Lanzarote Population

The island population has been marked in recent years by a dramatic increase in population. Between 1996 and 2006, its growth rate was ten times higher than that of the total Spanish population, and twice that of all the Canary Islands.

Over the past twenty years Lanzarote has more than doubled its population from 65,503 in 1988 to 139,506 in 2008. If we add the average number of daily tourists who are on the island (48,013 in 2007), the total population would amount to 180,379 habitants.

This rapid population growth is due to Lanzarote’s recorded crude birth rate, which is the highest in the Canary Islands (12.7 per thousand) and the crude death rate, which is the second lowest (4.3 per thousand) after Fuerteventura.

Its young population (youth rate of 16.8%, and average age of 33.2 years) with a high concentration of ages between 25 and 39 years, accounts for almost half of the total island population. Above all, population growth has been determined by immigration, which is 83% of the population growth in the last decade.

This has meant that for every inhabitant born on the island of Lanzarote in 2007, another came from outside. Residents with a different nationality than Spanish account for more than a quarter of the island population, with 36,202 registered foreigners in 2007.

Lanzarote has also seen a large immigration from mainland Spain, with 22,072 registered from other autonomous communities. The largest foreign colonies on the island, in order, are those originating from Colombia, the United Kingdom, Germany and Morocco.

The population density, considering the total population of the island, was 218 inhabitants per square kilometer in 2006. This is more than twice the national average.