A total of 240,208 foreigners residing in Spain acquired Spanish nationality in 2023which means an increase of 32.3% compared to the previous yearand the most frequent nationalities of origin were Morocco (54,027), Venezuela (30,154) and Colombia (18,738).
They are data from the ‘Statistics on acquisitions of Spanish nationality of residents‘, which is published this Friday on National Institute of Statistics (INE) and which reveals that Catalonia and the Community of Madrid were the communities with the most acquisitions of nationalitywith 60,846 and 50,049 respectively.
45.2% of the foreigners who acquired Spanish nationality in 2023 were men and 54.8% were women and, by age, People between 30 and 39 years old constituted the largest groupfollowed by the 40 to 49 year old group.
Regarding the methods of acquiring Spanish nationality, 212,779 cases were by residence and 26,844 by option. This last modality occurred especially in those under 20 years of age (this was the case in 95.7% of the cases).
The most frequent nationality of origin was that of Morocco, with 54,027 casesfollowed by Venezuela (30,154), Colombia (18,738), Ecuador (11,326), Honduras (11,189), Dominican Republic (10,275), Cuba (9,790), Bolivia (9,103), Peru (8,489) and Argentina (7,208) .
For its part, The most frequent country of birth in nationality acquisitions was Spain, with 52,451 cases, followed by Venezuela (29,581), Morocco (24,078), Colombia (18,428), Honduras (10,393), Ecuador (9,990), Cuba (9,799), Dominican Republic (9,572), Peru (8,327) and Bolivia (8,003). ).
Of the 240,208 people residing in Spain who acquired Spanish nationality in 2023, 21.2% had always resided in Spain, while the remaining 78.8% had previously resided abroad.
Since 2002, the most frequent year of arrival for people who acquired Spanish nationality was 2018. That is, it took them about five years to acquire Spanish nationality.
Catalonia (with 60,846 cases) and the Community of Madrid (with 50,049) concentrated 46.2% of nationality acquisitionswhile La Rioja (952) and Extremadura (1,309) were the ones that represented the fewest acquisitions.
By number, Catalonia and Madrid are followed by the Valencian Community (25,119), Andalusia (24,059), Murcia (13,357), the Canary Islands (11,622), the Basque Country (9,966), the Balearic Islands (8,339), Castilla La Mancha (6,963), Castilla and León (6,502), Galicia (6,010), Aragón (5,600), Navarra (3,526), Asturias (2,561) and Cantabria (1,867).