The Latin American Demographic Boom in Spain. Mass Immigration and Ethnic Convergence in the Former Colonising Country

Spain's colonial period was marked by mass emigration to its colonies and ethnic convergence in Latin America. Since the end of the last century, Spain has become a country of immigration, with a yearly average inflow of 510,000 immigrants, half of whom from Latin America. As a result, Spain's population has become more diverse. Diversity has been widely studied in historical immigration countries. However, less is known on population diversity in new immigration countries. We analyse diversity levels in Spain from 2000 to 2022, and project how they might change by 2062 under constant patterns of migration and ethnic mixing. We use register data, a retrospective analysis or births by parent´s background and a multi-state cohort-component projection. Our results show that the share of the population with a foreign background increased from 4% to 20% between 2000 and 2022, and 9% of residents had a Latino background. These proportions reached 28% and 13%, respectively, for individuals under 40. We project that the percentage of the population with a foreign background will exceed 55% by 2062, with the proportion of people with a Latin American background rising to 26%. Among the population under 40, these figures will reach one third each.