ARCHIVED - 17.7 per cent more deaths in Spain in 2020 as the pandemic swept the country
Deaths exceeded births by 150,000 as Spain endured the arrival of coronavirus
Changes in demographic trends generally occur at a fairly glacial rate, becoming significant only over the course of decades or even generations, but figures published this week by the Spanish government show that the coronavirus pandemic caused a spectacular increase in mortality rates across the country during 2020.
During last year it is reported that 492,930 people died in Spain, 17.7 per cent more than in 2019 and the highest mortality rate since shortly after the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939. This brought an abrupt fall of 1.24 years in average life expectancy to 83.34 (79.6 for men and 85.07 for women.
The worst of the pandemic was during the first wave of infection in March and April last year, when the number of deaths rose in year-on-year terms by 57 per cent and 78 per cent respectively. Fewer cases of Covid-19 were reported in these months due to a lack of PCR testing capacity, but the most vulnerable (the elderly and those in care homes) were quick to succumb to the virus before facemasks were widely available and long before the first Covid vaccines were approved.
The second wave last autumn brought increases of over 21 per cent in October and November, but despite higher known case numbers the third wave after Christmas was less drastic in terms of fatalities and the provisional figures for the first few months of 2021 show a fall from last year.
The data also show that the worst affected regions of Spain were Madrid, with a year-on-year rise of 41 per cent, Castilla-La Mancha (32 per cent), Castilla y León (26 per cent) and Catalunya (23 per cent, while at the other end of the scale were the Canaries (4%), Galicia (5%), Murcia (6%) and the Balearics (7%).
At a more local level, the increase in deaths reported in the province of Segovia was a staggering 44 per cent.
THE PANDEMIC ALSO SLOWED THE BIRTH RATE IN SPAIN STILL FURTHER
Another effect of the outbreak of the pandemic was a sharp decrease in the birth rate, perhaps due to couples facing increased financial insecurity as employment became less secure. Obviously this takes around 9 months to be reflected in the data, but by the end of last year the number of babies born in Spain had reached 339,306, as many as 21,000 (or 6 per cent) fewer than in 2020.
As a result, the natural population change in Spain last year amounted to a decrease of 153,167, and in terms of the birth rate the 2021 figure looks certain to be affected similarly: at the back end of 2020 the decrease was reported at 10.9 per cent and 21.5 per cent respectively.
Other long-standing trends were also accelerated in the data concerning births, and the number of babies born has now fallen by almost a third since 2010 due to women having fewer children and there being fewer women of child-bearing age than a decade ago. On top of this, women are generally leaving it later to have their first child, the average age of first-time mothers having risen to 32.8, one of the highest in Europe.