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Approximately 3.3M immigrants living in Spain were born in Latin America. When looking at the numbers, we weren't surprised that Spain has the largest LatAm population in Europe, given the shared tongue and cultural roots. Just like it isn't surprising that most foreign-born Portugal residents are from Brazil.

What did surprise us is how few Mexicans returned to their past colonizer — only 66K, or 2% of the 3.3M total. Spain is home to fewer Mexicans than Hondurans, Paraguayans, and even Uruguayans, countries with just a fraction of Mexico's population.

The main reason is simple geography — given Mexico's shared border, the US is the obvious country of choice for migrants.

Colombia is the largest Latin American population (and the third overall) living in Spain. From 1999 to 2004, that population grew 18x from 13K to 249K. What happened? In addition to Colombia's economic hardship in the 90s, an earthquake broke havoc on Colombia's Andes mountains in 1999, which killed more than 1,000 people and destroyed 8,000 coffee "fincas," leaving thousands displaced. Venezuelans fleeing Maduro's dictatorship in recent years led a new wave of migration — multiplying their number by 4x from 2015 to 2021.

Another surprising statistic from the data is that Peruvians are Italy's top Latin American demographic. Ties between both countries extend back to the colonial period when Italians became part of Peru's ruling class and even placed their own Virrey, Carmine Nicolao Caracciolo, in 1716.

Similarly to Colombia and Venezuela, during the socioeconomic hardships of the 90s, thousands of Peruvians (many of Italian descent) fled to rediscover their family origins. And the migrant flow goes both ways — in contemporary Peru, Italian descendants and migrants continue to play an important role.

Source: Wikipedia
Tools: Rawgraphs, Affinity Designer