From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

Romanians in Spain

Romanian emigrant community in Spain

Field	Value
group	Romanians in Spain
population	609,270 Romanian citizens (2025)
521,181 born in Romania (2025)
languages	Romanian, Spanish
religions	Predominantly: Romanian Orthodox;
also: Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic
related	Romanian Britons, Romanian Italians, Romanian Germans, Romanian Australians, Romanian Americans, Romanian Canadians, Romanian French people
footnotes

521,181 born in Romania (2025) also: Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic Romanians form the second largest group of foreigners in Spain, after Moroccans. , there were 609,270 Romanian citizens and 521,181 people born in Romania living in Spain. Most of the immigration took place given economic reasons. The linguistic similarities between Romanian and Spanish, as well as Romanians' Romance identity, are also a reason for the country's attractiveness to Romanians.

Background

After the December, 1989 Romanian Revolution, emigration was liberalized, but for the next few years, emigration to Spain was modest. It started to increase slowly during the late 1990s, and exploded after 2002. Emigration was further facilitated by the entry of Romania in the EU in 2007. By 2011, it reached a peak of nearly 900,000 people, after which the Romanian population has been steadily decreasing as a result of emigration from Spain since 2012 due to the economic problems and unemployment in Spain, as well as because of Romania's rapid economic improvement, falling to 623,097 by 2022. Because of this, the diaspora in Italy, which has stabilised in numbers above 1 million people, is now considerably larger than that in Spain.

Population

|1998 | 2258 |1999 | 3147 |2000 | 6410 |2001 | 31641 |2002 | 67279 |2003 | 137347 |2004 | 207960 |2005 | 317366 |2006 | 407159 |2007 | 527019 |2008 | 731806 |2009 | 798892 |2010 | 831235 |2011 | 865707 |2012 | 897203 |2013 | 870258 |2014 | 797054 |2015 | 752268 |2016 | 717462 |2017 | 687733 |2018 | 676005 |2019 | 671985 |2020 | 667378 |2021 | 644473 |2022 | 627478 |2023 | 629755 |2024 | 620463 |2025 | 609270

Romanian diaspora in Spain is today the second Romanian diaspora in the EU, after that of Italy. Romanians in Spain have settled especially in the provinces of Madrid, Castellón, Valencia, Zaragoza and Barcelona.

Notable individuals

Florin Andone (born 1993), footballer
Gelu Barbu (1932–2016), ballet dancer and choreographer
Alexandru Buligan (born 1960), handball player and coach
Mihaela Ciobanu (born 1973), handball player
Cosmin Contra (born 1975), footballer and coach
Gheorghe Craioveanu (born 1968), footballer
Alexandru Dedu (born 1971), handball player
Constantin Gâlcă (born 1972), footballer and coach
Cristian Ganea (born 1992), footballer
Adrian Ilie (born 1974), footballer
Valeriu Lazarov (1935–2009), television producer, director of Spanish channel Telecinco
Alina Nastase (born 1990), actress, model and director
Gheorghe Popescu (born 1967), footballer
Roxana Popa (born 1997), artistic gymnast
Virgil Popa (born 1975), conductor
Amelia Tiganus (born 1984), writer and abolitionist activist
Marcela Topor (born 1976), journalist

References

Sources

References

es.
es.
(June 26, 2018). "Number of Romanians in Spain declined in 2017".
(30 June 2016). "De ce trebuie România să constituie Alianţa Latină împreună cu Italia şi Spania. Ce avem de făcut în NUE – Noua Uniune Europeană". [[Ziarul Financiar]].
"Población extranjera por Nacionalidad, comunidades, Sexo y Año. Datos provisionales 2022.". [[Instituto Nacional de Estadística (Spain).
(December 2011). "report-spain.pdf".

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

romanian-diaspora romanian-minorities-in-europe spanish-people-of-romanian-descent romanian-emigrants-to-spain

Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about Romanians in Spain — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report