2020 sees second sharpest population fall of 21st century
Pandemic impacts latest register of residents as number of foreigners grows by an unusually low 0.53%
The Covid-19 pandemic had a direct impact on the latest register of inhabitants ('padró', in Catalan), published on Tuesday.
According to these provisional figures, 7,756,928 people resided in Catalonia as of January 1, 2021, 23,551 fewer than twelve months before – up to December 31, 2020, 17,146 people had died due to Covid-19 according to the Catalan health department.
Thus, the population dropped by 0.30% in 2020, breaking a six-year upward trend. These latest figures equate to the second sharpest fall seen during the 21st century.
The year 2013 is still top, with a 0.46% yearly decrease, mostly due to a large number of migrants returning to their home countries.
Indeed, the 2008 financial crisis and its impact on the local economy prompted an unprecedented drop in internationals in the years 2012 to 2014 – but apart from these exceptions, 2020 saw the lowest growth of migrants this century (0.53%).
On January 1, 2021, 1,593,330 non-Spanish nationals, 16% of the total population, were residing in Catalonia.
Looking into the figures by world region, the decrease of EU citizens (8.77%) and the increase of other European citizens (24.82%) stand out compared to the other regions and continents, but this is largely due to the fact that UK nationals were transferred categories after Brexit came into force on New Year's Day.
As for Spanish nationality holders, the 0.12% decrease registered in 2020 is the sharpest fall since the Spanish Statistics Institute records began using the current method in 1998 – until now, Spanish nationals had only dropped once in the past 23 years, by 0.03% two years ago.
The pandemic hit elderly people especially hard, and the latest figures also confirm this: the population of over 65s only dropped once in the past two decades, in the 2005 figures, but the 0.67% increase of the past 12 months has been the lowest since 2004.
Those aged between 15 and 64 fell by 0.10%, a figure only matched also to 2005, while those in the 0 to 14 age range dropped by 2.42% in 2020, something with no precedents in this century.