The housing crisis, the high price of properties on the islands, the highest in Spain, is beginning to have consequences on the demography of the Balearics and is driving residents out to other communities of so-called ‘empty Spain’. Detailed migration data recently published by the Balearic Institute of Statistics (Ibestat) highlights the growing phenomenon of residents moving to the mainland and in the last three years.
This is the opposite of what happened in the 60s and 70s with the economic boom that boosted the tourism boom. Over the past three years there have been more people moving from the Balearics to Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha, Murcia and Extremadura. The balance with Andalusia is negative at 607 people, that of Murcia at 127, that of Castilla-La Mancha at 124 and that of Extremadura at 13.
In addition to these communities, there are others in that emptying core, such as Castilla y León (-288 people), Galicia (-107), Asturias (-90) and Cantabria (-20). In addition, there is also a negative balance with other communities that are not included in the depopulating Spain: Navarre (-63), La Rioja (-17) and the Valencian Community (-578).
On the other side are the communities that continue to add more residents to the Balearics. There are now only five, a change in trend since the Balearics have traditionally been a recipient community in terms of immigration. The migratory balance is positive with Catalonia (1,286 people), Madrid (810), the Canary Islands (168), the Basque Country (110) and the community of Aragon (36). The data just published by Ibestat does not yet include the migratory breakdown for last year, but the trend in recent years suggests that this exodus is set to increase.
The Ibestat data does not detail the community of origin of those who leave, although in this case they are all Spanish. It is not known, therefore, whether those who leave are retirees returning to their territories of origin or people who are leaving the Balearics frightened by the very high standard of living and the impossibility of affording a house or a rental to live a decent life.
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It is actually quite normal and actually good for the development of the Land and it´s people for people to move on from where they were born and actually those who dare to do so are normally the one´s in the family who acquire skill´s and become the most educated and later at some point may chose to return to there place of Origen bringing there knowledge and prosperity back with them !