Young Spaniards who emigrate: how many leave, and what would bring them back

Democracia 21 put it as a goal in its launch speech in Madrid on 10 October: a country young people want to stay in. We have analysed that speech as we would any party's. The goal is a good one. The first step is to know how many young people are actually leaving, because the public debate swings between talk of an exodus and claims that nothing is happening.

What the INE data says

The INE's migration statistics for 2024, published in December 2025, count 137,719 departures of Spanish nationals abroad. Of those, 88,243 were born in Spain. In the same year 144,335 Spanish nationals arrived, so the official balance for Spaniards was positive by 6,616.

That headline figure hides two opposite flows. Spaniards born abroad, most of them naturalised, showed a net gain of 32,137. Spaniards born in Spain showed a net loss of 25,521, against a loss of only 3,652 in 2023. The "Spaniards" who arrive and the Spaniards who leave are largely different people.

The INE's table of migration balances by country of birth and age, which counts everyone born in Spain whatever their nationality, sharpens the picture. In 2024 the net loss abroad of people born in Spain was 31,548, up from 16,545 in 2023 and close to the 31,770 of 2022. Among young adults:

• aged 20 to 24, a net loss of 3,542;
• aged 25 to 29, a net loss of 5,129, the largest of any age group;
• aged 30 to 34, a net loss of 3,501.

Together that is 12,172 people aged 20 to 34, against 6,947 in 2023. After 35 the net loss falls below 2,000 for each five-year age group, and among people in their sixties more of the Spain-born come back than leave. Leaving is concentrated in the years when people finish studying, take a first serious job and would normally set up a home.

The stock grows accordingly. On 1 January 2026 the register of Spaniards living abroad, the PERE, held 3,202,002 people, up 5.1% in a year. Most were born abroad, but 860,957 were born in Spain, and 37,323 Spain-born people registered abroad for the first time in 2025, 69.5% of them of working age.

So the honest reading sits between the two camps. There is no exodus of hundreds of thousands. There is a steady net loss of young adults, and in 2024 it nearly doubled. The data has one large gap: the INE's migration figures are not published by level of education or occupation, so Spain does not know whether it is losing its nurses, its engineers or its waiters.

Exit as a signal

Albert Hirschman's Exit, Voice, and Loyalty gives the right frame. When an organisation declines, its members can leave or complain. Exit is information: a firm that loses customers learns that something is wrong. Hirschman's warning was that exit often removes the members most able to use their voice, and the organisation learns too late. Our earlier piece on young people and the parties showed the same generation turning away from politics. Emigration is the same exit, with a plane ticket.

The left is right that young people leave because of the conditions at home: the wages a first job pays and the cost of a first home decide whether a life plan fits in Spain. Any serious answer includes housing supply and a labour market that pays for skills, which is why this programme spent a whole week on housing. The market-liberal tradition is right that tax shapes the decision at the margin, and that a country competes for its own talent the way it competes for anyone else's.

Spain already acts on that second idea, though only for people it treats as foreigners. The special regime for people who move to Spain, the so-called Beckham law, was widened by the 2022 Startups Law: since 2023 it requires five years of non-residence instead of ten, and taxes employment income at a flat 24% up to €600,000 for the year of arrival and the five following years. A Spaniard who left in 2020 and comes back with a job offer can use it. A Spaniard who stayed and works next to them at the same desk cannot. That rewards leaving.

Portugal took a cleaner route. Its IRS Jovem, extended in 2025, exempts part of the earned income of every tax resident aged 18 to 35 for up to ten years: 100% in the first year, 75% in years two to four, 50% in years five to seven and 25% in years eight to ten, with an annual cap of 55 times the social support index, €29,542.15 for 2026 income. Since 2025 it requires no degree. It treats starting a working life at home as the thing to reward.

The proposal

What fits neither camp is to treat exit, in Hirschman's sense, as a signal to be read and answered. Concretely:

• An annual exit indicator. The INE already publishes net migration by age and country of birth. The government should report it each year to parliament next to the unemployment and youth emancipation figures, and link the migration records to education and Social Security files so that Spain knows which skills it is losing.
• Voice at the door. Every Spaniard who registers at a consulate fills in forms already. Add a short, voluntary questionnaire: why did you leave, what would bring you back, may we contact you in two years. Hirschman's lesson is that exit without voice teaches nothing.
• A youth allowance for everyone starting out. Replace the use of the Beckham regime by returning Spaniards with an IRPF allowance on earned income for the first years of work of anyone under 35, on the Portuguese schedule and with a cap, whether they stayed or came back. Its cost should be published and evaluated against the exit indicator, and the allowance kept only if it moves it.

A country young people want to stay in is one that notices when they go, asks them why, and makes starting out at home pay at least as well as starting out abroad. Spain has the data to do the first today.