Spain’s progressive approach to immigration has delivered a massive boost to its economy, new figures show.

Increasing immigration has increased Spain’s GDP and delivered the lowest unemployment level since 2008.

Spain’s economy was named the world’s best by the Economist magazine in 2024 fuelled by what observers say is the government’s strikingly different approach to migration.

Last year, while governments in Italy, Germany and France were pulling up the drawbridge. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez took a different approach.

He told the Spanish parliament: “Spain needs to choose between being an open and prosperous country or a closed-off, poor country. It’s as simple as that”.

His position has been vindicated by economic data.

Spain’s economy expanded by 3.2 per cent last year, eclipsing Germany’s 0.2 per cent contraction, France’s 1.1 per cent growth, Italy’s 0.5 per cent growth, and Britain’s 0.9 per cent.

Spain’s growth has been underpinned by the movement of people.

A record 94 million tourists visited Spain last year, a ten per cent rise on the previous year – creating a plethora of jobs in hospitality and tourism.

High rates of migration have allowed Spain to take advantage, and push unemployment levels to the lowest in 15 years, as migrants filled skills shortages in a labour market where the working-age population is rapidly ageing.

Other positive economic factors have been Spain’s abundance of wind and solar renewable energy that has helped to keep power costs low.

As hardline views on migration become entrenched across Europe, recent reports have focused on Spain exceptionalism.

“One remarkable facet of Spain’s recent performance has been the role of immigration. 2022 saw the highest net migration in 10 years, at close to three-quarters of a million individuals,” economists from JPMorgan said in a recent research report.

One effect was that the working-age population nearly doubled compared with other countries in western Europe.

Of the 468,000 jobs created across Spain last year, roughly 409,000 were filled by migrants or people with dual nationality, many of them from Latin America, but also from across Europe and Africa.

“Overall, Bank of Spain analysis suggests immigration contributed over 20% to the near 3 per cent GDP per capita income growth during 2022-2024,” the JPMorgan report said.

The Spanish result comes as across Europe, right-wing political parties attempt to attract votes by ramping up hostility towards migrants.

At the same time, ageing populations are shrinking the pool of workers who can pay for pensions and support the welfare states of most OECD countries.

Several studies carried out across Europe and the US have long demonstrated the economic benefits of well-managed migration.

Migration has been shown to be positive for productivity and income per capita in the long term with migrants contributing more in income tax and social contributions than they receive in benefits in all OECD countries.