Official population figures of the Spanish Municipalities: Revision of the Municipal Register

• 1. Contact

  • 1.1. Contact organisation

    • National Statistics Institute of Spain

  • 1.5. Contact mail address

    • Avenida de Manoteras 50-52 - 28050 Madrid

• 2. Metadata update

  • 2.1. Metadata last certified

    • 10/01/2025

  • 2.2. Metadata last posted

    • 13/12/2024

  • 2.3. Metadata last update

    • 10/01/2025

• 3. Statistical presentation

  • 3.1. Data description

    • The population figures, broken down by sex, are published for all Spanish municipalities at 1 January each year.

      These figures are passed by the Government, via the Royal Decree declaring the population figures resulting from the revision of the municipal register, referring to 1 January each year, to be official.

      It gathers the population resulting from the municipal registers, after applying the coordination of all of them, and the figure procedure established in the Resolution dated 20 July 2018, of the Presidency of the National Statistics Institute and the General Directorate for Local and Regional Cooperation, dictating technical instructions to the Municipal Councils regarding the annual revision of the Municipal Register and about the procedure for obtaining the proposal for official population figures.

       

  • 3.2. Classification system
    • • Comunidades y Ciudades Autónomas

        • 01   Andalucía 02   Aragón 03   Asturias, Principado de 04   Balears, Illes 05   Canarias 06   Cantabria 07   Castilla y León 08   Castilla - La Mancha 09   Cataluña 10   Comunitat Valenciana 11   Extremadura 12   Galicia 13   Madrid, Comunidad de 14   Murcia, Región de 15   Navarra, Comunidad Foral de 16   País Vasco 17   Rioja, La 18   Ceuta 19   Melilla

      • Islas

        • 07   Balears, Illes      07071   Formentera      07072   Eivissa      07073   Mallorca      07074   Menorca 35   Palmas, Las      35351   Fuerteventura      35352   Gran Canaria      35353   Lanzarote 38   Santa Cruz de Tenerife      38381   Gomera, La      38382   Hierro, El      38383   Palma, La      38384   Tenerife

      • Municipios
        • Relación de municipios y sus códigos acorde al estándar del INE Ver clasificación
      • Provincias

        • 02   Albacete 03   Alicante/Alacant 04   Almería 01   Araba/Álava 33   Asturias 05   Ávila 06   Badajoz 07   Balears, Illes 08   Barcelona 48   Bizkaia 09   Burgos 10   Cáceres 11   Cádiz 39   Cantabria 12   Castellón/Castelló 13   Ciudad Real 14   Córdoba 15   Coruña, A 16   Cuenca 20   Gipuzkoa 17   Girona 18   Granada 19   Guadalajara 21   Huelva 22   Huesca 23   Jaén 24   León 25   Lleida 27   Lugo 28   Madrid 29   Málaga 30   Murcia 31   Navarra 32   Ourense 34   Palencia 35   Palmas, Las 36   Pontevedra 26   Rioja, La 37   Salamanca 38   Santa Cruz de Tenerife 40   Segovia 41   Sevilla 42   Soria 43   Tarragona 44   Teruel 45   Toledo 46   Valencia/València 47   Valladolid 49   Zamora 50   Zaragoza 51   Ceuta 52   Melilla

      • Sexo

        • 1   Hombres 2   Mujeres

  • 3.3. Sector coverage

    • It includes all those persons registered in Spain. Law 7/1985, Regulating the Law on Local Ordinances, establishes the compulsory nature of registering all persons living in Spain in the Municipal Register, not making any distinction due to nationality, nor requiring legal residence in Spain.

  • 3.4. Statistical concepts and definitions
    • • Citizenship

        • Citizenship is defined as the particular legal bond between an individual and his/her State,, acquired by birth or naturalisation, whether by declaration, option, marriage or other means according to the national legislation.

      • Municipality

        • The municipality is the basic local entity of the territorial organisation of the State. It has a legal nature, and full capacity to meet its objectives.

      • Place of birth

        • Place where a person was born, in other words, the place of habitual residence of the mother at the time of birth, determined on the date of collecting data.

      • Resident population

        • The population resident in a given geographical scope is defined as those persons who, on the reference date, have established their usual residence therein.

      • Sex

        • Sex refers to the biological sex of the person. According to the WHO, "sex" refers to biological and physiological features defining to men and women, whereas "gender" refers to the roles, behaviour, activities and attributes constructed socially that a specific culture regards as appropriate for men and women. In accordance with this description, the WHO regards "man" and "woman" as sex categories, whereas "male" and "female" are gender categories.

  • 3.5. Statistical unit

    • The basic unit of the statistics is the person resident in Spain and registered in the INE municipal register database.

  • 3.6. Statistical population

    • The target population of study of the statistics are all those persons registered in Spain.

  • 3.7. Reference area

    • The statistics cover the whole of the national territory. Data are published by province and municipality.

  • 3.8. Time coverage

    • The figures are obtained annually, with the reference date being 1 January each year, with the results available as of the year 1998. The figures from the Renewal of the Municipal Register of Inhabitants on 1 May 1996 are also available.

       

  • 3.9. Base period

    • The series begins with the data from 1 January 1998.

• 4. Unit of measure

  • 4.1. Unit of measure

    • Number of persons.

• 5. Reference period

  • 5.1. Reference period

    • 1 January each year

      Data referred to the period: Anual A: 2024

• 6. Institutional mandate

  • 6.1. Legal acts and other agreements

    • The compilation and dissemination of the data are governed by the Statistical Law No. 12/1989 "Public Statistical Function" of May 9, 1989, and Law No. 4/1990 of June 29 on “National Budget of State for the year 1990" amended by Law No. 13/1996 "Fiscal, administrative and social measures" of December 30, 1996, makes compulsory all statistics included in the National Statistics Plan. The National Statistical Plan 2009-2012 was approved by the Royal Decree 1663/2008. It contains the statistics that must be developed in the four year period by the State General Administration's services or any other entity dependent on it. All statistics included in the National Statistics Plan are statistics for state purposes and are obligatory. The National Statistics Plan 2021-2024, approved by Royal Decree 1110/2020, of 15  December, is the Plan currently implemented. This statistical operation has governmental purposes, and it is included in the National Statistics Plan 2021-2024. (Statistics of the State Administration).

      The INE is obligated by Law (article 17.3 of Law 7/1985, Regulating the Law on Local Ordinances) to submit the proposal of official population figures for Spanish municipalities to the National Government, for approval, based on the coordination carried out by the Municipal Registers. The procedure for obtaining the population figures resulting from the Municipal Register Revision at 1 January contains different phases, and is regulated in the Resolution dated 20 July 2018, of the Presidency of the National Statistics Institute and the General Directorate for Local and Regional Cooperation, dictating technical instructions to the Municipal Councils regarding the annual revision of the Municipal Register and about the procedure for obtaining the proposal for official population figures.

       

  • 6.2. Data sharing

    • The exchanges of information needed to elaborate statistics between the INE and the rest of the State statistical offices (Ministerial Departments, independent bodies and administrative bodies depending on the State General Administration), or between these offices and the Autonomic statistical offices, are regulated in the LFEP (Law of the Public Statistic Function). This law also regulates the mechanisms of statistical coordination, and concludes cooperation agreements between the different offices when necessary.

      .

• 7. Confidentiality

  • 7.1. Confidentiality - policy

    • The Statistical Law No. 12/1989 specifies that the INE cannot publish, or make otherwise available, individual data or statistics that would enable the identification of data for any individual person or entity. Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics stipulates the need to establish common principles and guidelines ensuring the confidentiality of data used for the production of European statistics and the access to those confidential data with due account for technical developments and the requirements of users in a democratic society

  • 7.2. Confidentiality - data treatment

    • INE provides information on the protection of confidentiality at all stages of the statistical process: INE questionnaires for the operations in the national statistical plan include a legal clause protecting data under statistical confidentiality. Notices prior to data collection announcing a statistical operation notify respondents that data are subject to statistical confidentiality at all stages. For data processing, INE employees have available the INE data protection handbook, which specifies the steps that should be taken at each stage of processing to ensure reporting units' individual data are protected. The microdata files provided to users are anonymised.

      Given the nature of the statistical operation (to disseminate the figures passed by Royal Decree on a municipal level), this is not applicable.

• 8. Release policy

  • 8.1. Release calendar

    • The advance release calendar that shows the precise release dates for the coming year is disseminated in the last quarter of each year.

  • 8.2. Release calendar access

    • The calendar is disseminated on the INEs Internet website (Publications Calendar)

  • 8.3. User access

    • The data are released simultaneously according to the advance release calendar to all interested parties by issuing the press release. At the same time, the data are posted on the INE's Internet website (www.ine.es/en) almost immediately after the press release is issued. Also some predefined tailor-made requests are sent to registered users. Some users could receive partial information under embargo as it is publicly described in the European Statistics Code of Practice

• 9. Frequency of dissemination

  • 9.1. Frequency of dissemination

    • The population figures are disseminated annually.

• 10. Accessibility and clarity

  • 10.1. News release

    • The results of the statistical operations are normally disseminated by using press releases that can be accessed via both the corresponding menu and the Press Releases Section in the web

  • 10.2. Publications

    • The official population figures are disseminated via the INE website.

  • 10.3. On-line database

    • INEbase is the system the INE uses to store statistical information on the Internet. It contains all the information the INE produces in electronic formats. The primary organisation of the information follows the theme-based classification of the Inventory of Statistical Operations of the State General Administration . The basic unit of INEbase is the statistical operation, defined as the set of activities that lead to obtaining statistical results on a determined sector or subject based on the individually collected data. Also included in the scope of this definition are synthesis preparation.

      Access to the figures on the https://www.ine.es website in INEBase, within the Demographics and Population-Municipal register:

      https://www.ine.es/dyngs/INEbase/en/operacion.htm?c=Estadistica_C&cid=1254736177011&menu=resultados&idp=1254734710990 Number of queries to the data tables AC1 during 2023 = 1 375 147

  • 10.4. Micro-data access
    • A lot of statistical operations disseminate public domain anonymized files, available free of charge for downloading in the INE website Microdata Section

      Given the nature of the operation, these concepts are not applicable.

  • 10.5. Other

    • In addition to the population by municipality, other series of tables until 2021 on variations of the population and distribution of the municipalities according to size, are published.

  • 10.6. Documentation on methodology

    • Information is available at:

      https://www.ine.es/dyngs/INEbase/en/operacion.htm?c=Estadistica_C&cid=1254736177011&menu=metodologia&idp=1254734710990

  • 10.7. Quality documentation

    • Fields 10.6 to 17 of this document may be considered the quality report intended for users for this operation.

       

• 11. Quality management

  • 11.1. Quality assurance

    • Quality assurance framework for the INE statistics is based on the ESSCoP, the European Statistics Code of Practice made by EUROSTAT. The ESSCoP is made up of 16 principles, gathered in three areas: Institutional Environment, Processes and Products. Each principle is associated with some indicators which make possible to measure it. In order to evaluate quality, EUROSTAT provides different tools: the indicators mentioned above, Self-assessment based on the DESAP model, peer review, user satisfaction surveys and other proceedings for evaluation.

      Quality assurance framework for the INE statistics is based on the ESSCoP, the European Statistics Code of Practice made by EUROSTAT. The ESSCoP is made up of 16 principles, gathered in three areas: Institutional Environment, Processes and Products. Each principle is associated with some indicators which make possible to measure it. In order to evaluate quality, EUROSTAT provides different tools: the indicators mentioned above, Self-assessment based on the DESAP model, peer review, user satisfaction surveys and other proceedings for evaluation.

      The official population figures of the Spanish municipalities are the result of an "administrative procedure" provided for in Law 7/1985, of April 2, Regulating the Bases of the Local Regime and in the Regulation of Population and Territorial Demarcation of the Local Entities approved by RD 1690/1986, which is defined in the Resolution of July 20, 2018 of the Presidency of the National Institute of Statistics and of the General Directorate of Autonomous and Local Cooperation, on technical instructions to the City Councils on the review annual municipal register and the procedure for obtaining the proposal for official population figures.

      The procedure itself, by including a contrast between the registry files of the INE and those of the Municipal Councils, with the formulation of objections by the INE to the proposed figure of the Municipal Councils and the presentation of Allegations by the latter, as well as the report of discrepancies of the Registration Council, are a guarantee of quality.

      Also the fact that the INE is the independent autonomous body that carries out the coordination of the municipal registers to avoid duplication between them and who transfers the relevant information from other organizations to update them, such as, for example, information on births and deaths, or of the groups of foreigners who must periodically renew their registration or for whom their residence in the municipality must be confirmed, among others.

       

  • 11.2. Quality assessment

    • The procedure is adjusted every year as new situations arise that make it advisable. They are raised in the Registration Council and the agreements are disseminated to all Municipal Councils through the IDA-Padrón exchange application for general knowledge, as far that they must adjust their management procedures or for the formulation of allegations.

• 12. Relevance

  • 12.1. User needs

    • These population figures are official, and they are used to determine the number of delegates by electoral zone, to set the number of councilpersons to choose in the municipal elections, to make decisions that affect the financing and jurisdiction of the municipalities and for those purposes expressly set out by law.

      Users worth noting include the following:

      - Ministries and other public bodies

      - Territorial Administrations (Autonomous Communities, provincial delegations and municipal councils)

      - Universities and research centres

      - Businesses

      - The press and specialised media

      - Individuals

      - Other INE units

      - The Congress and the Senate: parliamentary matters

      - International organisations: Eurostat, OECD, etc.

      On some occasions, the requests refer to population figures with different reference dates throughout the year, and cannot be answered, as by law, the Revision of the municipal registers from which the official population figures are derived must be carried out on 1 January each year.

  • 12.2. User satisfaction

    • The INE has carried out general user satisfaction surveys in 2007, 2010, 2013,  2016 and 2019 and it plans to continue doing so every three years. The purpose of these surveys is to find out what users think about the quality of the information of the INE statistics and the extent to which their needs of information are covered. In addition, additional surveys are carried out in order to acknowledge better other fields such as dissemination of the information, quality of some publications...

      On the INE website, in its section Methods and Projects / Quality and Code of Practice / INE quality management / User surveys are available surveys conducted to date.(Click  next link)

       

      .

  • 12.3. Completeness

    • All of the information required, according to the relevant guidelines and regulations, is available. Therefore, the rate of compulsory information available is R1=100%.

       

• 13. Accuracy and reliability

  • 13.1. Overall accuracy

    • The global reliability of the figures is guaranteed by the procedure applied to obtain them, which is described in the Resolution of July 20, 2018. The figures published are those resulting after the estimation / dismissal of allegations.

       

  • 13.2. Sampling error

    • Sampling errors do not occur, as this is the direct use of a register.

  • 13.3. Non-sampling error

    • The data is from an administrative register, and all of the accepted units have information, with a possible existence of some occasional errors affecting the sex variable in approximately 0.14% of the records, and which are filtered in the different phases.

      Regarding the register coverage, for Spaniards, it is considered that the incidence of omissions is very small, as registration is a requirement for many administrative processes.

      Regarding over-coverage, in the case of Spaniards who transfer from Spain to locations abroad, this appears in the Municipal Register only if they register in the Consular Registers, which does not always occur, and therefore, they may continue to appear as residents in Spain, when they actually reside abroad.

      As per foreign nationals who leave Spain and transfer to other countries, depending on whether or not they are community nationals, and according to the type of residence permit they have, they may remain registered in the Municipal Register for 2 or 5 years (according to the case), until a process for delisting by expiry is applied (for not community citizens and those without permanent residence permits, ENCSARP) or delisting due to undue registration (for the rest, NO_ENCSARP).

• 14. Timeliness and punctuality

  • 14.1. Timeliness

    • The official figures for year t are published by the end of December of year t, that is, following a TP2=365 days.

       

  • 14.2. Punctuality

    • The figures are made available on the INE website the day after publication of the Government Royal Decree in the Official State Gazette, stating that they are official.

• 15. Coherence and Comparability

  • 15.1. Comparability - geographical

    • All the data is comparable for any territorial breakdown, as they all come from the municipal registers, which are governed by the same regulations, and which are coordinated by the INE.

  • 15.2. Comparability - over time

    • The data from the statistics is comparable as of 1998, which are figures already obtained at 1 January each year, using the implementation of the new municipal register management system, and therefore, the number of comparable elements from the time series is CC2=27.

       

  • 15.3. Coherence - cross domain

    • The figures from the Continuous Municipal Register Statistics coincide with the figures from the Official Population Figures, given that they use the same source, and they are the result of the same procedure.

      However, there are differences between the figures obtained in the Population Now Cast and those from the Population Censuses, which are justified by the different methodologies followed. Some of the differences with the figures from the Population Censuses are also due to the fact that they have different reference dates.

  • 15.4. Coherence - internal

    • All of the results are obtained from an administrative register, and they are coherent amongst themselves.

• 16. Cost and burden

  • 16.1. Cost and burden

    • Given that the figures are obtained directly from the INE municipal register database, there are no cost associated with the collection, nor is there a response burden.

      The stimation of the budgetary credit necessary to finance these statistics as foreseen in the 2024 Annual Programme comes to a total of 227.03 thousand euros.

       

• 17. Data revision

  • 17.1. Data revision - policy

    • The INE of Spain has a policy which regulates the basic aspects of statistical data revision, seeking to ensure process transparency and product quality. This policy is laid out in the document approved by the INE board of directors on 13 March of 2015, which is available on the INE website, in the section "Methods and projects/Quality and Code of Practice/INE’s Quality management/INE’s Revision policy" (link).

      This general policy sets the criteria that the different type of revisions should follow:  routine revision- it is the case of statistics whose production process includes regular revisions-; more extensive revision- when methodological or basic reference source changes take place-; and exceptional revision- for instance, when an error appears in a published statistic-.

      Once the figures are passed by the Government, and declared official by Royal Decree published in the BOE, they are no longer revised.

  • 17.2. Data revision - practice

    • Provisional data is not published.

• 18. Statistical processing

  • 18.1. Source data

    • The population figures are obtained using the coordination of the Municipal registers.

      The Municipal register is an administrative register where the neighbours of the municipality are recorded. All persons living in Spain are obligated to register in the Municipal Register of the municipality where they regularly reside. Persons who live in several municipalities must register only in that in which they reside the longest during the year.

      The municipal councils are responsible for the preparation, updating, revision and supervision thereof, as they must perform the actions and operations necessary for the data in their Municipal registers to coincide with reality. The municipal councils manages the registers by computer, and in those cases in which they lack the means of doing so, the registers are managed by the Provincial Delegations.

  • 18.2. Frequency of data collection

    • Law 7/1985, of 2 April, Regulating the Law on the Local Ordinances and the Population and Territorial Demarcation Regulation of Local Entities, establish that the Municipal Councils must submit those monthly variations that occur in the data in their Municipal registers to the National Statistics Institute, by computer or telematic media, so that the INE, in compliance with its obligations as set out in article 17.3 of the aforementioned Law on Local Ordinances, may perform the corresponding verifications for the purpose of correcting possible errors and avoiding duplicities, and so that the official figures resulting from the annual revisions may be declared official.

  • 18.3. Data collection

    • The municipal councils are in charge of keeping their municipal registers permanently updated, with the data stated by citizens, and they must carry out the updates and operations that are necessary for the data in their municipal registers to coincide with reality. Likewise, each month, the municipal councils must send the INE all of the variations occurring therein (registrations, delistings and modifications), with the INE being in charge of the coordination of all of the municipal registers, so as to avoid duplicities occurring among the different municipal registers.

  • 18.4. Data validation

    • The Municipal registers are administrative registers that are updated continuously.

      The INE is attributed the coordination of the municipal registers of all of the municipalities, and of these with the Register of Spaniards Resident Abroad (RSRA), and in this way, the Municipal register database of the INE remains permanently updated.

      The population figures are obtained following a complex contrasting process of the INE Municipal register database with the municipal register file from each municipal council (all referring to 1 January each year) up to the record (inhabitant) level.

      The Registration Council, in compliance with the functions attributed to it in article 17.4 of Law 7/1985, and article 85 of the Population Regulation, passes the proposed decision of the INE President binding dispute resolution of the discrepancies between the Municipal councils and the latter, and notifies, with a binding nature, on the proposal of official population figures of Spanish municipalities that the Government of the INE President passes for approval via Royal Decree.

      A process is also conducted to detect possible incoherences in the sex variable, contrasting with sources from the Home Office.

  • 18.5. Data compilation

    • The file from which the official population figures are obtained is filtered for the sex variable, so that no invalid values appear.

  • 18.6. Adjustment

    • Neither seasonal adjustments are made, nor are there decompositions of time series nor other similar methods.

• 19. Comment

  • 19.1. Comment