Andalusian People - Geographical Location and Population

Geographical Location and Population

Andalusian people live mainly in Spain's eight southernmost provinces: Almería, Cádiz, Córdoba, Granada, Huelva, Jaén, Málaga, and Sevilla, which all are part of the region and modern Autonomous Community of Andalucía. In January 2006 the total population of this region stood at 7,849,799, Andalucía is the most populous region of Spain. In comparison with the rest of Spain, Andalusia population growth has been slower and it continues to be sparsely populated in some rural areas (averaging just 84 inh. per km²). Since 1960, the region's share of total population has declined, despite birth rates being about 40 percent higher than the Spanish average during past decades (currently it is only a 13% higher). Between 1951 to 1975, over 1.7 million Andalusian people emigrated out of Andalusia to other areas of Spain. This figure was approximately a 24% of the population of Andalusia as a whole, mostly hitting the countryside areas. The main recipients of this migration were Catalonia (989,256 people of Andalusian origin in 1975), Madrid (330,479) and Valencia (217,636), and to a lesser level, the Basque Country and Balearics.

During 1962 to 1974, around 700,000 Andalusians —almost all of them male— moved abroad for economic reasons, mainly originating from the provinces of Granada, Jaén and Córdoba. Their preferred destination were France, West Germany and Switzerland, followed by the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Belgium. There are no official recorded figures for previous decades.

In South America in the last twenty years of 19th century, over 150,000 Andalusians emigrated to the Americas as a result of crop failures caused by the Phylloxera plague. Many Andalusian peasants moved to Brazil to work in the coffee plantations, mainly in rural areas of São Paulo State. Spanish immigrants to Hawai'i who were solicited to work in the sugar industry, arrived in October 1898, numbering 7,735 men, women and children by 1913. Most of them came from Andalusia, home of Don Marin. However, unlike other plantation immigrant groups, the Spanish moved on, and by 1930 only 1,219 remained, including a scant eight children born in Hawai'i. Most Spanish left for the promising fields of California to make higher wages and live among relatives and friends who had settled in greater numbers there.

Additionally, Andalusians formed the major component of Spanish colonial immigration to certain parts of Spain's American and Asian empire and the largest group to participate in the discovery of the Canary Islands. Principally, Andalusians and their descendants predominate in the Canary Islands(Spain), the Caribbean islands (Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and Cuba), and the circum-Caribbean area (Costa Rica, Panama, the Caribbean coast of Colombia, and in Venezuela). They were also predominant in the Rio de la Plata region of Argentina and Uruguay and the coastal areas of Chile, Peru, and Ecuador. In Asia, Andalusians predominated in the Spanish population of the Philippines as evidenced by the strong Andalusian character of Spanish in the Philippines and Spanish-based creoles, despite the fact that the Philippines were under the colonial supervision of the Vice-royalty of New Spain (Mexico).

Many Andalusian Muslims have emigrated to Maghreb in North Africa after the fall of Granada in 1492, and the final Muslim expulsion that took place between 1609 and 1614. Their descendants leave mostly in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia .