Spaniard-foreigner weddings soar

15 June 2004

MADRID – The numbers of ‘parejas mixtas’ – mixed couples involving at least one  foreigner – has risen by nearly two thirds in four years, according to figures released Tuesday.

The National Institute of Statistics (INE) said the number of married couples that contained at least one foreigner had gone up by 63 percent between 1999 and 2002.

Now they represented 8.5 percent of all married couples in Spain.

Most Spanish men preferred to marry Latin American women, while Spanish women tended to marry Europeans, statistics showed. 

In 1999, there were 11,259 mixed nationality couples, while this number increased to 17,841 by 2002

In more than a third of cases – 39.5 percent –  foreigners married other foreigners but these tended to be different nationalities.

Latest figures showed there were 2,664,168 foreigners registered in Spain – or 6.2 percent of the total population.

This meant the foreign population had quadrupled since 1998.

Ecuadorians are the biggest foreign nationality in Spain making up 14.6 percent of the total figure, with Moroccans in second place, followed by Colombians.

There are more foreign men – 53.1 percent – than women, figures showed.

Foreigners represent 4.7 percent of the total workforce.

In agriculture they make up 8.4 percent of the workforce; in building they are 6.9 percent; in the service sector they make up 4.4 percent, while in industry they are 3.1 percent.

Figures also showed a quarter of domestic workers are foreigners – or 26.3 percent.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news