Data report
How Catalonia changed, 2007 to 2022
Published 30 July 2026
Catalonia gained 580,047 residents in 15 years, and the share born here barely moved. The two largest shifts are not about arrivals from abroad at all: 380,593 fewer residents born elsewhere in Spain, and almost exactly as many more born in Catalonia. This report tracks every origin group across sixteen editions of the population register.
Sixteen editions, one balanced panel
Idescat's municipal population register (PMH) publishes residents by country of birth once a year. We have 16 consecutive editions, 2007 to 2022, which makes country of birth the only indicator on this site with real time depth. Everything else here is a snapshot, a point we return to at the end.
Over that span Catalonia went from 7,198,136 residents to 7,778,183, a gain of 580,047. The figures below are sums of comarca counts, never averages of comarca percentages, which would let a comarca of four thousand people weigh as much as Barcelonès.
The panel is held constant at 41 of Catalonia's 43 comarques, because a year must never appear to move because a place entered or left the sample. That constant panel is what makes the 15 year comparison meaningful.
- Rest of Spain15.2%
- Latin America9.2%
- Maghreb3.5%
- South Asia1.3%
- Eastern Europe2.4%
- East Asia1.0%
The two biggest movements are both domestic
Rank every origin group by how many residents it gained or lost and the top two are not about arrivals from abroad at all. Residents born elsewhere in Spain fell by 380,593, from 21.71% of the population to 15.20%, a change of −6.51 percentage points. Residents born in Catalonia rose by 377,441. The largest movement involving anyone born outside Spain, Latin America, is a distant third at 273,358.
A falling total does not tell you why it fell. The register counts residents at a moment, not moves, so this figure combines deaths, departures and new arrivals into one number and cannot separate them. The likeliest main driver is age: the internal migration from the rest of Spain peaked between the 1950s and the 1970s, so that group is now old. Arrivals from the rest of Spain have not stopped, and some residents do return; neither is visible here. What the figure establishes is the size of the change, not its mechanism.
The two nearly cancel, to within about 3,152 people. So the share of residents born in Catalonia went from 63.49% to 63.61%, a move of +0.12 points across 15 years, which is as close to flat as this dataset gets. A reader who assumed the born-here share had collapsed would be reading a real change in the composition of the rest, not a change in that share.
| Region of birth | Residents 2007 | Residents 2022 | Change | % 2007 | % 2022 | Change in points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rest of Spain | 1,562,974 | 1,182,381 | −380,593 | 21.71 | 15.20 | −6.51 |
| Latin America | 439,275 | 712,633 | +273,358 | 6.10 | 9.16 | +3.06 |
| Maghreb | 192,580 | 268,943 | +76,363 | 2.68 | 3.46 | +0.78 |
| South Asia | 40,134 | 100,655 | +60,521 | 0.56 | 1.29 | +0.74 |
| Eastern Europe | 127,875 | 185,936 | +58,061 | 1.78 | 2.39 | +0.61 |
| East Asia | 46,732 | 78,707 | +31,975 | 0.65 | 1.01 | +0.36 |
| West Africa | 44,516 | 76,116 | +31,600 | 0.62 | 0.98 | +0.36 |
| Western Europe | 153,629 | 182,727 | +29,098 | 2.13 | 2.35 | +0.21 |
| Catalonia | 4,570,186 | 4,947,627 | +377,441 | 63.49 | 63.61 | +0.12 |
| Central and west Asia | 4,961 | 14,198 | +9,237 | 0.07 | 0.18 | +0.11 |
| North America | 7,058 | 14,345 | +7,287 | 0.10 | 0.18 | +0.09 |
| Rest of Africa | 6,668 | 10,718 | +4,050 | 0.09 | 0.14 | +0.05 |
| Oceania | 881 | 1,797 | +916 | 0.01 | 0.02 | +0.01 |
Where the growth came from
Residents born outside Spain went from 14.80% of the population to 21.19%, +6.39 points and 583,199 people. That increase is not spread evenly across origins, and it is not distributed the way public argument usually assumes.
Latin America alone accounts for 46.9% of it: 273,358 more residents, taking the group from 6.10% to 9.16% of Catalonia. That is the single largest source of population growth from outside Spain, by a wide margin, and the share of foreign born residents ranking is dominated by it.
Second is the Maghreb, at 13.1% of the increase. South Asia grew fastest in proportional terms, from 0.56% to 1.29%. Eastern Europe, often assumed to be a continuing flow, has been effectively flat since 2008.
The Maghreb born share rose, then stalled, then resumed
Because it is asked about more than any other group, it is worth following in full rather than by its endpoints. Residents born in the Maghreb were 2.68% of Catalonia in 2007 and 3.46% in 2022, so the endpoint answer is that the share rose by +0.78 points.
The endpoints hide the only structural feature in the series. The share peaked at 3.03% in 2012, then fell for three consecutive years to 2.92% in 2015, a drop of 0.10 points, before resuming. The financial crisis is the obvious candidate, and the same years show up in other origin series, but this dataset counts residents and cannot attribute a cause.
Two limits matter more than the numbers. Birthplace is not ethnicity, nationality or religion, and many of these residents hold Spanish citizenship. More importantly, birthplace cannot see the second generation at all: a child born in Barcelona to Moroccan parents is counted as born in Catalonia. That gap is exactly why this site also carries a given name origin measure, which reads a family tradition rather than a birthplace, and why neither indicator should be read alone.
Sources: Idescat municipal population register (PMH), residents by country of birth, 2007 to 2022, aggregated from comarca counts over a constant panel of 41 comarques (Moianès has no continuous series and is excluded; Lluçanès, created in 2023, has none at all). Every figure in this article is computed from the same data that powers the rest of the site and is recalculated when that data is refreshed. Country of birth is not nationality, ethnicity or religion, and does not capture the second generation.