Census puts spotlight on Rock’s multi-national community

Although small in land mass Gibraltar continues to be the home of choice for people from around the world, with 92 different nationalities being recorded as resident on Census Day 2022.

While the vast majority of the total population are Gibraltarian, at 29,072, or British, at 5,511, there are 3,101 people from other countries who call Gibraltar home.

These nationalities had the fastest percentage growth over the decade, with over a 50% increase on the last census in 2012.

While the vast majority of them came from EU countries like Spain, Germany, Portugal or Ireland, 300 were from elsewhere, including the US, Cuba, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, South Africa and Thailand.

While the number of non-European nationalities increased overall, one nationality decreased, Moroccans, with only 252 recorded in the 2022 census.

That equates to a loss of more than half the number of Moroccans on the Rock in the preceding decade.
However, the report noted that “this drop can be partly attributed to the inherent difficulties of enumerating the Moroccan sub-population, as well as the increased number of Moroccans acquiring British citizenship through naturalisation over the decade.”

Rules for British nationals opting to become Gibraltarian also changed in that decade, when the Gibraltarian Status Act was amended lowering the length of residence criteria requirements for British Citizens from 25 years to 10 years.

This too would influence the number of Gibraltarians recorded in the 2022 Census.

The Census report noted that the population of Gibraltar has been growing steadily over the past 52 years, increasing by 53.8% from 1970 to 2022. However, 43% of this growth was between 2012 to 2022.
The difference in the number of female and males was slight with only 154 more women than men, which correlates to the fact that the female population increased by 18% when compared to the male population which increased by17.6%.

According to the Census, 15,546 people of the people included said they were married, with the vast majority of those being in an opposite sex marriage.

Same sex couples accounted for a third of civil partnerships.

There was also a change in marital status for 2,678 people on the Rock whose relationships ended in divorce, an increase of nearly half the number recorded in 2012.

In contrast, for a greater number of the adult population marriage, unions or divorce are not forming part of their lives at all, with the number of over 15 year olds who have never married or formed a civil partnership increasing by 35.5% when compared to 2012, with nearly 1,000 more men falling into this category then women.

Drilling into these statistics, the largest increase in persons who have never married or been part of a civil partnership is in the 25 to 49 age group, which is up by 59.3% when compared to 2012.