Romanians in Spain

Romanians form the second largest group of foreigners in Spain, after Moroccans. , there were 535,935 people born in Romania who lived in Spain. Most of the immigration took place given economic reasons. The linguistic similarities between Romanian and Spanish, as well as Romanians' Latin identity, are also a reason for the country's attractiveness to Romanians.

Background
After the December, 1989 Romanian Revolution, emigration was liberalized, but for the next few years, emigration to Spain was modest. It started to increase slowly during the late 1990s, and exploded after 2002. Emigration was further facilitated by the entry of Romania in the EU in 2007. By 2011, it reached a peak of nearly 900,000 people, after which the Romanian population has been steadily decreasing as a result of emigration from Spain since 2012 due to the economic problems and unemployment in the country, falling to 623,097 by 2022. Because of this, the diaspora in Italy, which has continued to increase, is now considerably larger than that in Spain.

Population
Romanian diaspora in Spain is today the second Romanian diaspora in the EU, after that of Italy. Romanians in Spain have settled especially in the provinces of Madrid, Castellón, Valencia, Zaragoza and Barcelona.



Notable individuals

 * Alexandru Buligan (born 1960), handball player and coach
 * Mihaela Ciobanu (born 1973), handball player
 * Cosmin Contra (born 1975), footballer and coach
 * Gheorghe Craioveanu (born 1968), footballer
 * Alexandru Dedu (born 1971), handball player
 * Constantin Gâlcă (born 1972), footballer and coach
 * Cristian Ganea (born 1992), footballer
 * Adrian Ilie (born 1974), footballer
 * Valeriu Lazarov (1935–2009), television producer, director of Spanish channel Telecinco
 * Alina Nastase (born 1990), actress, model and director
 * Gheorghe Popescu (born 1967), footballer
 * Roxana Popa (born 1997), artistic gymnast
 * Virgil Popa (born 1975), conductor
 * Amelia Tiganus (born 1984), writer and abolitionist activist
 * Marcela Topor (born 1976), journalist