In the first 10 months of 2023, more than 43,000 migrants and refugees landed on the Spanish coasts. Most of them reached the Canary Islands in small boats known as pateras. The number far exceeds arrivals to the UK, whose shores have been reached by about 27,000 people in the same period. The disparity is even more striking considering Spain has a population of 48 million, in contrast with the 68 million in the UK.
People arriving by small boats are a minority in the immigration flow, and are not necessarily the ones who stay in Spain. About 15% of the Spanish population is foreign-born – the population is actually growing due to waves of new immigrants, mostly from Colombia, Morocco and Venezuela.
