Spain's economy keeps growing with immigration, and eldiario.es says that's good news

Immigration is not artificially inflating Spain's GDP: the IMF forecasts 2.5% growth in 2026 and 1.5% GDP per capita growth, and between 2018 and 2027 the latter will rise by 1% a year on average, ten times more than between 2008 and 2017.

Every time Spain posts strong macroeconomic figures, the same debate resurfaces. The question is whether the country is genuinely growing or simply adding population, so that gross domestic product (GDP) swells without per capita wealth improving. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) confirmed that Spain will be, in **2026**, for the third year in a row, the fastest-growing advanced economy, with growth of between **2.5%** and **2.6%**, ahead of the United States. From there, some economists argue that this growth is explained by the arrival of migrants and that GDP per capita is stagnating. The data do not support that thesis.

## GDP per capita is growing ten times faster than between 2008 and 2017

The metric that divides the total economy by the total population shows solid growth for the coming years: **1.5%** in 2026 and **0.8%** in 2027, according to IMF forecasts. Between **2008** and **2017**, Spanish GDP per capita grew by an average of **0.1%** a year. Between **2018** and **2027**, the projection is that it will grow by **1%** a year on average. Ten times more than in the previous period and well above Germany (**0.4%**), France (**0.7%**), Japan (**0.8%**), the United Kingdom (**0.5%**) or Canada (**0.6%**).

The argument that the economy is growing "by weight" runs into arithmetic. If only the population were increasing without per capita activity improving, GDP per capita would fall, not rise. The economist **Luis Gómez**, who worked at the Economic Office of La Moncloa (the Spanish prime minister's office), poses the thought experiment of adding two million people to an economy in the middle of the Great Recession: "Putting a million migrants into an economy that is collapsing does not increase its size or act as an economic engine." The causal relationship runs the other way: the economy advances, that attracts migrants, and their arrival boosts the strength of growth.

## Population helps, but it is not enough to explain the growth

Funcas, the research centre of the Spanish savings banks, calculates that population growth alone has accounted for **47%** of the cumulative GDP growth between **2022** and **2025**. That boost allowed sectors such as construction, tourism or services to expand, which could not have grown without more labour, mostly migrant. But simply adding people is not enough either. According to Funcas's head of economic analysis, **Raymond Torres**, the sectors receiving that population need to be competitive, in a position to hire and benefiting from an increase in aggregate demand.

Only a week ago, in its latest forecast update, Funcas warned that one of the scenarios that most threatens Spanish growth is precisely a slowdown in population arrivals up to **2030**. If the working-age population were to grow again at the pace of the **2015-2019** period, **0.4%** a year (half the central scenario), GDP growth would fall to **1.5%** and public debt would continue on an upward path to **97.8%** of GDP in **2030**. In other words, demographics are not inflating growth: a slowdown would cut it back.

## Banco de Spain puts the foreign contribution at up to 0.7 points

A study by the Banco de España (Spain's central bank) published at the end of last year found that the contribution of the growth of the foreign population to GDP per capita growth had, in recent years, been similar in relative terms to that estimated in earlier phases, with the added bonus that the assimilation of that population, its education and its distribution across sectors is now better than in other periods. Specifically, if GDP per capita grew by an average of **2.9%** between **2022** and **2024**, between **0.4** and **0.7** points were due to the contribution of the foreign population. The national contribution was higher and only turned negative during the years of the Great Recession.

The chief economist for Spain at **BBVA Research**, **Miguel Cardoso**, offers another figure: GDP has grown by **12%** since **2019** and GDP per capita by around **6%**. That gap indicates that growth has been based on an increase in employment rather than on productivity or investment. "Basically, what we have done is hire more people," he says, and the result is that productivity has stagnated, perhaps because growth is concentrated in low-productivity sectors or because of a composition effect of the people arriving.

## Italy improves its per capita ratio because it is losing population

Those who compare Spain with Italy to argue that GDP per capita is advancing faster there overlook a weighty reason: the country has been losing population for years. That improvement in per capita ratios anticipates a serious economic problem, not an advantage. Something similar happens within Spain. According to Cardoso, the regions where GDP grows most are those where per capita growth is lowest, such as the Valencian Community or the Balearic Islands, while those that fail to attract immigration, such as Asturias, Galicia or Extremadura, are the ones advancing most in GDP per capita.

Cardoso himself points out that the logic could be reversed in the future: in a context of population loss, he doubts that GDP per capita growth would be seen as positive. The economist Gómez sums it up: that Spain attracts people is a good sign, a country where opportunities are visible. The number of people who study and work at the same time has also doubled, because they see prospects for pogre. GDP per capita, however, is an incomplete measure of wellbeing: it does not say how that wealth is distributed. Macroeconomic figures are not the same as each household's finances, and investment or spending decisions are best discussed with a professional.