In this week’s Inside Spain, we look at how attitudes towards relationships, marriage and childbearing are changing quickly in a country where “structural infertility” is rife.
Spanish society has changed immensely in a generation, and perhaps most evidently when it comes to getting married and having children.
The latest report from the National Institute of Statistics (INE) reveals that in the last three years Spain has gained 1.2 million single people but only 105,000 married people.
Among those over 16 – the minimum legal age to tie the knot in Spain – the married population remains the biggest population group.
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However, the number has barely increased in three years: 105,537 (just 0.55 percent), to a total of 19.05 million people.
On the other hand, the number of solteros (single people in Spanish) rose by 1.22 million (9.23 percent) from 2021 to 2024, reaching a total of 14.53 million.
Meanwhile, the rate of divorces also experienced significant growth during the same period, reaching 3.22 million (8.8 percent).
Overall, in 2024, 45.8 percent of Spain’s population were casados (married), 34.9 percent were single, 7.8 percent were divorced or separated, and 7 percent were widowed.
This means that the total number of single, divorced, and widowed people in Spain, which reached 20.66 million in 2024, now exceeds the total number of married people.
Pau Miret, a researcher at Spain’s Centre for Demographic Studies (CED), told Spanish daily 20 minutos that the National Institute of Statistics only records marital status, and therefore does not include “single men and women who choose non-marital cohabitation over marriage.”
He notes that the figures demonstrate that in Spain there is no longer social pressure to marry in order to have children or simply for love, and this is reflected in the increase in a more long-term ‘bachelor’ life.
Furthermore, there’s a “significant and profound” change in the trend of singlehood, as in 2006 27 percent of 35 to 39 year olds were single, while now it’s 50 percent.
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Miret also considers that in Spain “people are getting married later now and for a more materialistic interest, to ensure a widow’s pension, in case something happens to one of the spouses.”
Sociologist Héctor Cebolla also sees that the INE tables demonstrate the normalization of living under the same roof as partners rather than tying the knot: “It is no longer the step prior to marriage but a form of stable cohabitation,” he argues.
Cebolla suggests that the increase in single people would be proof of the arrival in Spain of a phenomenon observed in various Western countries that sees “fewer and fewer family homes being formed due to a couples crisis.”
So if there’s more singleness than ever in Spain and marriage is delayed or ignored completely, where does having kids fit in to all of this?
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As The Local has previously reported, for many years no Spain has been experiencing a downward trend in the number of births.
In 2024, the country reached a new all-time low: 318,005 babies nationwide, some 100,000 fewer births than in 2014.
READ ALSO: The cost of raising a child in Spain is now €758 per month
Spain also broke another record: fewer mothers under 35 than ever before, an age at which women’s fertility begins to decline more sharply and when difficulties conceiving increase.
While 50 years ago almost nine in ten mothers were under 35, now they represent six out of ten.
In Galicia, the Basque Country and Cantabria, almost half of the births registered in recent years are to mothers over 40.
Conversely, while birth rates fall and the number of young mothers declines, there is a boom in egg freezing in Spain, as well as assisted reproductive technology and fertility clinics.
READ MORE: How much does it cost to have IVF in Spain?
In other words, Spanish women are trying to ‘cheat’ their biological clocks and win back some time while they can assess if having children is feasible. And who can blame them for it?
When social, economic, and political conditions make it difficult to conceive and raise children, experts refer to it as “structural infertility”, and there’s plenty of that in Spain, especially regarding low salaries, job insecurity and affordable housing, but also including other factors from work discrimination against mothers and a lack of effective incentives and subsidies by the government.
In this unfavourable context, it’s inevitable that many Spanish women are postponing the decision to become mothers, waiting for more suitable circumstances.
According to the latest data from INE’s Fertility Survey, 72 percent of Spanish women between 25 and 29 years old want to have two or more children, and almost half of women over 45 wish they had been mothers.
The reality, however, is that women in Spain end up having an average of 1.1 children, the lowest rate in the EU.
“The gap between the actual and desired birth rate is what we need to address,” Elisa Gil, a gynaecologist specialising in reproductive medicine and a member of the board of the Spanish Fertility Society, told Spanish newspaper El Diario.
The number of women freezing their eggs has increased almost thirtyfold in just over a decade in Spain to the current 5,001 women who froze oocytes or embryos in 2024.
It’s worth noting that although some IVF treatment is available through Spain’s public health system, this isn’t always guaranteed and doing it privately isn’t affordable to all women, costing between €3,500 and €7,000 or higher.
So this is the paradoxical situation which many people (especially women) face when it comes to forming a family in Spain.
It’s not unique to the country, but Spain is certainly an example of how the traditional family structure is changing quickly.
READ ALSO: The real reasons why Spaniards don’t want to have children
