Brits Living in Spain: How Many, Where They Live and What They Pay (Official Data)

How many British people live in Spain? 266,462 UK citizens were registered as residents on 1 January 2025, according to Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE) and Eurostat. That is the official count of people who live here, not visitors or second-home owners. It is down from a peak of 397,892 in 2012 and from 291,367 in 2022, yet Spain still has three times more British residents than any other EU country. This page gives the count year by year, where the British live down to the town, how old they are, how they hold their residence after Brexit, what they buy and what they pay, every figure with its source and year.

How many Brits live in Spain: the official count, year by year

Spain publishes two official series. The municipal register (Padrón) counted UK citizens every 1 January from 1998 to 2022. Since 2015 INE also reports population by citizenship to Eurostat, which is the series that continues to 2025. The register grew fivefold between 1998 and 2012, fell sharply in the 2014 revision, when town halls ran the periodic residence checks that clear the register of people who no longer live there, and has moved between 240,000 and 295,000 ever since.

The trend since Brexit is a slow decline: 291,367 on 1 January 2022, 266,462 three years later, about 25,000 fewer. Part of that is people leaving, part is the age of the community, and part is that new arrivals now need a visa where before they only needed a passport.

Why you see 266,000, 300,000, 400,000 and a million in the same search

• 266,462 is the official count of UK citizens resident in Spain on 1 January 2025, the newest figure there is.
• 293,171 and 291,367 are the two 2022 figures, from the register and from the citizenship series. Both are three years old.
• 397,892 was the peak, on 1 January 2012. Anyone quoting 400,000 is quoting a number from before those checks.
• 423,222 is the number of residence documents held by UK citizens that were still valid at the end of 2024, according to Eurostat. It counts cards, not people: a Withdrawal Agreement card runs for five years, or ten once residence is permanent, and it stays in the count until it expires even if the holder has moved back to the UK.
• 800,000 to a million are press estimates that add second-home owners and people who spend part of the year in Spain without registering. No Spanish body publishes such a figure.

Where the British live in Spain, by province

The province figures come from INE’s Annual Population Census at 1 January 2025, the newest official count by nationality. The Costa Blanca and the Costa del Sol hold almost half of all British residents between them, and the pattern has barely moved in a decade. What has moved is the size: all ten provinces in the table have fewer British residents than in 2021, and Alicante alone has 7,021 fewer.

Where the British live in Spain, town by town

Province totals hide the real map. INE’s Annual Population Census counts UK citizens in every municipality in Spain, whatever its size. Two very different lists come out of it: the towns with the most British residents, and the towns where the British are the largest share of everyone who lives there.

Orihuela, which includes Orihuela Costa and its urbanisations, has the largest British community in Spain by number, 8,780 people, but only just: Barcelona has 8,523, and Mijas and Madrid follow. The most British towns, though, are much smaller places in the south of Alicante province and in Almeria:

In Arboleas, inland in Almeria province, almost half of all residents are UK citizens: 2,071 of 4,182. In Algorfa, San Fulgencio and Rojales, all in the south of Alicante province, it is roughly one in three. Among towns above 10,000 inhabitants Rojales still leads, with 29.4%.

Who the British in Spain are

This is the community the retiree stereotype was built on, and the numbers still support it. Of the 266,462 UK citizens counted on 1 January 2025, 41% were 65 or older, against 15% of Americans in Spain. Another 27% were between 50 and 64. Working-age adults between 30 and 49 are 18% (48,051 people), those aged 15 to 29 are 8% and children under 15 are 6%. Men and women are almost even, 51% and 49%.

How the British hold their residence in Spain after Brexit

Two groups live side by side. UK citizens who were legally resident before 1 January 2021 are protected by the Withdrawal Agreement, and the TIE residence card records that status; the older green registration certificate still counts as proof, and the rights to live, work and access healthcare continue. Everyone who arrived after that date counts as a non-EU national and in most cases needs a residence visa before settling: the non-lucrative visa for retirees and anyone living on their own means, the digital nomad visa for remote workers, or a work permit. The spouse or close family member of a Spanish or EU citizen is the exception, with a family card applied for in Spain. Our guide on how to move to Spain from the UK takes each of those routes step by step.

Eurostat’s count of first residence permits shows the new arrivals. Spain issued 12,653 first permits to UK citizens in 2024, against 10,249 in 2022:

Employment permits doubled in two years, which matches what we see in the office: the British client of 2026 is as likely to be a remote worker in their forties as a retired couple. The two routes we file most for British clients are the non-lucrative visa, which asks for €2,400 a month, €28,800 a year, for the main applicant plus €600 a month for each family member, and the digital nomad visa, which asks for €2,850 a month, twice the Spanish minimum wage, from work for employers or clients outside Spain. Which one fits is the first question our Spain immigration lawyers for Britons settle, because the income test, the healthcare requirement and the tax position differ. Our guide for UK citizens in Spain after Brexit covers the 90-day rule and the documents.

What the British buy in Spain, and what they pay

Spain’s notaries publish the nationality of foreign buyers in every area. In the twelve months to June 2026 the British were the largest foreign buyers in Mijas (18% of foreign purchases) and Marbella (12%), second in Estepona (13%, behind the Dutch), third in Malaga city (6%), fourth in Denia (9%) and Palma (5%), and fifth in Fuengirola (7%). On the Costa Blanca south of Alicante, where the British community is largest, the buyer mix has changed: in Torrevieja the top three groups are now Poles, Swedes and Ukrainians. Below, for the towns where the British live and buy, the price actually paid per square metre and the median rent for a flat that landlords declared to the tax office in 2024, the latest year published.

Read the rent column with care. It covers every tenancy running in 2024, including contracts signed years ago, which is why it looks low next to sale prices. It is the official floor, not what a newcomer pays; the upper end of the middle half is the better guide for a new arrival. Our guides to buying a house in Spain as a foreigner and mortgages for non-residents cover the purchase and the financing, and the Benidorm guide looks at the most British stretch of coast in detail.

Spain against the rest of the EU

Among the EU countries that report population by citizenship to Eurostat, Spain has 266,462 UK citizens, Ireland 91,315, Germany 65,691 and the Netherlands 44,520. France and Portugal do not appear in that table, so the comparison is not complete, but no reported country comes close to Spain.

Questions the British ask

Sources

• INE, Estadística del Padrón Continuo: foreign population by nationality, provinces and year, 1998 to 2022 (published 2023), for the historical series.
• INE, Censo Anual de Población, table 66323: population by nationality for every province and municipality at 1 January 2025 (published 2 December 2025), used for the province and town tables; the change column compares with the same table at 1 January 2021.
• Eurostat migr_pop1ctz, population on 1 January by citizenship, age and sex, 2015 to 2025, as reported by INE (published 2025).
• Eurostat migr_resfirst and migr_resvalid: first residence permits by reason and valid permits, 2022 to 2024 (published 2025).
• Portal Estadístico del Notariado: house price finder and buyer nationality, July 2025 to June 2026 (retrieved 8 September 2026).
• Ministry of Housing, SERPAVI: median rents of running contracts declared for tax year 2024 (database published March 2026).
• Figures retrieved on 8 September 2026; province and town tables updated to the 2025 census on 23 September 2026. Where two sources cover the same year, the newer series is used and the older one is named.