14,753 people from Malaga living abroad

ALMOST 1,000 people from Malaga moved abroad in the past year.

There are now 14,753 people from the province living mostly in other EU countries or in South America, according to the Official Register of Spaniards Residing Abroad.

In the past three years, the number of Malaga-born people under 16 living abroad has almost double and the number of over-65s has increased by 10 per cent.

Most people from Malaga have chosen France as their new home, where there are more than 3,600, followed by Germany, the United Kingdom and Switzerland.

Meanwhile, there are 1,660 in Argentina, and large numbers in Brazil, Venezuela and Mexico, while there are just 624 in the USA.

There are 347 in Australia, and just 45 in China.

The data also shows that 10,000 people from elsewhere in Spain or from foreign countries who were registered as residents in Malaga have left since 2009.

On a whole, the number of Spanish citizens living abroad rose by 6.7 per cent last year to 1,816,835, meaning that 114,057 people moved abroad.

Most of them have moved to the South America (83,763) and Europe (26,222), with the highest numbers moving to Argentina (22,073 more), Cuba (13,890 more) and Brazil (8,362 more).

According to the National Institute of Statistics, 36 per cent of Spanish citizens living abroad were born in Spain, 58.2 per cent in their current place of residence, and 5.1 per cent in other countries.

This means that most of them are people who have obtained Spanish nationality.

The countries with most Spanish residents are Argentina (367,939), France (198,182), Venezuela (179,035) and Germany (111,731).

More than 62 per cent of Spaniards living abroad are registered in America, 34.6 per cent in Europe, and 3 per cent in the rest of the world.

Most of them (62.2 per cent) are aged between 16 and 64, and are women (51.1 per cent).

By Jennifer Leighfield