According to data from January 1, 2020, collected in the annual report of the Department of Statistics and Data Dissemination attached to the Municipal Data Office, which sets out the essential indicators on the characteristics of the people registered in the Barcelona register, the population of foreign nationality continues to rise and already represents 21.6% of the total, with 179 different nationalities. These 360,970 people represent a maximum both in absolute and relative terms in the recent history of the city. Almost half have lived in the city for between one and five years, while 24.6% have arrived in the last year.

In contrast to what happened in the previous year, the number of foreigners from non-EU countries is the one that increases the most (9.6%), while those from the EU have gone from 12.3% the previous year to 5.2%. EU foreigners currently represent 30% of the total.

The most numerous foreigners are European and American and the most represented nationalities are Italian, Pakistani and Chinese, with more than 20,000 residents each. They are followed by people from France, Morocco, Colombia, Honduras, Venezuela and Peru, with more than 10,000 residents. Throughout 2020, the countries with more registered persons are Italy (3,587), Colombia (2,925), Venezuela (2,888), Honduras (2,396), Pakistan (2,106) and Peru (1,841).

Origin and nationality of the population

For the first time in the city’s recent history, more than half of Barcelona’s residents were born outside the city, specifically, 50.7% of the population. Of these, 27.8% were born abroad; 15.7%, in the rest of Spain, and 7.2%, in the rest of Catalonia. Of the 463,857 people living in Barcelona born abroad, 27.6% have Spanish nationality. The main countries of origin of this population are Argentina, Peru and Colombia.