SPAIN’S evergreen credentials have been burnished as the country’s average lifespan sailed past a historic milestone.
The increased longevity, while good news, poses increasing challenges for Spain’s national planners.
Life expectancy is now above 84 years for the first time – but the good news is tempered by more alarming developments at the other end of the scale.
Fresh figures from the National Statistics Institute (INE) show life expectancy at birth reached 84.01 years in 2024.
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Life expectancy for men rose to 81.38 years, up 0.27 on the previous year. For women it climbed to 86.53, an increase of 0.19. The number of deaths – 436,118 – was almost identical to 2023.
However, it was a shocking year for Spain’s birth rate.
Spain registered just 318,005 newborns last year, down 0.8% on 2023 and the lowest figure since national records began in 1941.
The fertility rate slipped to quasi-apocalyptic 1.1 children per woman – just half of the number needed to maintain the population.
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Women are choosing to delay childbirth until later in life, with births to mothers aged 40 or older continuing to rise – they now represent 10.4% of all deliveries, a 7.3% increase over the past decade.
With deaths holding steady at 436,118, it means that Spain’s population would have dropped – by 116,000 – for the eighth consecutive year of population decline – if it were not for one factor.
Spain more than offset its shrinking population with migration.
The country recorded a net gain of 642,000 people in 2023, the latest from which full figures are available.
The figure is part of a post-pandemic trend in which the immigrant population has been swelling by roughly 600,000 a year, the fastest rate in Europe bar Germany in absolute numbers.
It means that, in total, Spain’s population grew by about 458,000 people last year, once you add everything together – births, deaths and migration.
Adding nearly half a million people each year, Spain’s population may now break the 50 million barrier by the end of next year, standing, as it does, at 49,442,844 as of October 2025.
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