Canary Islands population reaches 2.2 million

[TamaraEnLaPlaya]

Noticias:

The Canary Islands now have more than 2.2 million inhabitants.

The increase in population in the archipelago, especially of the foreign population, seems very worrying for the survival of the island's way of life

The population in the Canary Islands grew by 1.2% at the end of 2023, to 2,213,016 inhabitants, which is 27,409 more than in the previous year, which closed with 2,185,607 residents.



This increase is mainly due to the increase in people from abroad, 7.5%, from 292,401 people in 2022 to 314,523 in 2023, 22,122 more according to the Continuous Population Statistics of the National Institute of Statistics (INE).


The population in Spain increased in the last year by 507,548 inhabitants, 1.06%, to reach 48,592,909 inhabitants, reaching its highest value in the historical series. This increase has been almost entirely due to the increase in arrivals from other countries. The percentage of migrants residing in Spain in 2023 (13.4%) has broken records. It grew in all regions except Andalusia and Extremadura.



In the last three months of 2023, the resident population in Spain increased by 85,870 people, confirming the upward trend of the last six quarters growing at year-on-year rates of more than 1%.



Spain's population growth was almost entirely due to the increase in foreign-born people. This population of 8,775,213 people was larger than that of foreign nationality, due to the processes of acquisition of Spanish nationality.



NATIONALITIES



The number of foreigners increased by 72,504 people during the quarter, to 6,491,502, and now represents 13.4% of foreigners in Spain compared to 4.2% in the country in 2002. The population of Spanish nationality rose by 13,366 people.



Regarding external migration, the main nationalities of immigrants during the quarter of 2023 were Colombian (with 42,600 arrivals in Spain), Venezuelan (27,300) and Moroccan (25,800). They are followed by Peru (17,200), Italy (9,600), Argentina (7,900), Honduras (7,000), Ecuador (6,200) and Romania (5,700 arrivals).

[TamaraEnLaPlaya]

Noticias:

90% of the 49,000 inhabitants of Fuerteventura in 1994 today would be foreigners.

The moratorium stopped hotels, but the holiday boom continues to consume the rustic development at a forced pace



NEWSROOMFUERTEVENTURA


The number of people living in the Canary Islands has not stopped growing, but there are two islands in particular that stand out for the increase in inhabitants they have experienced and those are Lanzarote and Fuerteventura".



30 years ago 49,020 people lived in Fuerteventura, today on the island 39,200 people are foreigners (those who are registered, of course). The island of Fuerteventura has 126,864 inhabitants according to the latest data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE) as of January 1, 2024. Of this number, more than 30% are resident aliens. We don't even talk about the percentage of foreigners versus those born on the island.



Soil consumption



Coupled with population growth is a new economic paradigm on the islands. The new business model that has come to stay in the Canary Islands is not a model of industrial development of tourism, it is a model of development of income generation. These are rentiers who invest in holiday homes. These are investments in fixed assets, home purchases and economic development of the rents that housing provides to new or old large landlords.



Buying a plot of land, urbanizing three villas (or fourteen), putting them on vacation means for the owner an almost immediate amortization and the achievement of a level of income unparalleled in average investments, but for society it means a burden in the loss of land and above all in the change of development model.

This model does not generate employment, but it does generate handouts and spending capacity from municipalities that get huge dividends at the expense of granting licenses and more licenses. The battle for territory is lost at times, especially when it began years ago with a moratorium on tourist beds. Beds have slipped through the back door and no one seems to want to stop it.



On the other hand, the excessive growth of rural areas in this new brick fever does not see the infrastructures improved, there are no new sanitation networks and there is no land for actions in recreational areas for the citizen. Public infrastructure is conspicuous by its absence.



The Canary Islands have 545,344 tourist accommodation places, of which 36% are holiday homes and rising


The Canary Islands have 545,344 tourist accommodation places --including hotels, apartments and holiday homes--, of which 36 per cent of the accommodation supply corresponds to holiday homes compared to 18 per cent of apartments, according to the report 'Distribution and concentration of tourist accommodation in the Canary Islands' prepared by the archipelago's Tourism Observatory.



According to the report presented, in December 2023 there were 200,000 holiday home beds in the Canary Islands. The figures recorded in October last year indicated the existence of 28,560 owners, of which 71% were natural persons and 28% legal persons.



Holiday homes have doubled since 2017


In the presentation of this report, prepared by the Tourism Observatory of the Canary Islands in collaboration with the two public universities on the island, the Minister of Tourism and Employment, Jéssica de León, said that from 2017 until yesterday, the number of holiday homes registered in the archipelago has doubled, from 25,000 to nearly 50,000.



The director of the CajaCanarias-Ashotel Chair of Tourism at the University of La Laguna, Raúl Hernández, stated last December that "in the Canary Islands there are 8 holiday homes for every 100 inhabitants, although this figure increases in Fuerteventura, 21 places per 100 inhabitants; in Yaiza with 62 places per 100 inhabitants and El Cotillo with 104 holiday home places per 100 inhabitants". There are more holiday beds than inhabitants.





In this sense, and according to AtlanticoHoy, "the lack of a bed for so many people is perhaps becoming more real than we would like. And no, in this case we are not talking about hotel beds, but about the population itself." The rentier business leaves a hyperinflationary real estate market for the average citizen.



The progression of foreign arrivals is unstoppable



The number of people who fattened the census in 2022 to the island was 6,434 people, according to the National Institute of Statistics, understanding that they are not all those who are, since a very high percentage are people who are arriving from Latin America with a tourist visa and it takes time to regularize. In any case, the progression is geometric and this past 2023 the numbers are even bigger.



According to sources from organizations that help immigrants (by plane), the situation is becoming a real bombshell, "since these people do not get work permits until four or five years of residing on the island, while they work in the black, without paying contributions. In precarious, but using all the services, so the action-inaction of the administration increasingly impoverishes the island's society



Foreigners from the European Union



According to the latest foreign immigration data from the INE for 2022, 6,434 foreigners changed their residence and settled in Fuerteventura. Most of them come from European Union countries - such as Italy, the United Kingdom or Germany - a total of 3,318 people, while the rest are from Africa (597), North America (30), Central America and the Caribbean (287), South America (1,643), Asia (124), Oceania (2) and stateless people (2).