How many people live in Spain?
Guess before you scroll — the answer is below
The answer
48,800,000 people
Roughly 48.8M.
Spain passed 48 million residents for the first time in 2024, growth driven almost entirely by immigration — the country has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. It also has one of the longest life expectancies, at over 83 years.
How to get close to this number
Anchor among the large European countries. Germany is around eighty-four million, France and the UK in the high sixties, Italy around fifty-nine, and this country sits just below that group. Ranking within a familiar set is more reliable than recalling an absolute figure, and European populations change slowly enough for the ranking to stay valid.
The composition of the growth is the important part. The country crossed forty-eight million for the first time recently, and that growth comes almost entirely from immigration — the birth rate is among the lowest in the world. Population growth and natural increase have completely decoupled here, as they have across southern Europe.
The life expectancy figure is the counterweight: over eighty-three years, among the highest anywhere. A country with very low births and very long lives ages rapidly, which means the population total stays stable while its age structure changes dramatically underneath. The headline number hides the transformation.
Where this number comes from
| Source | Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE) |
|---|---|
| Figure refers to | 2024 |
| Last checked | |
| Unit | people |
Numbers move. If this one has drifted from its source, let us know.
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