type of immigration.
Unlike the immigrant groups analysed in the previous parts of this series, European immigrants are extremely heterogeneous in terms of the average income levels in their home countries, a difference that affects all the other major components. Meanwhile, their age structure has a relatively weak weighting in the age group that dominates among all other immigrant communities, that of 20-44 years old, owing to the number of retired immigrants among those originating from high-income European countries (accounting for around 33% of the total for this group).
As far as gender is concerned, overall European immigration shows a slight female predominance of 52%, which is similar to the native population, although in the case of two of the main source countries, Ukraine and Russia, there is a notable imbalance, with 59% and 61% women, respectively. This skewing towards women has been a longstanding feature of Russian and Ukrainian migration into Spain, but has become more pronounced following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which paved the way to the departure of Ukrainian women and children (Ukrainian martial law prevents men aged 18-60 from leaving the country), granted refuge by the EU’s Temporary Protection Directive.
As far as their territorial distribution is concerned, the proportion of European immigrants in the total population exceeds 10% in the provinces of Alicante and Málaga (Figure 4), the favoured destinations of British and German pensioners, as well as the epicentres of the Russian and Ukrainian diasporas. In another five coastal provinces (Almería, the Balearic Islands, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Castellón and Gerona) European immigrants account for more than 7% of the total. These areas are all highly attractive to retirees and workers from Western Europe, with a buoyant employment market in the agrifoods sector and/or services occupied by Eastern European workers. On the other hand, unlike the situation among Latin American and Asian immigrants, their relative frequency in the provinces of Madrid and Barcelona is lower than their presence in Spain as a whole.
In absolute terms (in other words, not relative to the total population of each province) Madrid, Alicante and Barcelona have the greatest number of European residents. In Madrid the largest group is made up of Romanians: a third of all Romanian immigrants in Spain live in Madrid (111,000). In Barcelona, Italians take first place (35,000). In some coastal areas and the islands, the tendency of European immigrants from high per capita income countries to settle in specific areas has created their own employment niches, with jobs dedicated to providing all manner of services to such communities of Britons, Germans, etc., ranging from hospitality to maintenance services, gardening, estate agency, education, legal and leisure services, and so on.
European immigrants’ integration into the Spanish employment market
Based on the microdata of the Active Population Survey, the main features that characterise the mode and intensity of European immigrants’ integration into the Spanish employment market are identified here. The data relate to individuals aged 25-59, with the goal of excluding young people still in education, as well as adults already retired from the employment market, thereby constituting a group comparable to their native counterparts (defined as born in Spain to parents both of whom were also born in Spain), among whom employment activity is very low outside this age range.
The European immigration data are also compared with those of immigrants from the rest of the world,[1] and are broken down into four sub-groups that jointly account for 96% of the entire European population resident in Spain. Three criteria were used for this classification: the home country’s membership or otherwise of the EU; the country’s level of per capita income; and kinship with Spanish emigrants.
This classification enables separate consideration to be given to the offspring of former Spanish emigrants, born in other countries but subsequently ‘returning’ to Spain. Meanwhile, membership or otherwise of the EU is a key factor in the migration process because it determines the freedom of movement and therefore the context in which potential migrants take their decisions. Lastly, the level of income in the home country is a factor that motivates one type of migration or another, both in terms of its volume and its parameters of age, training and orientation towards specific sectors. The latter criterion enables immigrants from the EU’s ‘wealthy’ countries (France, Germany, Italy…) to be differentiated from those from Romania, Bulgaria and other EU countries with lower per capita incomes than Spain’s.
Data based on the Municipal Registry do not reveal parents’ origins, meaning that it is not possible to use this source to identify the offspring of Spanish emigrants who now live in Spain. The EPA, on the other hand, does permit such a differentiation, which here is conducted for the whole of the European immigrant population aged 25-59:
- Immigrants from EU countries with lower per capita incomes than Spain’s (‘EU LICs’, Low Income Countries), a group essentially comprising Romanians and Bulgarians, with smaller contributions from Portuguese, Polish, Hungarian, etc, immigrants. This is the largest group, with 739,000 people aged 25-59.
- Immigrants from EU countries with higher per capita incomes than Spain’s, with both parents born abroad (henceforth ‘EU HICs’, High Income Countries,). This group also includes British immigrants, given that their country belonged to the EU when a large proportion of them migrated to Spain and the post-Brexit agreements sealed by Spain and the UK bestow a privileged status on such immigrants compared with other non-EU immigrants. They make up 306,000 people aged 25-59.
- Immigrants from non-EU low per capita income countries (‘Non-EU LICs’, now mostly comprising Ukrainians and Russians): 279,000 people aged 25-59.
- Immigrants from EU countries with higher per capita incomes than Spain’s, with at least one parent born in Spain (henceforth ‘EU HIC immigrants of Spanish origin’): 147,000 people aged 25-59.
The details of these categories are set out in Annex 2. This classification excludes 4% of all European immigrants in Spain, namely those who come from high per capita income countries that are not part of the EU, such as Switzerland, Norway, Andorra and Liechtenstein. Given their minimal size in the Municipal Register and in the EPA sample, they have been left out of the analysis.
A preeminent factor determining immigrants’ integration into the employment market is their educational attainment level, an area in which European immigrants aged 25-59 are better positioned than any other of the main communities present in Spain, whether foreigners or natives (Figure 5). However, the differences between the European sub-groups are remarkable: the percentage of EU HIC immigrants who have completed higher education is 10 percentage points higher than their counterparts with at least one Spanish parent (which is in turn identical to the percentage of native Spaniards), and almost three times greater than EU LIC immigrants. Also notable is the high educational attainment level of the non-EU LIC immigrants, especially in the case of the Russians. In all groups there is an educational gulf in favour of women, although this is greater in the case of non-EU European female immigrants: 52% of such women have completed higher education compared to 38% of their male counterparts.
In terms of activity and employment rates,[2] the data for all European immigrants aged 25-59 reveal figures somewhat lower than for their native counterparts (Figure 6). Particularly noteworthy here is the high activity rate among EU immigrants from wealthy countries: the French, Italians, Britons, Germans, Belgians, etc, who reside in Spain and are aged 25-59 are as much ‘economic migrants’ as the Latin Americans in the same age range. As pointed out, a peculiarity of this group continues to be the high percentage of people who exceed this age range (33%) and who therefore may be deemed as being mostly removed from the employment market.
In contrast to their high educational attainments, non-EU LIC immigrants (predominantly Russians and Ukrainians) have a notably low rate of involvement in the labour market. In this group there is both a low rate of female participation in the labour market (low activity) and a marked skewing towards women: 60% of this population is female. Among Russian women the activity rate is only 65%, probably because many of them are people with high incomes who do not need a job or because they are engaged in activities that the EPA does not pick up. Meanwhile, many of the Ukrainian women resident in Spain are refugees who arrived in the wake of the Russian invasion in 2022, often caring for small children and generally unversed in the local language, something that has impeded their entry into the employment market.
The unemployment rate among immigrants from wealthy countries is lower than that among native Spaniards. However, that of EU immigrants from low-income countries is high, identical to that of non-EU immigrants (Figure 8). This suggests that having an EU passport is not an advantage in the Spanish employment market. Indeed, EU citizenship is a requirement only for acquiring a civil service job (access to the public sector under the heading of general public employees is open to any nationality).
The distribution of the sectors of activity where European immigrants work reveals a differentiated pattern depending on their origins. Immigrants descended from former Spanish emigrants are, as might be expected, most similar to their native counterparts in terms of their distribution by economic sector, with a somewhat higher presence in manufacturing industry. Practically all of them have Spanish nationality and their rate of employment in the civil service is similar to that of natives.
Meanwhile, among those from high per capita income countries (with no Spanish kinship) there is a notable involvement in the hospitality sector (related to their clustering on the coasts) and professional, scientific and technical activities. In the former, their percentage is three times greater than their native counterparts and in the latter it is twice as great. Involvement in education is also somewhat greater than among natives (in the private sector), at 10%. However, despite the holding of an EU passport theoretically opening the doors to the civil service, their presence there is extremely low: workers in this group do not account for even 1% of those employed by the public administration. Language and the educational content received in their home countries are likely to be the main stumbling blocks making it difficult for such immigrants to enter the Spanish civil service.
Among those coming from lower per capita incomes than Spain’s, whether EU nationals or otherwise, there is a notable presence in construction, hospitality and domestic service, with percentages significantly higher than those of native Spaniards in all three cases. Only EU nationals however (Romanians, Bulgarians, etc) have a high presence in agriculture and transport.
Although the whole of European immigration accounts for 6.3% of total employment in Spain, in three sectors they make up more than 10% of the workforce: hospitality, domestic activities and real estate activities (Figure 10). The European presence is especially high in the case of the latter: they hold 16% of the jobs in the estate agency sector, and the share of non-EU immigrants (essentially Russians in this case) is similar to that of Europeans from wealthy countries.
At the other extreme, the sector where European workers hold the smallest share of jobs is the Public Administration, Defence and Social Security, where their numbers are made up almost exclusively of immigrants with at least one Spanish parent, especially those born in France and Switzerland.
As far as their professional situation in Spain is concerned, the overall distribution of European workers aged 25-59 bears the closest similarity to that of their native counterparts, with major internal differences (Figure 11).
The offspring of Spaniards are employed in the public sector (both as general contracted employees and as civil servants) in the same proportion as native Spaniards: one in five, or 20%, work in this sector. Excluding such descendants of Spaniards, all other European immigrants, especially those from wealthy countries, tend to be self-employed and entrepreneurs more frequently than their native counterparts. Indeed, three out of 10 European immigrants from wealthy countries are self-employed or entrepreneurs, compared to 1.3 in the case of native Spaniards. Working as self-employed and as entrepreneurs is also relatively common among Russians and Ukrainians (2.2 out of 10).
European immigrants’ overall presence in ‘white collar’ occupations is similar to that of native Spaniards (Figure 12), with major internal differences. Thus, among EU HIC immigrants, 51% are employed in the three highest occupational categories, 9 percentage points above native Spaniards (42%), whereas the percentage falls to 17% in the case of EU LIC immigrants, considerably lower than native Spaniards. 10% of EU HIC immigrants are directors and managers, double the percentage of native Spaniards.
For their part, the twofold nature of non-EU LIC immigrants emerges in this section owing to the differences in position of Russian and Ukrainian immigrants, the two major sources of migration in this group. High-ranking jobs abound among the Russians, whereas people performing basic roles are highly frequent among the Ukrainians. The average data for the entire group conceal these differences.
With regard to earnings, the statistics published by the Social Security Administration (TGSS)[3] for average taxable income include data relating to citizens of the 27 EU member states as well as from the UK and Ukraine. The data classify people by their nationality rather than their country of birth or their parents, eliminating the possibility of reproducing the same type of analysis that was conducted on the basis of the EPA.
The data show that European immigrants’ earnings are markedly higher than Spaniards’ in the case of the French, Germans, Swedish, Dutch, Belgians and Irish, slightly higher in the case of Italians, Portuguese, Hungarians, Britons and Poles, and lower in the case of Lithuanians, Romanians, Bulgarians and Ukrainians (the TGSS offers no data about Russians).
The case of the Poles, Portuguese and Hungarians is particularly remarkable, with per capita incomes lower than Spain’s in their home countries, but higher earnings than Spaniards in Spain, which suggests that the type of inbound immigration into Spain from these countries is specifically of the well-qualified variety. The inverse situation pertains in the case of Lithuania, with a per capita income that is currently higher than Spain’s, but with immigrants who earn lower salaries in Spain.
An earnings gap in favour of men is observable in all the nationalities, albeit with significant differences: whereas female Lithuanians’ taxable income is 10% lower than their male counterparts, the difference in the case of Ukrainian women is 24%, which confirms the already-mentioned employment difficulties that many Ukrainian women have encountered in Spain in the wake of the Russian invasion.
As in the previous papers, attention has been paid to the school drop-out rate among youngsters aged 16-20 in this group of immigrants. Overall, this shows a school drop-out rate of 23%, an intermediate percentage that is closer to that of native youngsters (15%) than those who come from Latin America and Africa (34% and 35%, respectively), but also with the peculiarity of having a higher female than male drop-out rate (Figure 14). And although the EPA sample of Europeans in this age range is too small to determine significant differences between the four sub-groups scrutinised here, there are signs of a greater school drop-out rate among EU LIC youngsters.
Conclusions
Spain has become a powerful magnet for immigrants from other European countries, whether or not they are EU member states. In a border-free European space that facilitates movement of all kinds, Spain offers attractive living conditions and specific employment niches that have attracted some two and a half million people, 26% of all immigrants living in Spain. By comparison, Spanish emigrants living in other European countries are less than half as numerous, at around 1,164,000. This figure probably underestimates the actual number of Spanish emigrants in Europe, but the same may be said about the number of European immigrants in Spain.
It is a much more heterogenous community than any of the others that have been scrutinised in this series of analyses: they include retirees living on the coasts and islands, Ukrainian refugees, Russians (many of whom are wealthy), executives and entrepreneurs from the UK and Germany, etc, less well-qualified Romanian and Bulgarian workers and the descendants of former Spanish emigrants. The differences are remarkable depending not only on their origins but also within each group: among the British, for example, there are many people holding directorships and entrepreneurial roles, but also retirees living on modest pensions, English teachers with low incomes and gardeners working in residential communities inhabited solely by their compatriots. Russians with large fortunes who invest in the coastal real estate market are a well-known phenomenon, but there are also many Russians doing jobs of all kinds. Among Ukrainian immigrants, the situation faced by those who have been settled longest is very different from that of refugee women who have arrived since 2022.
Such a variety of profiles and circumstances makes it difficult to draw general conclusions about this type of immigration as a whole. The important point is to highlight these internal differences and to emphasise that immigration from wealthy countries predominantly involves workers and is not an immigration of ‘retirees’. Another important phenomenon is a major regression among Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants, 30% in both cases, which constitutes a wake-up call regarding factors that limit people’s willingness to remain on Spanish soil: the restriction to certain occupational niches, the confinement to low salaries and the growing shortage of housing.
[1] As in the previous parts of this series, the term ‘Latin Americans’ includes in this analysis all those immigrants from the aforementioned geographical area whose home countries are identified in the EPA (with the exception of Puerto Rico), following the same criterion with respect to the ‘Africans’ and the ‘Asians’ (with the exception of Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Taiwan). In all cases the population being scrutinised is restricted to the 25-59 age range.
[2] The activity rate is defined as the percentage of the population in the age group concerned (in this case aged 25-59) that is in work or is looking for work, whereas the employment rate is defined as the percentage of the population in the age group concerned (in this case aged 25-59) that is in work. The unemployment rate is calculated using the total active population in this age range (not the total population in the age range).
[3] The Active Population Survey (EPA) does not include questions about earnings, hence reliance on the Social Security Administration’s average taxable income statistics, where individuals are classified by their nationality, not by their country of birth. The maximum taxable income threshold in 2025 was €4,909 per month, and therefore earnings higher than this figure are not included.
Annex 1. European immigrants living in Spain on 1 January 2025 by country of birth
Figure 15. Number of European immigrants living in Spain by country of birth, 1/I/2025
| Country of birth | Number of residents in Spain |
|---|---|
| Romania | 521,181 |
| UK | 281,584 |
| France | 219,791 |
| Ukraine | 209,592 |
| Germany | 180,264 |
| Italy | 164,380 |
| Russia | 141,438 |
| Bulgaria | 101,578 |
| Portugal | 96,773 |
| Netherlands | 62,007 |
| Switzerland | 60,164 |
| Belgium | 56,924 |
| Poland | 56,656 |
| Moldavia | 25,171 |
| Georgia | 23,510 |
| Sweden | 23,082 |
| Ireland | 20,959 |
| Lithuania | 15,677 |
| Armenia | 15,055 |
| Hungary | 13,770 |
| Finland | 11,684 |
| Norway | 10,774 |
| Belarus | 10,640 |
| Turkey | 10,435 |
| Denmark | 9,121 |
| Czech Republic | 9,077 |
| Austria | 8,043 |
| Albania | 7,585 |
| Serbia | 6,905 |
| Latvia | 6,899 |
| Andorra | 6,719 |
| Slovakia | 6,394 |
| Greece | 6,035 |
| Other non-EU countries | 5,998 |
| Other EU countries | 5,361 |
| Estonia | 3,433 |
| Croatia | 2,774 |
Annex 2. Grouping of European immigrants aged 25-59 based on the EPA microdata
The four groups identified are composed as follows:
- ‘EU LIC’ (Low-Income Countries) immigrants: 739,000 people aged 25-59 born in EU countries with per capita incomes lower than Spain’s, with both parents born abroad. They represent 50% of all European immigrants in this age group. This group is made up of people born in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, the Czech Republic and Romania. Some of these countries have recently overtaken Spain’s per capita income (such as Lithuania and Slovenia) but have been below it for the bulk of the time that the migratory inflows into Spain have taken place (between 1990 and the present day).
- ‘EU HIC’ (High-Income Countries) immigrants: 306,000 people aged 25-59 born in EU countries with per capita incomes higher than Spain’s, with both parents born abroad. They represent 21% of all European immigrants in this age group. This group is made up of people born in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the UK and Sweden.
- ‘Non-EU LIC’ immigrants: 279,282 people aged 25-59 born in non-EU countries in Eastern Europe, with per capita incomes lower than Spain’s, with both parents born abroad. They represent 19% of all European immigrants in this age group. This group is made up of people born in Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldavia, Russia, Serbia, Turkey and Ukraine.
- ‘EU HIC immigrants of Spanish origin’: 146,533 people aged 25-59 born in EU or former EU countries, with per capita incomes higher than Spain’s, with at least one parent born in Spain. They represent 10% of all European immigrants in this age group. The birth countries of this group are the same as the ‘EU HIC’ group.
This classification excludes immigrants from wealthy non-EU countries (Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Andorra, Norway…), which account for 4% of all European immigrants in Spain aged 25-59.
