How many foreigners living in Malaga province have obtained Spanish nationality in the last decade and where are they from?

Almost 57,000 foreigners have obtained Spanish nationality in Malaga province since 2013, the first year since data has been available from Spain's INE national statistics institute. Since that year the INE has received all data from the Ministry of Justice pertaining to the national register of Spanish citizens, including new arrivals or losses. This number makes Malaga the seventh province in terms of how many people have obtained a Spanish passport, behind Madrid (402,626), Barcelona (over 366,000), Valencia (93,589), and then Murcia, Alicante and the Balearic Islands still ahead of Malaga. So, Malaga is the leading province in Andalucía, ahead of Seville (34,281 naturalisations in the dozen or so years that these figures have been published). In Spain as a whole, those acquiring Spanish nationality are close to 1.9 million people in the period between 2013 and 2024.

Spanish legislation regulates several ways or means by which Spanish nationality can be obtained. For example, it is possible to acquire it by origin, that is, by being born to a Spanish father or mother or by being born in Spain. To obtain nationality by this latter route, if the parents are foreigners, at least one of them must have been born in Spain. Spanish nationality can also be acquired if the parents lack Spanish nationality or if the legislation of their countries of origin does not grant nationality to any children they may have.

Spanish nationality can also be acquired by choice, for example, if you have been under the parental authority of a Spaniard or if you were born in the country of a Spanish parent. Furthermore, it can be obtained through residency, for which a minimum of ten years of continuous legal residency in Spain is required. The statistics published by the INE include obtaining nationality by choice or by residency.

As a result, in Malaga, most of the people who have obtained Spanish nationality have done so because they have lived in Spain, having clocked up a decade of legal, continuous residence immediately prior to applying for nationality. Of the 56,957 people who have obtained a Spanish passport in Malaga, some 49,602 have done so on the basis of their term of residence. This means that 87% of all new Spanish nationals in the province have achieved this status by having lived here continuously for more than ten years.

The picture across Spain is similar: of the almost 1.9 million new nationals, 1.56 million, 82%, are new nationals because they have lived here for the required time.

Who are the people who have obtained Spanish nationality in Malaga? By geographical area, the largest contingent corresponds to South Americans, with 24,360 new Spanish citizens, of which Argentina is the most significant country of origin, with 4,709 people, followed by Colombia (4,468).

The second most important area of origin is Africa, with 19,745 new naturalised persons, a figure that is largely occupied by those from Morocco (16,665 persons).

Meanwhile, among people from European but non-EU countries, the most abundant contingents are Ukrainians (1,782), followed by Russians (1,272), while the number of British nationals who have acquired Spanish nationality in Malaga is only 241 compared to 616 Romanians.

It is also interesting to note that 11,268 of the people who have obtained Spanish nationality in the last 12 years were born here in Spain.

With regard to the last year for which data is available (2024), some 7,367 people obtained Spanish nationality in Malaga province. This is the second highest number since records began, with the sole exception of 2023, when there were 7,735. In contrast, for Spain as a whole, a record number of 252,500 was reached in 2024, up from 240,200 a year earlier.