Granada bids farewell to thousands of residents

EVEN though the financial crisis appears to be slowly coming to an end, it seems that the upturn has not yet reached Granada.
The latest report published by the National Statistics Institute (INE), corresponding to the 2014 data, shows that a total of 19,697 residents left Granada during the past year, a 12.4 per cent increase on the number who migrated from the province in 2013. If the same number is compared with the figures of 2008 at the start of the economic crisis, the difference is even starker, with 49.3 per cent more departures per year since then.
Most of the residents who left Granada did so to settle in another Spanish province (14,654 of the total), while the rest (5,043) moved to a different country.
The data published by the INE shows that it was foreign residents who left the country in big numbers to return home, presumably disappointed by the lack of job opportunities in Granada. Out of the 5,043 international departures, 3,834 (76 per cent) were foreigners.
Between 2008 and 2014, Granada has lost more than 100,000 residents, mainly young residents between 25 and 34 years old, in search of better opportunities than the province can offer.