The Spanish diaspora consists of Spanish people and their descendants who emigrated from Spain.
In the Americas, the term most often refers to residents with Spanish nationality; this is in contrast to "Hispanic" which in English usually describes Spanish-speaking populations in general.
The diaspora is concentrated in places that were part of the Spanish Empire. Countries with sizeable populations are Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, and, to a lesser extent, Brazil, Belize, Haiti, United States, Canada, the Philippines and wider Europe.
According to the latest data from the 's Register of Spaniards Resident Abroad (PERE), "the number of people with Spanish nationality living abroad reached 3,045,966 on January 1, 2025, an increase of 4.7% (137,317 people) with respect to the data from the same day last year". However, most of them are naturalized citizens returning to their countries of origin or remigrating elsewhere; only about 855,000 natural born Spaniards (about 2% of the population) live overseas.
History Origins (1402–1521) Castile, under the reign of Henry III, began the colonization of the Canary Islands in 1402, authorizing under feudal agreement to Norman noblemen Jean de Béthencourt. The conquest of the Canary Islands, inhabited by Guanche people, was only finished when the armies of the Crown of Castille won, in long and bloody wars, the islands of Gran Canaria (1478–1483), La Palma (1492–1493) and Tenerife (1494–1496).
The marriage of the (Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile) created a confederation of reigns, each with their own administrations, but ruled by a common monarchy. According to Henry Kamen, it was only after centuries of a common rule that these separate realms formed a fully unified state.
In 1492, Spain drove out the last Moorish king of Granada. After their victory, the Catholic monarchs negotiated with Christopher Columbus, a Genoese sailor attempting to reach Cipangu by sailing west. Castile was already engaged in a race of exploration with Portugal to reach the Far East by sea when Columbus made his bold proposal to Isabella. Columbus instead inadvertently "discovered" the Americas, inaugurating the Spanish colonization of the continents. The Indies were reserved for Castile.
Age of Discovery After the Age of Discovery, the Spanish were the earliest and one of the largest communities to emigrate out of Europe, and the Spanish Empire's expansion during the first half of the 16th century saw an "extraordinary dispersion of the Spanish people", with particular concentrations "in North and South America", mainly the vice-royalties of the New Spain and Peru.
During the first half of the 16th century, following the Age of Discovery, the Spanish became one of Europe's first and largest emigrating populations. The rapid expansion of the Spanish Empire led to an unprecedented dispersal of Spanish people, primarily concentrated in the vice-royalties of New Spain and Peru in the Americas.
After the 19th century Between 1846 and 1932 nearly five million Spaniards went to the Americas, mostly to South America in general and to Argentina and Brazil in particular.
Unprecedented waves of emigrants left Spain during the sixties and the seventies for other European countries. However, shortly after signing the Treaty of Adherence to join the European Community in 1985, Spain went from being a sender to a receiver country.
Africa
Conquest of the Canary Islands
The first period of the conquest of the Canaries was carried out by the Norman nobles Jean de Béthencourt and Gadifer de la Salle. Their motives were primarily economic as Béthencourt possessed textile factories and dye works and the Canaries offered a source of dyes such as the orchil lichen. The treaty settled disputes between Castile and Portucalense County over the control of the Atlantic, in which Castilian control of the Canary islands was recognized but which also confirmed Portuguese possession of the Azores, Madeira, the Cape Verde islands and gave them rights to lands discovered and to be discovered as well as any other island which might be found and conquered from the Canary islands beyond toward Guinea.
The Castilians continued to dominate the islands, but due to the topography and the resistance of the native Guanches, complete pacification was not achieved until 1495, when Tenerife and La Palma were finally subdued by Alonso Fernández de Lugo. After that, the Canaries were incorporated into the Kingdom of Castile.
The islands were conquered by mostly Andalusians and some Castilians at the beginnings of the 15th century. In 1402, they began to subdue the native Guanche population and the Guanches were initially enslaved and gradually absorbed by the Spanish colonizers.
After subsequent settlement by Spaniards and other European peoples, mainly Portuguese, the remaining Guanches were gradually diluted by the settlers and their culture largely vanished. Alonso Fernández de Lugo, conqueror of Tenerife and La Palma, oversaw extensive immigration to these islands from the late 1490s to the 1520s from mainland Europe, and immigrants included Galicians, Castilians, Portuguese, Italians, Catalans, Basques and Flemings. At subsequent judicial enquiries, Fernández de Lugo was accused of favoring Genoese and Portuguese immigrants over Castilians.History of La Palma
Equatorial Guinea
Americas Argentina
Spanish emigrant settlements were established in Argentina in the period before Argentina's independence from Spain, and again in larger numbers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Between the 15th and 19th centuries, the Spanish Empire was the sole colonial power in the territories that became Argentina after the 1816 Argentine Declaration of Independence. Thus, before 1816, a large number of the European settlers in Argentina were from Spain, and they conducted Spanish colonial administration, including religious affairs, government, and commercial business. A substantial Spanish-descended Criollo population gradually built up in the new cities, while some mixed with the indigenous populations (Mestizos), with the black slave population (Mulattoes), or with other European immigrants. Since a great part of the immigrants to Argentina before the mid-19th century were of Spanish descent, and the fact that a significant part of the late-19th century/early-20th century immigrants to Argentina were Spaniards, the vast majority of Argentinians are of mostly Spanish ancestry. However, this prevalence and the numerous shared cultural aspects between Argentina and Spain (the Spanish language, Roman Catholicism, Criollo/Hispanic traditions), massive immigration to Argentina at the turn of the 20th century involved a majority of non-Spanish peoples from all over Europe.
Bolivia
Bolivian people of European ancestry are predominantly descended from the people who emigrated from Spain beginning five hundred years ago.
In the official census in 1900, people who self-identified as "Blanco" (white) composed 12.72% or 231,088 people in the total population. This was the last time data on race was collected. There were 529 Italians, 420 Spaniards, 295 Germans, 279 French, 177 Austrians, 141 English and 23 Belgians living in Bolivia.
Brazil
Spanish immigration was the third largest among immigrant groups in Brazil; about 750,000 immigrants entered Brazil from Spanish ports (a number smaller only than that of Argentina and Cuba after the independence of Latin American countries).Entrada de estrangeiros no Brasil Brazilian censuses do not research "ethnic origins" or ancestry, which makes it very difficult to give accurate numbers of Brazilians of Spanish descent. In a 1998 research, the scope of which, however, is limited (it covers only six metropolitan regions), Brazilians claiming Spanish descent were 4.4% of Brazil's population.Simon Schwartzman. Fora de foco: diversidade e identidade étnicas no Brasil. Quadro 2, p. 7.
Canada
The population of Canadians of Spanish descent is 342,040.
Chile
The earliest European immigrants were Spanish colonisers who arrived in the 16th century. They came to form the majority of the population by the time of Chilean independence.Vascos en Chile. They came mainly from Castile and Andalusia and formed the majority population. In the 18th and 19th centuries, many Basques from both Spain and France came to Chile where they integrated into the existing elites of Castilian origin. Other European nationalities then followed and also became rich and fused with each other and the Basque–Castilian elite to create modern Chilean culture. In the 20th century, there was an influx of refugees of the Spanish Civil War and Franco's regime. (see Winnipeg ship). They have kept their Spanish national identity and set up Spanish clubs throughout the country. The Spanish culture of the original settlers slowly evolved into Chilean folk culture, especially the huaso culture, and at the time of independence had abandoned national affiliation with Spain.
Colombia
Spanish emigration to Colombia began in the early 16th century and continues to the present day. About 500,000 Spaniards emigrated to Colombia during the colonial period. There are currently over 27,000 Spanish immigrants in Colombia.
Cuba
Spanish immigration to Cuba began in 1492, when Christopher Columbus first landed on the island. The first sighting of a Spanish boat approaching the island was on October 28, 1492, probably at Baracoa on the eastern point of the island. Christopher Columbus, on his first voyage to the Americas, sailed south from what is now the Bahamas to explore the northeast coast of Cuba and the northern coast of Hispaniola. Columbus found the island believing it to be a peninsula of the Asian mainland. In 1511, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar set out with three ships and an army of 300 men from Santo Domingo to form the first Spanish settlement in Cuba, with orders from Spain to conquer the island. Most heritage comes from Canarians, Asturians, Galicians and Castilians. The native white population are nearly all descendants of the Spaniards.
20th century Other results show that between 1902 and 1931, 780,400 (60.8%) were from Spain, 197,600 (15.4%) from Haiti, 115,600 (9.0%) from Jamaica and 190,300 (14.8%) other countries.Fazer a América: a imigração em massa para a América Latina By Boris Fausto
In 2020, there were 147,617 people in Cuba with Spanish citizenship.
Dominican Republic