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Country information

General overview

  • Area: 506,000 km²
  • Population: 48,446,594 hab (INE, 2023)
  • Capital: Madrid
  • Principal urban areas and number of inhabitants: Madrid (3.280.782), Barcelona (1.636.193), Valencia (792.492), Seville (681.998), Saragossa (673.010), Malaga (579.076), Murcia (462.979) (INE - Spanish National Statistics Office, 2022)
  • Official language and other recognised languages: Castilian (and Catalan, Basque, Galician)
  • Regions: 17 autonomous communities (Andalusia, Aragon, Principality of Asturias, Balearic Islands, Canary Islands, Cantabria, Castile - Leon, Castile-La Mancha, Catalonia, Extremadura, Galicia, La Rioja, Madrid, Murcia, Navarre, Basque Country, Valencia) and two autonomous cities (Ceuta and Melilla).
  • Religious situation: According to the most recent survey data (November 2023) from the Barómetro of the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, a public opinion research institution, the Spanish society identifies as:
     Practicing Catholic: 18,3%
     Non-practicing Catholic: 37,3%
     Believer from another religion: 3,4%
     Agnostic: 11,9%
     Indiferent/non-believer: 12,5%
     Atheist: 14,8%
     No-response: 1,8%
    This data for the whole population varies significantly between men and women, with more women declaring themselves Catholic (practicing or not) and with the younger generations also identifying more as nonreligious than the older groups.
    According to the “Observatory of Religious Pluralism in Spain” providing data about the places of worship of minority religions, 56% of the centers belong to Protestant churches, 22% to Muslim communities, 8% are Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom’s Halls, 3% belong to Buddhists, 2% to Adventists, 1% to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and to Baha’is. Centers belonging to Jews, Hinduists, Scientologists and other religious represent less than 1% of the total of religious minorities’ places of worship (Observatorio del Pluralismo Religioso, 2022).

D 7 December 2023    AJulia Martínez-Ariño ARosa Martínez-Cuadros

CNRS Unistra Dres Gsrl

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