Why a drain in Spain will lead to population shrinkage by 2017 | In English | EL PAÍS

Why a drain in Spain will lead to population shrinkage by 2017 | In English | EL PAÍS:

For some time now, Spain's falling birth rate and ageing population has had the country's demographers calculating just when the two curves will cross, and deaths will begin to outnumber births. The National Statistics Institute (INE), which last month published its findings in the report Projections for the Spanish Population 2013-23, says that if current trends continue, that moment will arrive in 2017. The country has not faced such a situation since the Spanish Civil War, or the flu epidemic of 1918-19. The birth rate fell steadily throughout the 1990s, but picked up again in 1998, maintaining a positive trend for a decade, largely due to a sharp increase in immigration.

From 2017, any increase in the birth rate will be due to migratory flows, which will make it much more difficult to predict long-term demographic trends.

The INE's survey also forecasts that Spain's population will shrink by a further 2.6 million people due to emigration - equivalent to the combined population of Barcelona and Valencia - falling to 44,082,671. "This is a reflection of how bad the situation in Spain is: less immigration, more emigration, and nobody wanting to start a family," says Teresa Castro of the CSIC Spanish National Research Council's Human and Social Sciences Center.

Population decline will no longer be a problem related to rural or underdeveloped areas, but will manifest itself throughout the country, with the Spanish exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco the only areas to register an increase in the number of inhabitants.