The number of foreigners imprisoned in Spain has increased abnormally in just one year. According to data as of Dec. 31, 20,524 people are now born outside the country’s borders in the country’s prisons, up from 18,535 in 2024. … August from the Home Office Prisons General Secretariat, which the ABC can access through the transparency portal. This increase is 10.7%. This is the highest number since 2013. Considering that there are 61,858 people in prison, one in three prisoners (33.2%) are foreigners.
This is not an isolated increase, but part of a trend that started five years ago. The number of foreigners in Spanish prisons has increased from 15,918 in 2020 to more than 20,500 now. This equates to an increase of 26%. Meanwhile, the total prison population increased by 12% and for Spanish prisoners by 6%.
Additionally, Spain’s foreign population has increased significantly over the past decade, accounting for 14.3% of the total (9.9% in 2016), but the proportion of the foreign prison population is twice that of the total foreign population. Of course, Home Ministry officials say autonomous communities have not experienced such an increase. In Catalonia, where 19% of the population is foreign, more than half of prisoners are non-Spanish. And in the Community of Madrid, where 16.9% of the population is of foreign origin, the proportion reaches 46.9%. In the Balearic Islands and Castile and Leon, four out of ten people imprisoned are not Spanish nationals.
Looking at the distribution by country, there were 6,188 prisoners from Morocco, followed by Colombia (2,092) and Algeria (1,538). This was followed by Romania (1,332), Dominican Republic (631), Ecuador (604), Peru (543), Albania (507), Senegal (456) and Brazil (369).
According to data from the Fernando Grande-Marlaska police station, Moroccans make up 10% of the prison population, the same number as the following five countries, and account for 30.3% of the total foreign prison population: Additionally, that number increased by 13.1% last year, from 5,417 to 6,188. The proportion of Moroccans in prison is 1.9%, which is five times the presence of Moroccans in Spain’s total population. Colombians make up 10.2% of non-Spaniards imprisoned. Algerian, 7.5%. 6.5% Romanian, 3.1% Dominican. Filling this list in percentage terms are Ecuador (2.9%), Peru (2.6%), Albania (2.5%), Senegal (2.2%), and Brazil (1.8%).
Moroccan, Colombian and Romanian nationals are three of the largest foreign groups in Spain and therefore have a large number of prisoners, but neither Algeria nor the Dominican Republic is in the top 20. That is, their proportion in prison is much higher than their number in the total foreign population.
Among the countries with the largest number of Spanish nationals are Italy, the United Kingdom, Venezuela, China, Ukraine, and Honduras. However, they are not among the 10 most common nationalities among Spanish prison inmates. His presence in prison is proportionately low to his overall presence in Spain.
continental differences
There are also significant differences in the impact each continent has on these numbers. 45.1% of Spain’s foreign prisoners are from Africa, but only 19.7% of foreigners residing in Spain were born on the continent. The same thing doesn’t happen in America. The figures for the general population settled in Spain (34.9%) are very similar to those in prisons (30.1%).
The same thing happens to other Europeans and Asians. In Spain, foreigners born in the Old Continent make up the majority (4 out of 10), but in prisons they make up 21.7% of prisoners. Asians make up only 2.6% of foreign prisoners, compared to 8% of the total foreign population.
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