It’s Not Known Just How Many Brits Live in Spain
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| There is now way of knowing the real number of Brits living in Spain |
It could be two million. It could be more or less. The fact
is that there is no official number for the amount of Britons that currently
live in Spain. This is according to official sources. They say that it is
difficult to register and keep track of who is living where and for how long
they do it.
When Labour leader Jeremy Corbin spoke about the EU
referendum recently he claimed that there were around three quarter of a
million Brits living in Spain. The BBC quickly questioned the figure and tried
to find out for themselves just how many Brits could be found in Spain. The
closest we can get to official data comes from Eurostat. Eurostat says that
there are 306,000 UK-born people registered as permanent residents in Spain.
Almost everyone else says the number is much higher.
A lot of people throw out the “750,000” figure but this is
just an educated guess. There are also claims that twice this number actually
spend a majority of their year in the country, especially on the Costa del Sol
and Costa Blanca.
The BBC also claim that one third of the Brits registered as
residents of Spain claim their UK state pension. This is in line with claims
that the majority of British expats are retired people who wanted to live the
rest of their lives in the sun.
Brits also make up the majority of the holiday travel and
property sector. Over six million Brits flocked to Spain last year. There are
also plenty of Brits that live and work in the coats del sol an Spain but are yet to register as
residents with their local town hall. There are some estimates that the number
of unregistered Brits is higher than the number of registered ones.
Whatever the case may be Spain is still the most popular
home away from home for Brits and it’s not hard to see why.
