Zaragoza overtakes Seville in number of inhabitants... in the absence of INE ratification

2023-05-02T21:21:25.035Z

The provisional data sent by both cities to the National Institute of Statistics reveal that 880 more people live in the Aragonese capital than in the Andalusian

The big cities of Spain maintain a hidden competition to see which of them grows more and better.

The magic figure is the number of registered inhabitants.

The objective is to occupy the highest possible position, knowing that Madrid (3.3 million inhabitants) and Barcelona (1.6 million) are unbeatable and that Valencia still has a cushion as third (789,744 registered).

Behind, on the other hand, there has been an unusual overtaking: Zaragoza has surpassed Seville for the first time in population, according to provisional data provided by the city councils of both capitals to the National Statistics Institute (INE) on inhabitants registered in the Register at 1 January 2023. A

surprise

by little (880 people), despite the fact that both the Andalusian and Aragonese capitals have grown in population, always according to the figures of their respective consistories.

The data is provisional and has yet to be refined by the INE, which must ratify the numbers as if it were the soccer video assistant referee (VAR).

Last year it lowered the figures for both cities by around 10,000 people each, something that has not mattered to Seville or Zaragoza, which have made their official calculations with their own figures and not with the official ones for this year and the previous one. .

The Seville mayor himself, the socialist Antonio Muñoz, specifies that the report is provisional and has been communicated "so that it becomes an official figure."

The same as the Zaragoza City Hall.

Population is one of the factors determining municipal funding.

The advance, which has yet to be confirmed, had been suspected in recent years, in which the data for Seville and Zaragoza were becoming even.

A few days ago, the

Cifras

magazine, produced by the Municipal Statistical Observatory of the Aragonese City Council, stressed that the city has a "provisional figure" of 694,109 inhabitants, "which is indicative of an apparent increase in the population of the municipality set at 9,423 , given that the figure for the previous year amounted to 684,686, which represents an increase of 1.37%”.

The tricky statistics indicate that the city is recovering its population after having lost it in the last two years, a rebound that has gone hand in hand with the increase in the foreign population, which grows by 11,254 people.

The population that has risen the most is that of people from Nicaragua and Ukraine.

Zaragoza's population curve had been going up since 2017, with average increases of 10,000 registered inhabitants per year, but said curve turned downward in 2020, the year of the pandemic, and has rebounded strongly over the past year.

The Seville curve, on the other hand, was very different, since the graph showed a drop in glide of the population curve, always according to the INE data, already refined, which differ from those offered by the respective town halls.

Seville went from the 704,198 official residents it had in 2010, its millennium maximum, to 681,998 certified at the beginning of 2022.

More information

People also emigrate from Madrid: more than 300,000 residents left the region for Toledo, Guadalajara or the coast between 2020 and 2022

The capital of Seville has transferred to the INE that the population of the city is 693,229 inhabitants as of January 1, 2023, according to data from the Municipal Register.

The figure has been reached after a population increase of 2,202 human beings compared to the same date in 2022. The Seville mayor, the socialist Antonio Muñoz, has celebrated this increase, and has stressed that the "migratory balance of the city is the best of the last 10 years”.

In his opinion, provided in an audio file by the City Council, public housing policies and job creation have been “two key factors for population growth;

They are giving results."

In the previous year, Seville had informed the INE that it had 691,215 fellow citizens, but the state body refined the data and lowered it to 681,898.

The same happened with Zaragoza, where the City Council reported that it started last year with 684,686, but the INE lowered the figure to 673,010 people.

That is, a difference of approximately 10,000 people in both cases.

And given the tightness of the overtaking (it does not reach 900 souls in favor of Aragón), the fight for fourth place should not be considered closed

This Tuesday, the PP candidate for Seville mayor, José Luis Sanz, has blamed the socialist mayor for the overtaking, for the "urban paralysis and the drop in the quality of life in the neighborhoods", as reported by Efe.

Sanz explained in a statement that "in 2015 Seville had 693,878 inhabitants compared to 681,998 as of January 2022, which translates into 11,880 fewer inhabitants, according to the INE", than for years, from the 2010-2011 interval. , has been showing a progressive demographic decline in the capital Seville, while reflecting a constant growth in the population of the municipalities of the first metropolitan area, since Dos Hermanas, for example, already accounts for 137,561 inhabitants.