Six out of every ten new residents in Andalucía over the last decade live in Malaga province

The dynamism of Malaga is underpinning Andalucía's population growth. To such an extent that the province accounts for 60 per cent of the entire demographic increase registered in the last ten years in the region: 155,620 inhabitants of the more than 255,000 by which the region has grown since 2014 have found their residence in one of the municipalities of the Costa del Sol.

Meanwhile, Almería accounts for nearly 30 per cent of the increase in regional demographics with its 73,375 more inhabitants in the last ten years. In third place is Seville: its just over 35,000 new inhabitants in the last decade represent just 13.70 per cent of the number of residents that the region has gained in the same period.

Malaga's demographic contribution is therefore five times that of Seville, with Granada coming closest, with its 23,143 more inhabitants - nine per cent of the total - and Huelva, with its slightly more than 15,000.

The two provinces that have recurrently lost population have been Jaén and Cordoba, with declines of almost 36,000 and nearly 24,500 people since July 2014, respectively, which means that they have subtracted almost 25 per cent from Andalucía's population growth.

The most recent data also show the same thing: in the first half of 2024, Andalucía gained 5,171 new residents, bringing the total number of inhabitants to 8,637,152. In the same period, the demographic increase in Malaga was 6,298 new residents, to a total of 1,778,275 as of 1 July, according to figures from the national statistics institute (INE). Without the contribution of the province of Malaga, Andalucía would have seen its population figures fall this year. Malaga alone is up more in population than the region as a whole.

Along with Malaga, only three other provinces in Andalucía have increased their population in 2024, although none of them have reached the same level of growth as Malaga. And only in two of these provinces has the increase reached significant volumes: in Almería the increase in inhabitants is 2,862, to 765,128; while in Granada the increase is 788, to 940,974 inhabitants. In Cádiz the increase is barely 30 inhabitants, to 1,258,881 in total.

The sum of the population of these three Andalusian provinces offsets the significant loss recorded in Cordoba, for example, where the demographic fall in the first half of the year was 3,136 people - the largest in Spain - representing 0.40 per cent of its population, to 770,952 inhabitants. Meanwhile, Jaén has said goodbye to 1,206 of its residents (the fourth largest fall in the country), 0.20 per cent of its population, which on 1 July stood at 618,031 inhabitants.

Seville, meanwhile, has lost 439 residents since 1 January, to 1.969 million inhabitants, and Huelva has also dropped in population, although by only 26 people, to 535,836 residents.

This demographic dynamic in Andalucía intensified in the second quarter. Seville, Cordoba and Huelva were the three provinces that lost the most population in Spain, with decreases of 2,147, 1,622 and 657 inhabitants, in that order, between April and June. Jaén, meanwhile, was the fifth province in the country with the greatest demographic decline, with 515 fewer residents. With population growth only in Almería (1,030 people), Málaga (898 people), Granada (330) and Cádiz (10), the Andalusian autonomous region has lost 2,673 inhabitants in the second quarter of this year - a circumstance that is offset by the population increase recorded in the first quarter, which is why the balance for the six-month period is positive.

Be that as it may, the most common historical pattern is that Malaga tends to contribute slightly more than half of the new inhabitants that Andalucía is gaining, although the weight of the province's population in the region as a whole is 20 per cent. Thus, in the last 12 months, the region has added 25,285 residents; in the same period, Malaga has added 13,338 inhabitants. Meanwhile, since July 2019, the resident population in Andalucía has increased by more than 205,000 people, a period in which the residents of Malaga have grown by more than 108,000; and, in the last decade, if the region has gained 255,704 inhabitants, the new residents of the province of Malaga are 155,620.

Malaga, in addition to this demographic prominence in Andalucía, also plays a leading role at national level. Thus, as of 1 July this year, it remained the sixth most populated province in Spain, behind Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Alicante and Seville, and ahead of Murcia, Cadiz and the Balearic Islands. It is the same position it occupied in 2014. A decade ago, Seville was the fourth most populated province and is now the fifth after the 'sorpasso' of Alicante, which has already surpassed two million inhabitants. In this respect, according to the population projections published by the INE at the end of June, Malaga will have exceeded two million inhabitants by the year 2031 and it is estimated that it will also be then when it will surpass Seville's demography.