Spain would have 11 million fewer people without immigration

Spain would have 11 million fewer people without immigration

What would Spain look like if no net immigrants had arrived between 1995 and 2026? This counterfactual historical exercise yields an uncomfortable numerical answer: the country would have approximately 11.1 million fewer inhabitants today—migrants and their locally born children—but the working-age population ratio would barely shift from 66.3% to 64.2%. In other words, three decades of demographic integration efforts would have done almost nothing for the age structure.

The calculation starts from the 1995 population structure, assuming fertility and age-specific mortality remained at observed levels. The author admits this hypothesis is debatable: less demographic pressure might have made housing cheaper and potentially boosted birth rates. Or conversely, because certain migrant groups have higher-than-average fertility rates. Regardless, the margin of error is in hundreds of thousands, not millions. The broad result holds.

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Data debunking the pension argument

Immigration has long been sold as the solution to the demographic winter. The numbers say otherwise. The percentage of people aged 15 to 64 rises only from 64.2% in a no-migration scenario to 66.3% with actual migration. Two points. Insufficient to sustain a pension system that already consumes 40% of public spending, and far from the fantasy that every newcomer is a net contributor.

Some argue the effect is directly negative. If most received immigration was low-skilled, and the welfare state is highly redistributive, the discounted present value of these individuals for public coffers would be negative. This isn't an isolated opinion; it's the standard framework of fiscal economics. Each person who enters, contributes little, but consumes healthcare, education, and transfers generates a net cost paid by others' taxes.

The classic counterargument—"without them, pensions wouldn't be paid"—faces an arithmetic problem. Maintaining the current contributor-to-pensioner ratio would require annual migration flows no European country has sustained. And Spain, with structurally high unemployment, cannot absorb such labor without depressing wages in lower-skilled segments.

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How many Spaniards of origin would exist today?

Here, the figures diverge. One analytical stream within the debate argues the native-origin population would have plummeted to 30-32 million, starting from 38 million in 1981 and a fertility rate already below replacement level (2.1 children per woman), which hovered around 1.5 in 1985. The conclusion is that the country seen on the streets does not match what native demographics alone would have produced.

Another, more nuanced reading notes that the population born in Spain stands at around 38.99 million currently, and that the drop in birth rates didn't translate into an equivalent reduction due to the inertia of the age structure. The difference between these figures—30-32 million versus nearly 39—is not trivial: it defines whether we are talking about an aging country or a directly emptied one.

The exercise has obvious political derivatives. If by 2050 those over 60—currently about 17 million, mostly of Spanish origin—have largely passed away, and birth rates don't recover, Spain would shrink to around 22 million inhabitants. With that pyramid, there would be no pensions, healthcare, or infrastructure. The problem isn't that they come; it's that they aren't born.

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Housing, wages, and saturation: the lost paradise narrative

The most repeated thesis is that without mass immigration, there would be no housing crisis. The argument is simple: less rental demand, normal prices, housing access for young people, family formation, and thus higher birth rates. It's a vicious cycle: lack of housing suppresses birth rates, and immigration pressures housing. Defenders of this position point out that the "housing problem" is actually a problem of uncontrolled migration flows and short-termist politics.

Opposing this is the argument that the causal link is weaker than it seems. Housing in Spain has been becoming more expensive since before 1995, and main factors—land, taxation, urban bureaucracy—do not depend on the migration balance. Furthermore, immigration has also filled labor niches natives rejected: construction, hospitality, care work. Without this workforce, entire sectors would have contracted.

What seems beyond doubt is the effect on public services. Healthcare, transport, and education in areas with high demographic pressure have become saturated. Whether this is due to absolute population growth or chronic underfunding is another discussion. But the temporal coincidence between migration flows and perceived service deterioration is a fact no statistic denies.

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The emigration nobody counts

There is data often left out of the frame. Spain doesn't just receive; it also expels. Over the last thirty years, a significant number of Spanish university graduates have emigrated to Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Austria, or the UK. Educated people contributing to other systems, generating wealth abroad. The balance isn't just inflow.

This outflow has an economic explanation: higher salaries, better working conditions, less precariousness. If the Spanish labor market offered equivalent opportunities, part of this skilled emigration wouldn't have occurred. And if it hadn't, the birth rates of those cohorts—the ones most likely to have children—would have added up. This is not a minor factor: qualified youth emigration is a silent hemorrhage that doesn't appear in arrival headlines.

The paradox is that the country imports low-skilled labor and exports highly skilled labor. An exchange that loses out in terms of human capital. And explains why Spanish productivity doesn't take off even as the population grows.

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International context: neither unique nor the worst

Spain is not an isolated case. Poland, with a much more homogeneous population, is cited in the debate as an example of a country that maintained its social fabric while growing economically. But Poland has also lost millions of inhabitants through emigration and faces its own demographic winter. The Polish paradise has an expiration date.

At the other extreme, Gulf countries show that birth rates can't be bought. The United Arab Emirates saw fertility drop from 3.7 to 2.9 children per woman in a decade, despite offering free housing, public jobs, and paid leave. Yemen, a perversos and war-torn country, has 4.33 children per woman. The lesson is uncomfortable: pro-natalist policies fail when society has changed its preferences.

The Spanish case has an additional layer. The drop in birth rates since 1975 is not just an economic phenomenon: it's cultural. Women's entry into the labor market, youth precariousness, delayed emancipation, and changing values have reduced the desired number of children. No migration policy fixes that. And no pro-natalist policy has succeeded in any developed country.

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The conclusion of the exercise is uncomfortable for everyone. For those who see immigration as the solution to the demographic winter, because the numbers say it isn't. For those who believe Spain would be a paradise without immigration, because the country would have 11 million fewer inhabitants and an equally aged population structure. And for those who argue the problem is solely one of management, because evidence points to something deeper: a society that has stopped reproducing itself and opted to import population instead of solving the causes of its own sterility. The full calculation, with all hypotheses and sensitivities, is on the table. Nobody has yet presented an alternative that adds up.