Never have so many people died in Spain in a single year, since there are official records of the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
And never had so few children been born.
The coincidence of these two phenomena in 2020 leaves a devastating demographic balance, according to the provisional data on the natural movement of the population published this Thursday by the INE.
In the year that concentrates the worst hit of the pandemic, they have died
492,930
people, 74,227 more than in 2019. It is 17.73% more. And 339,206 children have been born, 5.94% less than last year, the worst number since 1941 — two years after the end of the Civil War. Thus, the vegetative balance (the difference between births and deaths) is the worst in the entire historical series: there were 153,167 more deaths than births, tripling the data for 2019, which was already the worst until then.
“These data were to be expected in a pandemic situation like the one we have experienced. This crisis has affected the main variables that make up the population ”, says Diego Ramiro, director of the Institute of Economy, Geography and Demography of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC). This expert adds one more factor to the maximum of deaths and the minimum of births to justify the demographic burden of 2020: the average age of maternity reaches a new record, 32.3 years, one tenth more than the previous year.
In January and February, before the start of the health crisis, the deaths of 2020 are not much different from those of the previous year. What's more, fewer people died in those first two months. In March, when the virus had already spread and the Government decreed confinement, the trend changed radically: 37,058 in 2019 and 58,124 in 2020. The month with the most difference compared to the previous year is April, when 60,951 more people died, 78 , 21% more than in 2019. Then the worst of the pandemic was experienced, with up to 900 deaths from covid reported in a single day.
The number of deaths from coronavirus registered by the Ministry of Health (50,837 as of December 31, 2020) is very far from the difference between the deaths in 2019 (418,703) and 2020 (492,930). It is also very far if we broaden the view with an average of the total annual deaths between 2015 and 2019: 420,825. The Government's registry of deaths from covid does not include thousands who died from covid in the first wave, but whose diagnosis was not confirmed with a laboratory test. This does not mean that the excess mortality collected by the INE data is attributed exclusively to the coronavirus: a part of these deaths may be due to other reasons, such as diseases that were not properly treated due to the saturation of hospitals and health centers . “The pandemic is the main cause of the increase in mortality,but at the moment we do not have a reliable portrait of which are the deaths from covid and which are due to other reasons ”, explains Joaquín Recaño, president of the population group of the Association of Spanish Geographers, professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and researcher at the Center for Demographic Studies.
By communities, the worst data are those of Madrid.
It is the autonomy that suffered the greatest increase in deaths compared to last year, 41.17% more, with 19,418 more deaths than the previous year.
The two border territories with the Community of Madrid are the second and third most affected: in Castilla-La Mancha, deaths have increased by 32.33% and in Castilla y León, by 25.97%.
On the other side of the balance are the Canary Islands (4.19%), Galicia (4.97%) and Murcia (5.78%).
The virus, especially lethal among the elderly, has hit Spain at a time when its inhabitants are older: the average age of the population is 43.58 years, four more than just two decades ago.
Those over 60 years old are 26.6% of the Spanish population in 2020, when in 2000 they were 21.6%.
The fact that fewer and fewer children are being born contributes decisively to these data: 21,411 fewer in 2020 than in 2019. It is the biggest drop since 2013 and the worst data since there are records. This collapse in births cannot be attributed exclusively to the health crisis, since the lockdown began in March. The children conceived then were born mainly in the last month, so the effect of the closure and the uncertainty due to the pandemic on the birth rate will be better appreciated in the data for the first half of 2021. “A considerable drop in the birth rate can be anticipated. In November and December, the months affected by the pandemic, the birth rate falls by 10% and 21% respectively compared to 2019, when the national average is a drop of 6% ″, considers Recaño.
An older man walks through the Caramuel park, in the Puerta del Ángel neighborhood of Madrid, on June 3.
In any case, the trend continues as in previous years: the total number of births in Spain has fallen steadily since 2015, precisely the first year in which the number of deaths exceeded the number of births.
Although the pandemic has little effect on birth statistics, fewer children were born in all communities in 2020 than in 2019. We are very far from the 21st century birth record, in 2008, when, in minimal unemployment figures a year earlier, exceeded half a million births (519,779).
They are almost 200,000 more than in 2020.
The CSIC researcher believes that the economic crisis derived from the pandemic is one of the main reasons for the reduction in the birth rate: “In an ERTE or with uncertainty about the future, couples do not dare to have children. This makes them wait until the last years of reproductive age ”. Ramiro identifies several consequences for the future: the increase in the number of couples without descendants will lead to more people without a family network to attend to them, especially women (since they live longer). The number of children per woman (1.18) is the lowest since 2000.
With these figures, the difference between births and deaths in 2020 is the worst since the INE records began, at the beginning of the 1940s: there are 153,167 more deaths (it is not the exact subtraction, since the INE includes in this data the births of a non-resident mother and deaths of non-residents, which do not enter into the individualized data of births and deaths). This data has been negative since 2015 and in 2019 it reached what, until now, was the worst record (57,355 deaths more than births), totally surpassed by the new record. "The negative balance of the previous three years is the equivalent of 2020," says Recaño. By territories, the worst balance is not that of the community with the most deaths, Madrid, but that of a territory that combines a great impact of the pandemic and an aging population: Castilla y León,with 22,543 more deaths than births. It is followed by Catalonia, with 21,659 more deaths, and Galicia, 17,610, with characteristics very similar to the Castilian-Leon community.
Recaño believes that in 2021, despite the fact that the pandemic has continued to cause deaths, mortality will fall: “Many older people who died from covid in 2020 are not going to die in the next few years.
In other words, the virus has anticipated the death of elderly people, so it is normal that there is not such a high mortality ”.
Marriages, kept to a minimum
The pandemic is also noticeable in marriages, which have fallen to a minimum since the first data offered by the INE, from 1941: there were 90,416 links in 2020, almost half that of 2019. Before the pandemic, the number of marriages was already going downhill. It has fallen since 2017 and 200,000 weddings have not been exceeded (a modest figure for the rest of the historical series) since 2007. In 2020 there was no cost for marriages, but a precipice: there were 76,114 fewer than in 2019. The restrictions imposed by the pandemic , which limited the number of attendees allowed to weddings, have been a deciding factor for this low number. The president of the population group of the Association of Spanish Geographers believes that in 2021 there will be a very considerable rebound in weddings, due to all those that were postponed in 2020.