steviedeluxe

Certainly not Brits - they only squeeze in 4th place!

For me the biggest surprise there is not the Rumanians (I noticed plenty in Madrid when I worked there) but the Italians!

michaleen oge

have a look waaaaaaaaayy down the survey and you will find us azbekistanis in 896th place. not bad eh?? when i bring my wifes and childrens we should move to 700th or thereabouts...surveys eh??

elspeth sinclair

Morocco has topped the list for years and recently the UK were 2nd until Ecuador pushed them down to third but Romania surprises me if we're talking legal immigrants because they were always the biggest illegal group along with Ecuador. I always knew more illegal Brits than legal ones when I lived in Oliva so I wouldn't be surprised if in real numbers we're nearer the top. I have never met an Italian in Spain not even in an ice-cream parlour.

Dick Dasterdly

Biggest surprise there for me is the Brits.

Despite the collapsed pound and all the horror stories in the media,..still showing an increase in numbers,...which is probably a little good news for Spain,amongst all the gloom and doom.

cricketman

There were loads of young Italians in Barcelona working as waiters and barman.

I've met loads of Romanians in Spain also, as has been mentioned before, Romanian is a similar language to Spanish.

I'm surprised that Argentina isnt in that list. Every 3rd person I meet seems to be Argentinian!

elspeth sinclair

You only get on the list if you are registered. I know two architects now working in Valencia as draughtsmen and they said that most of the Argentinians who came over after their banks crashed had families in Spain and got dual nationality. The others are from rich families doing Spain as the Victorians did Europe. I expect they are all in Madrid living it up.

Lenox

As Eslpeth says, you are only on this list if you are registered. The figures come from the Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas and are fed to them by the town halls 'padrón' list. This is reasonably accurate for the Spanish as it is natural to register and de/re register when one moves from one town to another, but many foreigners don't register (contrast the difference between the 387,000 Brits and the the Foreign Office figure of 1 million Brits) and they don't 'de-register' when they leave Spain or return to their own country - as a lot of Romanians have in the crisis. ("Rumania 829,715 +30,823..." I don't think so!!)
How many foreigners are there here? The Europeans clearly come and go and, unless they are working, can easily skip any registration.

Nige

Romanians have freedom of work & residence etc in Spain having acceded to the EEC in 2007 and they were already a growing mass of residents thanks to the commonality of language - see Unión Latina http://www.unilat.org - so it makes sense that they have a growing population.