Demographics
Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² with an official population of 7,354,411 (2008), of which non-Spanish immigrants represent an estimated 12.3%.
The Urban Region of Barcelona includes 5,217,864 people and covers an area of 2.268 km², and about 1.7 million people live in a radius of 15 km from Barcelona. The metropolitan area of the Urban Region includes cities such as L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Sabadell, Terrassa, Badalona, Santa Coloma de Gramenet and Cornellà de Llobregat.
In 1900, the population of Catalonia was 1,984,115 people and in 1970 it was 5,107,606. That increase was due to the demographic boom in Spain during the 60s and early 70s and also to the large-scale internal migration from the rural interior of Spain to its industrial cities. In Catalonia that wave of internal migration arrived from several regions of Spain, especially Andalusia, Murcia and Extremadura.
Immigrants from other countries settled in Catalonia in the 1990s and 2000s; a large percentage came from Africa and Latin America, and smaller numbers from Asia and Eastern Europe, often settling in urban centers such as Barcelona and industrial areas.
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