Continuous Register
Statistical use of the register

Continuous Register

The Municipal Register is the administrative register where the municipality neighbours are registered. Its data constitutes proof of residence in the municipality and usual domicile in the same.

Its formation, maintenance, revision and custody corresponds to the Town Council, in agreement with the regulations approved jointly by the Exchequer and Ministry of Public Administration at the request of the Council electoral register, obtaining the Revision of the Municipal Register referred to 1 January of each year.

Law 4/1996 of 10 January, by which Law 7/1985 of 2 April, Regulator of the Local Regimen Bases in relation to the municipal Register and its regulatory development is modified, approved by Royal Decree 2612/1996 of 20 December by which the Regulation of Population and Territorial Demarcation of local entities establishes that the Town Councils must issue, via IT or telematic methods the monthly variations that occur in the Municipal register data at the National Institute of Statistics so that this institute, in fulfillment of the obligations that article 17.3 of the said Bases Law imposes, carries out the appropriate checks to correct errors and duplicates.

Once the said checks have been carried out, the National Institute of Statistics obtains a population figure for each municipality that is used to contrast the numerical results of the annual revision sent by the Town Councils according to what is established in article 81 of the Territorial Population and Demarcation Regulation of Local Entities. When an agreement cannot be reached, it defers to the Electoral Register Board for its report, in agreement with article 82.1 of the said regulation, the discrepancies with the population figure approved by the Town Councils.

The Electoral Register Board, in fulfillment of the functions attributed to it by article 17.4 of the Bases Law and article 85 of the Population Regulation gives information on the discrepancies between the Town Councils and the National Institute of Statistics as well as the proposal of official population figures from Spanish municipalities that the President of the National Institute of Statistics brings up for approval via Royal Decree.

Law 7/1985, Regulator of the Local Regimen Bases stated that in five years, in years ending in one and six, the Town Councils should carry out a Register Renewal via the ex-novo elaboration of its registers for which field trips were conducted to distribute registry sheets in all dwellings and collecting them once filled in by families. With the entry into force of Law 4/1996 a new system of register management was established via which the Registry renewals were suppressed. The 1996 renewal was the last one to be carried out. The first Register revision in agreement with the new management system referred to 1 January 1998.

Everybody who resides in Spain is obliged to register in the Municipal Register in which they habitually reside. Anyone who lives in several municipalities will have to register only in the one in which they spend more time in over the year.

The entry in the Municipal Register will contain only the following obligatory data on each neighbour:

a) Name and Surname

b) Sex

c) Usual domicile

d) Nationality

a) Place and date of birth

f) National Identity Document Number or in the case of foreigners, the document that replaces it.

 Municipal Register: statistical use

Law 4/1996 of 10 January, by which Law 7/1985 of 2 April, Regulator of the Local Regimen Bases and Regulation of Population and Territorial Demarcation relative to the municipal register is modified approved by Royal Decree 2612/1996 of 20 December by which the Regulation of Population and Territorial Demarcation of Local Entities is modified, approved by Royal Decree 1690/1986 of 11 July, establishes the regulations for the formation of the municipal register and the obtaining of population figures coming from the revision of the same to 1 January of each year.

In article 16 de of the said Law 4/1996, the registration data are related which must feature in the same.

The results of the variables included in the register that can be used statistically are presented here, in other words:

· Sex

· Nationality

· Place of birth

· Date of birth

· Place of residence

· Age

· Relation between place of residence and place of birth

The population figures coming from the municipal register revision to 1 January of the different Spanish municipalities are declared official by means of Royal Decree.

Based on the information used for this purpose the files that are used to carry out the statistical operation that is exhaustive are generated, in other words by studying the total registers contained in the registry files. Here validity controls of the different variables have been carried out, applying the Automatic Filtering and Imputation System (AFI) to all of them, giving rise to the final files which is the base from which the information is obtained.

For various reasons, in some cases, there is no exact coincidence between the figures derived from the files and those approved officially for which it is necessary to use correction factors, calculated on a register level, that on occasions give rise to differences in some units between the official figures and those that feature in the tables.

In some provinces it has not been possible that the INE has all municipality files when starting the statistical operation of the register for which the information for these municipalities does not appear in the tables obtained on a municipal level.

On the other hand, the information generated on a provincial, autonomous and national level contains the population of the municipalities mentioned distributed by means of the application of correction factors.

For the first time, 1-1-2006 figures reflect the previously unrecorded outflow of foreigners, as a result of the application of the expiration procedure of non communitary foreigner registrations lacking permanent residence permits which are not renewed every two years, established by virtue of the ammendment of article 16 of Law 7/1985 Regulating Local Regime Basis, by Organic Law 14/2003, dated 20 November.