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Demographics

The British in Spain 2026: A municipal atlas of the UK diaspora after five years of Brexit

Published August 2026 · MyCasa Spain Research

Key findings

  1. 266,462 UK nationals were registered as residents in Spain on 1 January 2025, down 2.2% on the 272,402 recorded a year earlier — the latest official count published by Spain's Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE).
  2. 382,474 UK nationals held a valid EU registration certificate or Withdrawal Agreement residence card on 31 December 2025, according to the Observatorio Permanente de la Inmigración — a difference of roughly 116,000 people against the census count.
  3. The British population of Spain peaked at 316,362 in 2013. The 2025 figure is around 16% below that peak, and the decline began three years before the Brexit referendum.
  4. Britons are now the sixth-largest foreign nationality in Spain, accounting for 3.9% of all foreign residents — down from 4.2% two years earlier.
  5. Málaga province holds 49,298 British residents, still the largest single foreign nationality there, but the count fell by 1,531 in one year — the second consecutive annual decline.
  6. Alicante province holds more than 68,000 British residents, the largest concentration on the Costa Blanca and the second-largest of any Spanish province.
  7. In the Balearic Islands, Britons have fallen to fifth place (18,722), behind Colombians, Argentines, Moroccans and Germans. In 2000 they were second, with 10,686.
  8. Torrevieja is no longer a British town. UK nationals numbered 4,671 in the town's own register in spring 2026 — fourth behind Ukrainians (10,787), Colombians (5,892) and Russians (5,834).
  9. 250,713 Withdrawal Agreement residence documents were granted to UK nationals and their family members between July 2020 and December 2025, from more than 280,000 applications — an 89% grant rate. Spain closed the statistic in March 2026.
  10. A Briton arriving in 2026 with no pre-Brexit rights must prove €28,800 a year of passive income for a non-lucrative residence permit, plus €7,200 for each dependent.

Executive summary

Every January, British newspapers publish a version of the same story: how many Britons are left in Spain, and did Brexit drive them out. The story is usually built on one number, and the number is usually wrong — not because the source is bad, but because there are at least three legitimate answers and they differ by more than 100,000 people.

This report reconciles them. Spain's annual population census counted 266,462 people of British nationality resident in the country on 1 January 2025. Spain's immigration observatory counted 382,474 UK nationals holding a valid residence document on 31 December 2025. Both are official. Both are correct. They measure different things, and the space between them is where most of the confusion about "how many Brits live in Spain" lives.

The trend beneath the numbers is clearer than the levels. The British population of Spain peaked in 2013 at 316,362 and has fallen in most years since — a decline that started with the euro-zone crisis, not with Brexit. What Brexit changed was the composition and the friction: it stopped the casual, low-cost inflow of new arrivals, converted an administrative formality into a visa process with an income threshold, and left a large legacy population whose rights are secure but whose paperwork is not always in order.

Geographically, the diaspora is more concentrated than any other large foreign community in Spain. Andalucía and the Comunitat Valenciana together account for roughly six in ten British residents; Málaga province alone holds around 49,300 and Alicante province more than 68,000. But within those provinces the map has shifted. Málaga's British count has now fallen for two consecutive years while Moroccan, Italian, Colombian and Paraguayan numbers rise. In the Balearics, Britons have dropped from second place to fifth in twenty-five years. In Torrevieja — the town British journalism reaches for whenever it needs a shorthand — UK nationals are now the fourth-largest foreign group, well behind Ukrainians.

One methodological caveat runs through the whole report and deserves stating up front: INE discontinued the Estadística del Padrón Continuo and replaced it with the Censo Anual de Población. The last definitive padrón statistic refers to 1 January 2022. Anyone citing "the 2025 padrón" for a municipal breakdown by nationality is citing something that no longer exists as a published product. Where we could not verify a municipal figure from a primary source at a stated reference date, we say so rather than estimate.

Methodology

Time period covered. Long series 2002–2025 for national totals; 2024–2026 for regional, provincial and municipal detail; regulatory timeline 2016–2026.

Geographic granularity. National, autonomous community, province and — where verifiable — municipality. Sub-municipal detail (Orihuela Costa, Mijas Costa, Arroyo de la Miel) is discussed qualitatively only, because Spain does not publish nationality by census section in a form that can be cited without microdata processing.

Primary sources.

Definitions used throughout.

  • UK national / British resident: a person recorded with United Kingdom nationality. This excludes British-born people who have acquired Spanish nationality and excludes British-born people registered under another nationality.
  • Foreign-born: place of birth outside Spain, regardless of current nationality. Consistently larger than the nationality count.
  • Holder of a residence document: a person with a valid EU/EFTA registration certificate or a Withdrawal Agreement TIE on the reference date. This is a stock of live documents, not a headcount of people physically present.

Calculations and assumptions. All arithmetic performed on published figures is shown in the body of the report in a Note block. No figure has been interpolated, projected or estimated. Percentages are computed to one decimal place from unrounded inputs where both inputs are published.

Explicit limitations.

  1. There is no complete, current, publicly published municipal ranking of British residents in Spain. INE's municipal-by-nationality tables now sit inside the Censo Anual and require either interactive extraction or the microdata files; the previous padrón product that journalists relied on has been discontinued. This report publishes only municipal figures we could trace to a dated primary or official municipal release, and flags every one with its reference date. A full 30-municipality atlas is the natural next edition of this report and will require processing INE microdata directly.
  2. Registration on the padrón is voluntary in practice and de-registration on departure is rarer still. Both under- and over-counting are possible; the direction of the net error is not knowable from published data.
  3. DWP State Pension recipients resident in Spain are not published as a standing headline statistic; the figure requires a custom Stat-Xplore tabulation or a Freedom of Information request. We have not fabricated one.
  4. S1 healthcare form holders in Spain are likewise not published by the NHS Business Services Authority or the Spanish Ministry of Health in a citable series.
  5. The Censo Anual replaced the padrón statistic for reference dates from 2021 onwards. The series before and after that break are not strictly comparable and we mark the break in every table.

1. Three numbers, three definitions: how many Britons are actually in Spain

Ask three Spanish institutions how many Britons live in Spain and you get three defensible answers.

Measure Figure Reference date Source
People of UK nationality resident in Spain 266,462 1 January 2025 INE, Censo Anual de Población
UK nationals holding a valid EU registration certificate or Withdrawal Agreement TIE 382,474 31 December 2025 Ministerio de Inclusión, OPI
Withdrawal Agreement documents granted to UK nationals and family members (cumulative) 250,713 July 2020 – December 2025 Ministerio de Inclusión, OPI

Note: 382,474 − 266,462 = 116,012. The gap is not evidence of fraud or of a hidden population. Three mechanisms explain most of it. First, the OPI series counts live documents, and a registration certificate issued in 2009 does not expire and is not cancelled when its holder leaves Spain — Spain's own fact-checking press has noted that many Europeans holding valid certificates no longer live in the country. Second, the two dates are twelve months apart. Third, the census counts people who registered with a town hall; the OPI counts people who registered with the national police. A retiree who did the second and never bothered with the first appears in one and not the other.

The direction of the error is therefore not obvious, which is precisely why the popular numbers — "800,000 Britons in Spain", "over a million" — should be treated as advocacy figures rather than statistics. They are constructed by adding non-resident second-home owners, seasonal residents and long-stay visitors to the resident count, and no institution publishes them.

For journalistic purposes the defensible formulation is: around a quarter of a million Britons are registered as living in Spain; up to another 100,000-plus hold Spanish residence paperwork; an unknown further number own property and spend part of the year there without being resident at all.

CHART: Horizontal bar chart, three bars. Categories: "UK nationals in the census (1 Jan 2025)", "UK nationals with a valid residence document (31 Dec 2025)", "Withdrawal Agreement documents granted (cumulative to Dec 2025)". Values 266,462 / 382,474 / 250,713. Annotate the 116,012 gap between the first two bars.

Britons in the wider foreign population

Spain's population reached 49,128,297 on 1 January 2025, an increase of 508,602 in a year. Of that total, 6,911,971 held foreign nationality and 9,464,210 were born abroad. By 1 April 2026 the provisional quarterly estimate had the foreign-born population above ten million for the first time — 10,154,722, or 20.4% of the country — with 7,346,414 foreign nationals.

Against that backdrop, the British are a shrinking slice of a fast-growing whole. Britons are the sixth-largest foreign nationality in Spain, behind Moroccans (968,999) and Romanians (609,270) at the top of the table, and account for 3.9% of all foreign residents, down from 4.2% two years earlier. The absolute number fell; the denominator grew; the share fell twice as fast as the count.

2. The long series: from 104,846 to 266,462

The British presence in Spain is often narrated as a Brexit story. The data does not support that framing.

Reference date (1 January) UK nationals in Spain
2002 104,846
2004 163,953
2006 243,911
2008 302,457
2010 314,200
2012 312,959
2013 (peak) 316,362
2014 310,052
2016 296,408
2018 284,987
2019 286,753
2020 262,885
— methodological break: padrón statistic discontinued, Censo Anual begins —
2024 272,402
2025 266,462

Sources: INE Estadística del Padrón Continuo (2002–2020); INE Censo Anual de Población (2024–2025).

Three observations a journalist can use directly.

The decline predates the referendum by three years. The peak is 2013. Between 2013 and the June 2016 referendum the registered British population had already fallen by roughly 20,000. The drivers were the euro-zone crisis, the collapse in Spanish property values, sterling weakness and a wave of returns to the UK by working-age Britons who had come during the 2004–2008 construction boom.

Note: 316,362 (2013) − 296,408 (2016) = 19,954, a fall of 6.3% over three years, entirely before the referendum result.

Brexit produced a registration spike, not only an exodus. The trough in the series is 2020. In the following two years, tens of thousands of Britons who had lived in Spain informally for years — often for a decade or more — regularised their status in order to qualify under the Withdrawal Agreement before the 31 December 2020 cut-off. The count rose again. This is the single most misreported feature of the series: an apparent "increase in Britons moving to Spain" that was in fact existing residents becoming visible to the state.

The current phase is slow attrition. From 272,402 to 266,462 in a year is a fall of 5,940, or 2.2%. At that rate the community loses roughly one person in forty-five each year. Nothing in the published data suggests a cliff.

CHART: Line chart. X-axis: 2002–2025 (annual). Y-axis: UK nationals registered in Spain. Mark 2013 peak, the June 2016 referendum, the 31 December 2020 end of free movement, and a visible discontinuity marker at the 2021–2023 methodological break. Source: INE.

A caution on revisions. Different vintages of INE data give slightly different values for the same reference year — the 2014 figure has been published as both 310,052 and 300,286 depending on the release consulted. Anyone re-using this series should cite the release date as well as the reference date.

3. Where the British live: the regional map

The British are the most geographically concentrated of Spain's large foreign communities. Two autonomous communities hold about six in ten of them.

Autonomous community UK nationals Share of UK total
Andalucía 84,503 31.0%
Comunitat Valenciana 81,455 29.9%
Canarias 27,079 9.9%
Cataluña 22,861 8.4%
Illes Balears 18,889 6.9%
Región de Murcia 16,583 6.1%
Comunidad de Madrid 11,317 4.2%
Galicia 2,353 0.9%
País Vasco 1,537 0.6%
Asturias 1,077 0.4%
Aragón 992 0.4%
Castilla y León 991 0.4%
Castilla-La Mancha 956 0.4%
Spain total 272,402 100%

Source: INE, 1 January 2024. Shares calculated by MyCasa Spain Research; smaller communities omitted, so listed rows do not sum to the total.

Note: 84,503 + 81,455 = 165,958, which is 60.9% of 272,402. Adding the Balearics and Murcia brings the Mediterranean-coast share to 201,430, or 73.9% of all Britons in Spain.

Two points worth drawing out. First, the Canary Islands are the third-largest destination and are almost always missing from Costa-focused coverage — 27,079 Britons, more than the Balearics. Second, Madrid's 11,317 Britons are a completely different population: younger, working, largely corporate, and with almost no overlap with the retirement and second-home pattern that defines the coast.

CHART: Choropleth map of Spain by autonomous community, shaded by number of UK nationals. Overlay labels for the top six. Source: INE, 1 January 2024.

4. The municipal atlas — and its limits

This is the section British newspapers most want, and it is the section where honest sourcing is hardest.

What changed. Until 2022, INE published the Estadística del Padrón Continuo, which gave population by municipality, nationality, age and place of birth in downloadable tables. That operation has been discontinued and replaced by the Censo Anual de Población. The successor tables exist and go down to census-section level, but the municipality × nationality cross-tabulation is no longer a simple published download — it requires interactive extraction or the microdata files. The practical consequence is that most "most British town in Spain" rankings still circulating in the UK press rest on 2021 or 2022 padrón data, now four to five years old, during a period in which these municipalities changed faster than at any time since the 1990s.

What we can verify. The following table contains only figures we could trace to a dated official release. Reference dates differ and are stated for each row; these rows are not directly comparable with one another and should not be presented as a ranking.

Municipality Province UK nationals Reference date Source
Orihuela (incl. Orihuela Costa) Alicante 9,681 1 January 2024 Ayuntamiento de Orihuela, municipal register
Orihuela (incl. Orihuela Costa) Alicante 10,498 1 January 2022 Ayuntamiento de Orihuela, municipal register
Torrevieja Alicante 4,708 1 January 2025 Ayuntamiento de Torrevieja, municipal register
Torrevieja Alicante 4,671 May 2026 Ayuntamiento de Torrevieja, municipal register
Mijas Málaga 8,610 1 January 2021 INE, Padrón Continuo
Fuengirola Málaga 5,508 1 January 2021 INE, Padrón Continuo
Marbella Málaga 4,661 1 January 2021 INE, Padrón Continuo
Estepona Málaga 4,111 1 January 2021 INE, Padrón Continuo
Benalmádena Málaga 3,420 1 January 2021 INE, Padrón Continuo
Manilva Málaga 2,555 1 January 2021 INE, Padrón Continuo

What we will not do. We will not publish a "top 20 most British municipalities in Spain 2026" table, because the underlying figures for 2025 and 2026 are not available at municipal level from a public, citable source at a single reference date. Producing one would require either fabricating numbers or silently mixing five-year-old data with current data — which is exactly what most existing rankings do.

The one municipality where the story is unambiguous. Orihuela is the largest British municipality on the Spanish Mediterranean coast for which we have a current official figure: 9,681 UK nationals on 1 January 2024, the largest foreign nationality in a municipality of 85,674 people, of whom 32% are foreign and which counts 121 nationalities. The ayuntamiento's own release notes that the British population fell 7% in a single year, and attributes it to Brexit and to returns to the UK. Two years earlier the same register recorded 10,498 Britons.

Note: 10,498 (2022) → 9,681 (2024) is a fall of 817, or 7.8% over two years. Applying the same 7% annual rate would put Orihuela near 8,400 by January 2026 — but that is an extrapolation, not data, and we do not publish it as a finding.

The Torrevieja correction

Torrevieja is the town British journalism reaches for by reflex. The data says it should stop.

On 1 January 2025 the town's own register recorded 106,350 inhabitants, 52.09% of them foreign — 55,390 people from 123 countries. UK nationals numbered 4,708, in fourth place behind Ukraine (9,512), Russia (5,926) and Colombia (5,141). The ayuntamiento noted explicitly that Colombia had overtaken the United Kingdom for the first time.

By May 2026 the register had grown to 113,453 inhabitants, of whom 51,432 were Spanish. Ukrainians had risen to 10,787, Colombians to 5,892, Russians to 5,834 — and UK nationals stood at 4,671, fourth, followed by Morocco (3,743), Algeria (2,209), Sweden (1,993), Romania (1,784) and Belgium (1,646).

Torrevieja is now one of Spain's most internationally diverse municipalities, with roughly 120 nationalities represented — but it is a Ukrainian, Colombian and Russian town far more than a British one. The British presence in the Vega Baja is real and large; it is concentrated in Orihuela Costa, Rojales, Algorfa, San Fulgencio and Pilar de la Horadada, not in Torrevieja itself.

CHART: Grouped bar chart. Torrevieja's top eight foreign nationalities, two series: 1 January 2025 and May 2026. Source: Ayuntamiento de Torrevieja.

5. What Brexit changed: a timeline, 2016–2026

For readers who have followed this at close range, the sequence has been a decade of rolling deadlines. Set out end to end, it is easier to see what actually bites.

23 June 2016 — referendum. No immediate legal change. Registration of UK nationals in Spain rises over the following four years as residents seek to secure status.

31 January 2020 — UK leaves the EU. Transition period begins; free movement continues to 31 December 2020.

6 July 2020 — the TIE arrives. Spain introduces the Tarjeta de Identidad de Extranjero stamped with a Withdrawal Agreement reference for UK nationals. Britons who already held the green certificado de registro keep their rights.

31 December 2020 — end of free movement. The cut-off for Withdrawal Agreement protection. Anyone who can prove they were legally resident in Spain before this date retains rights broadly equivalent to those they had as EU citizens: residence, work, study, healthcare and the annual uprating of the UK State Pension. Anyone arriving afterwards is a third-country national.

1 January 2021 onwards — the 90/180 rule. Non-resident British second-home owners become limited to 90 days in any rolling 180-day period across the whole Schengen area. This is the single change with the widest practical effect on the British property-owning population, because it affects people who never intended to be residents at all.

1 May 2022 — driving licences. UK licences cease to be valid for residents of more than six months. A bilateral agreement on recognition and exchange follows on 16 March 2023. Today the rule is simple: a UK, Gibraltar, Jersey, Guernsey or Isle of Man licence may be used for six months; after that a resident must exchange it (UK and Gibraltar) or sit Spanish theory and practical tests (Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man). UK licences cannot be renewed from Spain.

December 2023 – March 2025 — the green certificate loses ground. Spain confirms that the old green certificado de registro remains legally valid, but the FCDO and the Spanish authorities both begin strongly recommending exchange for a TIE. In March 2025 the position hardens: the TIE is the only residence document listed in the Schengen Borders Handbook, and green certificate holders cannot use it to prove exemption from the EU's Entry/Exit System.

April 2025 — the golden visa route ends. The residence-by-investment route closes to new applicants, removing one of the two remaining low-friction paths for wealthier arrivals.

12 October 2025 — the Entry/Exit System begins. The EU starts the progressive rollout of the EES, with Spain beginning at Madrid-Barajas and extending to other airports, then land and sea borders.

10 April 2026 — the EES is fully operational. Passport stamping is replaced by a biometric record of each entry and exit across the 29 participating countries. Overstays under the 90/180 rule are now detected automatically rather than by a border officer counting stamps. British residents of Spain holding a biometric TIE are exempt from EES registration; green certificate holders are not.

30 June 2026 — the extraordinary regularisation window closes. Spain's regularisation scheme for migrants in an irregular situation ends. It was not designed for Britons but was open to some.

Expected in the second half of 2026 — ETIAS. The European Travel Information and Authorisation System will require visa-exempt third-country nationals, including Britons, to obtain an advance travel authorisation costing €7, valid for three years or until passport expiry. Residents of Spain will not need it. Second-home owners who are not residents will.

What a new British arrival faces in 2026

There is no longer a low-friction route. The two mainstream options:

Route 2026 financial requirement Notes
Non-lucrative residence permit (NLV) €28,800/year for the main applicant, plus €7,200/year per dependent 400% and 100% of the IPREM respectively. The IPREM has been frozen at €600/month since 2023 because no new national budget has been passed. All work — including remote work for a foreign employer — is prohibited.
Digital nomad visa €34,188/year 200% of the 2026 Spanish minimum wage. For remote workers with a foreign employer or foreign clients.

Note: A retired British couple therefore needs to evidence €28,800 + €7,200 = €36,000 a year, net, plus comprehensive private Spanish health insurance with no co-payments, a clean criminal record and a medical certificate. At the first renewal the figures must be evidenced for a two-year period, so the couple must show €72,000. A couple with one child needs €43,200 initially.

For context, that income threshold sits well above a full UK new State Pension for two people. The practical effect is that the post-Brexit British arrival in Spain is, on average, wealthier than the pre-Brexit one — and considerably rarer.

Regulations change. Everything in this section should be confirmed against the current text before you act on it. Residence and immigration rules in Spain sit in the Ley Orgánica 4/2000 and its implementing regulation, currently RD 1155/2024, and change more often than any summary can track. Confirm your position with a lawyer or a gestor before making a decision.

6. The document gap: green certificates, TIEs and the Entry/Exit System

This is the most actionable finding in the report, and it is not a number — it is a mismatch.

Spain issued the green A4 certificado de registro de ciudadano de la Unión to EU citizens for years, and to Britons until 2020. It has no photograph, no biometric chip and no expiry date. It remains a valid residence document under Spanish law and under the Withdrawal Agreement. But it is not the document the Schengen Borders Handbook lists, which means a border officer cannot use it to confirm that its holder is exempt from the EES.

The consequence, in the FCDO's own words: a green certificate holder must register with the EES like any tourist, and may be treated as a short-stay visitor subject to the 90/180 limit. In the worst case a long-standing resident could be recorded as an overstayer at their own border.

How many people does this affect? Spain does not publish the split between green certificates and TIEs for UK nationals. What we know:

  • 382,474 UK nationals held either a registration certificate or a Withdrawal Agreement TIE on 31 December 2025.
  • 199,469 Withdrawal Agreement TIEs were in force on the same date — but that figure covers all holders of that card type, including non-British family members.
  • 250,713 Withdrawal Agreement documents had been granted cumulatively between July 2020 and December 2025, from more than 280,000 applications.

Note: The cumulative grant figure (250,713) is larger than the stock in force (199,469) because cards expire, are replaced, are exchanged for permanent versions, or lapse when the holder leaves. The two are not subtractable, and we do not attempt to derive a green-certificate population from them. What can be said with confidence is that a substantial minority of the British residence-document population still holds the older certificate, and that Spain closed the Withdrawal Agreement application statistic in March 2026 on the grounds that the situation justifying it had ended.

If you hold a green certificate and live in Spain, the action is unambiguous and both governments agree on it: exchange it for a TIE.

Regional deep-dives

Costa del Sol — Málaga province

Málaga province had 1,791,183 residents on 1 January 2025, having added 16,482 people in a year, 77% of that growth from abroad. Foreign nationals numbered 341,229, or 19% of the province.

Britons remain the largest single foreign nationality at 49,298 — but the count fell by 1,531, the second consecutive annual decline. Meanwhile:

Nationality Málaga province, 1 Jan 2025 Annual change
United Kingdom 49,298 −1,531
Morocco 36,438 ≈ +4%
Italy 21,549 ≈ +6%
Colombia 18,973 ≈ +16%
Argentina 14,346 ≈ +7%
Paraguay 11,582 ≈ +14%
Germany 11,369 —
Romania 11,287 —
Venezuela 10,119 ≈ +13%

Source: INE Censo Anual de Población, 1 January 2025, as reported by The Olive Press, 4 December 2025.

Note: The British lead over Moroccans in Málaga province is 49,298 − 36,438 = 12,860. If Britons continue to lose ~1,500 a year and Moroccans continue to gain ~1,400, the gap closes in roughly four to five years. That is a linear extrapolation and should be read as a scenario, not a forecast.

Municipal detail for the province in 2025 is patchy in public releases, but three things are established. Marbella is the second-largest municipality in the province at 166,478 residents, growing 4.4% in a year and now holding more than 9% of the provincial population. Fuengirola shrank by 0.6% — the second-largest fall of any municipality in Spain — which matters here because Fuengirola has historically had one of the highest British and Nordic densities on the coast. Mijas, at 94,320 residents, remains the province's largest British concentration in absolute terms on the most recent verifiable municipal data.

The Costa del Sol is also where the British community is most visibly being diluted rather than displaced. Total foreign numbers are rising sharply; British numbers are drifting down. The result is that the British share of the "international" population in towns like Benalmádena and Estepona is falling faster than the British headcount.

CHART: Slope chart. Málaga province, top eight foreign nationalities, 1 January 2024 vs 1 January 2025, showing the UK line falling and the Colombian, Paraguayan and Moroccan lines rising steeply. Source: INE.

Costa Blanca — Alicante province

Alicante is the province with the highest proportion of foreign residents in Spain and the third-largest foreign population in absolute terms, after Madrid and Barcelona. Foreign residents were 23.3% of the province on 1 January 2024 and 24.3% on the provisional 1 January 2025 estimate.

The province closed 2025 with more than 2,075,000 inhabitants, having grown by 41,987 in a year, of which nearly 33,000 were foreign nationals — foreign growth running close to four times Spanish growth. Foreign nationals now exceed 530,000. By 1 July 2026 the foreign-born population reached a record 656,680, meaning almost one resident in three of Alicante province was born abroad.

Within that, British nationals exceed 68,000 — the largest single foreign nationality in the province and the largest provincial concentration of Britons anywhere in Spain.

Alicante is also the best place to observe the census-versus-permits gap, because local reporting has already done the arithmetic for other nationalities. Against roughly 250,000 non-EU nationals recorded by INE, the OPI counts around 178,000 with valid residence authorisation, excluding Britons and Ukrainians, who are treated separately. For Colombians the divergence is extreme: 51,224 in the census against 18,930 with permits. For Moroccans it is modest: 49,700 against 43,490.

The British case is the mirror image of the Colombian one. Colombians appear in the census but not in the permit data because many are asylum applicants whose status has lapsed. Britons appear in the permit data in numbers that exceed the census, because their documents outlive their residence.

The age structure of the province explains why the British presence matters more than its size suggests. Alicante already has more residents over 65 (429,235) than under 18 (381,371), and more people over 80 than children aged 0–4. The British are heavily weighted towards the older end of that distribution.

Municipally, the Costa Blanca British population is spread thinly across many small municipalities rather than concentrated in a few large ones — Alfaz del Pi, Rojales, Algorfa, San Fulgencio, Benitachell, Teulada-Moraira, Jávea/Xàbia, Dénia and Pilar de la Horadada — with Orihuela the single largest. This dispersion is exactly why a credible municipal atlas needs microdata rather than headline releases, and why so few exist.

Balearic Islands

The Balearics tell the sharpest version of the story, because the archipelago has a long enough series to show a complete reversal of rank.

Nationality Balearic Islands, 2000 Balearic Islands, 2024
Colombia 1,037 37,017
Argentina 4,562 35,600
Morocco 6,251 32,546
Germany 16,707 21,381
United Kingdom 10,686 18,722

Source: IBESTAT / INE, as reported by Ultima Hora, April and August 2025.

In 2000 the three largest foreign communities in the Balearics were German, British and French. In 2024 the top three are Colombian, Argentine and Moroccan, and Britons have fallen to fifth. The British count has risen in absolute terms over twenty-five years — from 10,686 to 18,722, an increase of 75% — but it has been overtaken by communities that grew far faster.

Note: 18,722 ÷ 10,686 = 1.75, i.e. +75.2% over 24 years, an average of 2.4% a year. Colombians over the same period went from 1,037 to 37,017 — a 35-fold increase.

Two nuances matter for anyone writing about Mallorca. First, the German community in the Balearics remains larger than the British one and always has been in the modern era; British coverage that treats Mallorca as a British island is describing Magaluf, not Mallorca. Second, the Balearics were the only autonomous community to lose population in the fourth quarter of 2025, a signal worth watching in the next annual census release.

Murcia, Almería and the rest of the arc

The Región de Murcia holds 16,583 British residents — a larger community than Madrid's, concentrated around Mazarrón, Los Alcázares and the Mar Menor. Almería's British population sits inside the Andalucían total and is concentrated around Mojácar, Vera and Albox, with a distinctive inland component almost absent elsewhere on the coast.

The Canary Islands, with 27,079 Britons, hold more than the Balearics and are systematically under-covered in mainland-focused reporting.

7. The age problem

The single most consequential feature of the British population in Spain is not its size but its age profile.

Britons make up around 3.9% of Spain's foreign residents overall, but roughly 14% of the foreign population aged over 65 — the largest single nationality in that age band. Research using INE register and census microdata puts the number of UK nationals aged 65 or over in Spain at 108,960 in 2024, against 92,120 in 2018 and 20,180 in 1998.

Note: 108,960 ÷ 272,402 = 40.0% of UK nationals in Spain were aged 65 or over in 2024. For comparison, 65+ residents are about 20% of Spain's population overall. This figure comes from an academic elaboration of INE microdata rather than from a headline INE table, and should be attributed as such.

The implications compound. An ageing, slowly shrinking, geographically dispersed population with a low rate of Spanish-language proficiency and no significant inflow of younger replacements produces a specific and growing set of needs: healthcare navigation, home adaptation, property maintenance by people who cannot easily climb a ladder or negotiate with a tradesperson in Spanish, and eventually estate and succession planning across two jurisdictions.

It also means the British population of Spain will fall for demographic reasons alone, independent of Brexit, sterling or the housing market. Mortality in a population that is 40% over 65 is not offset by a post-Brexit arrival rate constrained by a €28,800 income test.

What this means for foreign residents

If you hold a green certificate, exchange it for a TIE. This is the highest-value single action in this report. Your residence rights are not at risk, but your ability to prove them at a border is. Since the EES became fully operational on 10 April 2026, the green certificate is not accepted as proof of EES exemption, and green certificate holders must register with the system.

If you are a second-home owner rather than a resident, count your days. The 90/180 rule is now enforced automatically rather than by stamp-counting. The arithmetic that used to be forgiving is no longer forgiving. If you routinely spend five or six months a year at your Spanish property, you are either already non-compliant or you need a residence permit.

Check whether you are tax-resident before you decide you are not. Spending more than 183 days in Spain in a calendar year makes you Spanish tax-resident, with worldwide income reporting obligations and, above certain thresholds, a Modelo 720/721 filing on assets held abroad. This is a separate question from immigration status and catches a large number of British retirees who assume the two travel together. Take advice from a Spanish tax professional; this report is not tax advice.

Register on the padrón, even if you think it does not matter. Padrón registration is what unlocks the local health centre, school places, some IBI discounts, municipal transport concessions and — after three years of residence — the right to vote in Spanish local elections. Several Costa del Sol town halls now run campaigns specifically to stop foreign residents being struck off for failing to renew or confirm their registration, which happens automatically under INE rules. If you are struck off, you disappear from the count in this report and from your town's budget allocation at the same time.

Exchange your driving licence within six months. A UK licence is valid for six months of residence, cannot be renewed from Spain, and the exchange takes time to process. Apply before the six months are up, not after.

Plan the healthcare gap if you are retiring early. The S1 route funds your Spanish healthcare through the UK only once you are drawing a UK State Pension. Britons who move at 58 or 60 face a gap of several years in which they need private cover or the convenio especial. Budget for it before you move, not after.

Assume the paperwork will change again. ETIAS is expected in the second half of 2026. The IPREM has been frozen since 2023 and will rise whenever Spain passes a budget, taking the non-lucrative income threshold with it. Anyone planning a move on 2026 numbers should re-check them at the point of application.

Frequently asked questions

How many British people live in Spain in 2026? The most recent official count is 266,462 UK nationals registered as resident on 1 January 2025, published by INE. A separate official series counts 382,474 UK nationals holding a valid Spanish residence document on 31 December 2025. The difference is mostly expired situations and documents that were never cancelled. Claims of 800,000 or one million include non-resident property owners and are not official statistics.

Did Brexit cause the British population of Spain to fall? Only partly. The registered British population peaked at 316,362 in 2013 and had already fallen by nearly 20,000 before the 2016 referendum, driven by the euro-zone crisis and the Spanish property crash. Brexit changed the composition more than the level: it ended casual new arrivals and prompted many long-term informal residents to regularise, which briefly pushed the count back up in 2021–2022.

Which is the most British town in Spain? On current verifiable data, Orihuela in Alicante province, with 9,681 UK nationals on 1 January 2024 — the largest foreign nationality there. Torrevieja, often named in UK coverage, is not: British nationals were fourth in its 2026 municipal register, behind Ukrainians, Colombians and Russians. A definitive national ranking cannot presently be published from public sources because INE discontinued the padrón statistic that used to provide it.

Do I need to swap my green residency certificate for a TIE? Yes, in practical terms. The green certificate remains legally valid in Spain, but it is not listed in the Schengen Borders Handbook, so it cannot be used to prove exemption from the EU Entry/Exit System. Both the Spanish authorities and the UK FCDO strongly recommend exchanging it. Green certificate holders must register with the EES; TIE holders do not.

What does a British person need to move to Spain now? Unless you were legally resident before 31 December 2020, you need a visa. The main routes are the non-lucrative residence permit, requiring €28,800 a year of passive income for the main applicant plus €7,200 per dependent in 2026, and the digital nomad visa, requiring €34,188. Both require private Spanish health insurance, a clean criminal record and a medical certificate. The non-lucrative permit prohibits all work, including remote work for a foreign employer.

How long can I stay at my Spanish holiday home without becoming a resident? Ninety days in any rolling 180-day period, counted across the whole Schengen area, not just Spain. Since 10 April 2026 this is tracked automatically by the Entry/Exit System rather than by passport stamps. Separately, spending more than 183 days in Spain in a calendar year makes you Spanish tax-resident, which is a different threshold with different consequences.

Is the British State Pension still increased each year if I live in Spain? Yes. Under the Withdrawal Agreement, UK State Pensions paid to people resident in the EEA or Switzerland continue to be uprated annually. This is one of the rights the agreement specifically preserved and it does not depend on when you started claiming, provided you meet the qualifying conditions.

Where in Spain has the British population grown rather than shrunk? In absolute terms, the Balearic Islands: from 10,686 UK nationals in 2000 to 18,722 in 2024. But that growth was outpaced by other communities, and Britons fell from second place to fifth over the same period. On the mainland Mediterranean coast, the recent direction in both Málaga and Alicante provinces is flat to negative.

Why do different sources give such different numbers for the same year? Three reasons. Different definitions — nationality, place of birth, or holding a residence document. Different reference dates — INE reports as at 1 January, the immigration observatory as at the end of each quarter. And different vintages — INE revises figures, so the same reference year can appear with different values in successive releases. Always cite the release date as well as the reference date.

Is the padrón still the source for municipal population figures? Not as a statistical product. INE discontinued the Estadística del Padrón Continuo; the last definitive data refers to 1 January 2022. Official municipal population figures now come from the Censo Anual de Población, plus the annual revision of official municipal population figures. Town halls still maintain their own registers and publish their own figures, which is why municipal releases and INE releases for the same town can differ.

Sources

Ayuntamiento de Orihuela. (2025). El municipio de Orihuela alcanza los 85.674 habitantes empadronados. Retrieved 7 August 2026 from https://www.orihuela.es/el-municipio-de-orihuela-alcanza-los-85-674-habitantes-empadronados/

Ayuntamiento de Torrevieja. (2025). Torrevieja comienza 2025 con 106.350 habitantes empadronados. Retrieved 7 August 2026 from https://torrevieja.es/es/noticias/2025-01-07-torrevieja-comienza-2025-106350-habitantes-empadronados

European Commission, Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs. (2026). Entry/Exit System. Retrieved 7 August 2026 from https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/schengen/smart-borders/entry-exit-system_en

Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office. (2026). Living in Spain (updated 3 July 2026). Retrieved 7 August 2026 from https://www.gov.uk/guidance/living-in-spain

Instituto Nacional de Estadística. (2025). Censo Anual de Población. Primeros resultados 2025. Retrieved 7 August 2026 from https://www.ine.es/dyngs/Prensa/CensoVariables2025.htm

Instituto Nacional de Estadística. (2026). Censo Anual de Población — Últimos datos. Retrieved 7 August 2026 from https://www.ine.es/dyngs/INEbase/operacion.htm?c=Estadistica_C&cid=1254736176992&menu=ultiDatos&idp=1254735572981

Instituto Nacional de Estadística. (2026). Estadística Continua de Población, 1 de abril de 2026 (datos provisionales). Retrieved 7 August 2026 from https://www.ine.es/dyngs/Prensa/ECP1T26.htm

Instituto Nacional de Estadística. (2023). Estadística del Padrón Continuo — Últimos datos (discontinued operation; last definitive data 1 January 2022). Retrieved 7 August 2026 from https://www.ine.es/dyngs/INEbase/es/operacion.htm?c=Estadistica_C&cid=1254736177012&menu=ultiDatos&idp=1254734710990

Ministerio de Inclusión, Seguridad Social y Migraciones. (2026). La población extranjera con documentación de residencia en vigor alcanza los 7,5 millones en España y crece un 4,5% en el último año (20 March 2026). Retrieved 7 August 2026 from https://www.inclusion.gob.es/w/la-poblacion-extranjera-con-documentacion-de-residencia-en-vigor-alcanza-los-7-5-millones-en-espana-y-crece-un-4-5-en-el-ultimo-ano

Ministerio de Inclusión, Seguridad Social y Migraciones, Observatorio Permanente de la Inmigración. (2026). Personas británicas y sus familiares que han solicitado documento de Acuerdo de Retirada. Retrieved 7 August 2026 from https://www.inclusion.gob.es/web/opi/estadisticas/catalogo/tie_ar_reino_unido

Ministerio de Inclusión, Seguridad Social y Migraciones, Observatorio Permanente de la Inmigración. (2026). Personas extranjeras con documentación de residencia en vigor. Retrieved 7 August 2026 from https://www.inclusion.gob.es/web/opi/estadisticas/catalogo/stock_documentacion

Newtral. (2026). Las cifras de los permisos de residencia para extranjeros (3 April 2026). Retrieved 7 August 2026 from https://www.newtral.es/cifras-permisos-residencia-extranjeros/20260403/

The Olive Press. (2025). Are Brits falling out of love with Malaga province? New census data reveals sharp shifts in foreign numbers (4 December 2025). Retrieved 7 August 2026 from https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2025/12/04/brits-leaving-malaga-census-data/

The Olive Press. (2025). UK expats living in Spain fall by 2.2% as total population heads towards 50m (3 December 2025). Retrieved 7 August 2026 from https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2025/12/03/uk-expats-living-in-spain-fall-by-2-2-as-total-population-heads-towards-50m/

TodoAlicante. (2026). Over 70,000 foreigners in irregular situation in Alicante province (22 April 2026). Retrieved 7 August 2026 from https://www.todoalicante.es/english/over-70-000-foreigners-20260422060442-nt.html

TodoAlicante. (2026). La provincia de Alicante rebasa los 2.075.000 habitantes en 2025 aupada por la población extranjera (12 February 2026). Retrieved 7 August 2026 from https://www.todoalicante.es/sociedad/provincia-alicante-rebasa-2075000-habitantes-2025-aupada-20260212144207-nt.html

TodoAlicante. (2026). Alicante rebasa las 655.000 personas nacidas en el extranjero y alcanza nuevo récord de población (6 August 2026). Retrieved 7 August 2026 from https://www.todoalicante.es/english/alicante-foreign-born-population-20260806110838-nt.html

Ultima Hora. (2025). Baleares recibe 300.000 residentes extranjeros en 25 años (8 April 2025). Retrieved 7 August 2026 from https://www.ultimahora.es/noticias/local/2025/04/08/2362513/baleares-recibe-300000-residentes-extranjeros-anos.html

Ultima Hora. (2025). El 95% de los nuevos residentes en las Islas ha nacido en un país extranjero (8 August 2025). Retrieved 7 August 2026 from https://www.ultimahora.es/noticias/local/2025/08/08/2445795/nuevos-residentes-islas-nacido-pais-extranjero.html

How to cite this report

MyCasa Spain Research. (2026). The British in Spain 2026: A municipal atlas of the UK diaspora after five years of Brexit. MyCasa Spain Research. Retrieved from https://www.mycasaspain.com/research/british-in-spain-2026/

About MyCasa Spain

MyCasa Spain helps foreign residents on the Spanish coast get home repairs done without the language barrier. You contact us in English or German through our form; we coordinate with a trusted local professional and follow up until the problem is solved. We are currently active in Alicante, Málaga, Mallorca and Ibiza. The MyCasa Spain Research Hub publishes data-led reports on the foreign communities of the Spanish Mediterranean coast.