Seven years of more deaths than births

The starting point is not a migration figure but a birth figure. According to the INE's provisional estimate of 18 February 2026, 11,672 children were born in the Canaries in 2025 while 18,580 people died: a balance of minus 6,908. Deaths rose by 5.9 percent, more than double the Spanish average of 2.5 percent. This is not an outlier. On 23 February 2026 ISTAC reported minus 5,846 for 2024 — the seventh negative year in a row. Without arrivals, the Canary population would be shrinking.

What the 343 percent measures

The figure comes from ISTAC population data analysed by the news agency EFE on 7 August 2026. It compares two reference years: in 2000, 77,196 people of foreign nationality lived in the Canaries; in 2025 the number was 342,612 — almost four and a half times as many. Their share of the population therefore stands at 15.17 percent, against 13.26 percent in 2021. Over the same quarter-century the population as a whole grew by 31.6 percent, according to the Consejo General de Economistas.

The ranking: Italy first, Germany fourth

The order recorded by ISTAC for 2025 does not match the picture of a British and German archipelago. Italy leads with 55,553 people, followed by Colombia with 32,381, Venezuela with 28,200, Germany with 27,631 and the United Kingdom with 25,740; then Morocco with 20,382, Cuba with 17,499 and China with 10,656. The movement since 2021 says more still: Colombia up 98.56 percent, while the British group shrank by 11.23 percent.

Country of birth and passport are two different numbers

Two of the measures here do not count the same thing, and confusing them is the commonest source of error. At 1 July 2026 the INE counts 553,265 residents of the Canaries born abroad, 24.3 percent; for 2025 ISTAC counts 342,612 people holding a foreign passport, 15.17 percent. Behind the gap of a good 200,000 stand mostly naturalised Spaniards. The ECCA Social foundation set this out on 2 December 2025: 88,602 residents were born in Venezuela but only 28,200 hold a Venezuelan passport; for Colombia, 54,362 people born there face 32,381 passports. The report points to the accelerated naturalisation of Latin Americans, possible in Spain after two years. By country of birth, then, Venezuela, Cuba and Colombia lead — by nationality, Italy.

Unevenly spread — and slowing down

Between the islands the differences are wide. On ISTAC data for 2025, Fuerteventura leads with 31.30 percent (40,402 people), ahead of Lanzarote at 24.58 percent (41,020); Tenerife stands at 15.90 percent (153,696) and Gran Canaria last at 10.26 percent (89,813). Notably, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote were the only islands with a positive natural balance in 2024, plus 278 and plus 187, against minus 2,920 on Tenerife and minus 2,848 on Gran Canaria. At the same time growth is slowing: in the first half of 2026 the Canaries gained just 1,460 residents according to the INE, and 0.03 percent in the second quarter — the lowest of any Spanish region.