ORIHUELA CENSUS FIGURES PUBLISHED

For the first time in its history the municipality of Orihuela has exceeded 90,000 registered inhabitants. The figure was released by the city’s Statistics department as at Monday, January 9 when there was a total of 90,967 registered residents. This compares with the same date last year when the figure stood at 88,868.
 

Despite falls being experienced in many other parts of the country the population in Orihuela continues to rise. The increase of 2,099 residents shows that more than 1,300 are over 65 years of age and 75% come from outside Spain.

Most foreigners in the region are residing on urbanisations in the Orihuela Costa, a place chosen by many Europeans to spend their retirement where 21% are British and 101 nations are represented. 

Local data also shows that of the 2099 increase only 532 are Spanish, so that 75% of the population increase of residents in the Orihuela district have arrived from other countries.

Moreover, the growth in population is predominantly in the more advanced age brackets, as the census shows an increase in those over 65 years of age of almost 23% (one percentage point higher than in early 2011). Those over 80 years of age are 4% of the registered population.

The number of children aged up to nine years, has fallen from 9.21% last year to 8.81% in the current census. Those under 20 years of age make up 18.46% of the census.

Amongst the many scattered towns of Orihuela, the core of the population is centred around the Orihuela Costa, which has added 1497 residents, 75% of all new residents.

The coastal development makes up 35.2% of the municipality's population (almost 1% more than last year), representing 32,014 residents.

The city of Orihuela numbers 33,933 residents, 37.3% of the population (0.5% less than last year).

The remainder of the Orihuela region, 27.5% of the more than 90,000 residents, is made up of a multitude of rural villages and small towns. Of these, the five main centres of population are La Murada (3,61% of the total population of Orihuela), La Aparecida (2,37%), Desamparados (2,36%), San Bartolomé (2,77%) and Torremendo (2,17%).

According to recent data published by the National Statistics Institute (INE) in the provinces of Valencia and Castellón only Chiva, San Antonio de Benagéber, Torrent and Burriana has added more than 500 residents, while in the province of Alicante the number of new residents in Torrevieja are 1045, Santa Pola (865 new residents), Benidorm (864), Rojales (630 new residents) and Xàbia (560).

Among the biggest losers at the regional level are Cullera, Xirivella o Pobla de Vallbona (with just over 500 residents in each case), Sagunto and Oropesa (with nearly 700 fewer residents), and the three provincial capitals  which publish figures of 89 less in Alicante, a reduction of 11,000 in Valencia and almost 600 fewer in Castellón de la Plana.

Article from The Leader Online 15 January 2012