THE Balearic Islands are home to 6.9 percent of immigrants in Spain who have taken up residence in rural areas.
The number of immigrants living in country districts has multiplied 17 times over during the last decade.
According to a study on immigration covering the 7'467 towns in Spain, two years ago only 1'777 still had no foreigners in their midst. In another 5'690 districts, however, which go to make up 76 percent of rural areas, there was some foreign presence.
Regarding immigrant origin, today's groupings are very different than they were in the nineties, when nearly a half of the immigrants who moved to rural communities came from other European countries. Such areas contained a very low percentage of people who were not from the European Community.
In the previous decade, rural foreigners accounted for 26 percent of the total immigrant population since there was much greater chance at that time of picking up work in the agricultural sector than in the city.
Nowadays, Bulgarians, Romanians and Ukranians are in pole position amongst non European Union immigrants; the English, French and German are the most numerous of the EU population.
A second change relates to the fact that there is now a predominance of Latin American immigrants in Spain as opposed to Moroccans. This second group has experienced a percentage fall in their presence in Spain, relative to other immigrant groups which have registered a percentage fall.
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