The reports published this week said 90,000 had been removed from the padron, which as you well know does not actually mean that 90,000 Britons left Spain in a single year. Ayuntamientos all over Spain have been contacting people whose padron details hadn't changed for 5 years or more and asking them to reconfirm their registration (my OH and I both had letters asking us to do this), and if they didn't respond within a certain timescale they would be deregistered. Therefore, these 90,000 could have left at any time during the last 5 years, not in 2013 alone.katy wrote:Makes sense to me. A lot more sense than posts that the Brits are returning when stats show around 90,000 have left. Of course, You lot make it up as you go along, "a bloke who works in xxxx told me blah blah "
Perhaps the ones returning are the ones who haven't managed to sell, which is most of them
Ask yourself, if so many left all at once, why has the number of British pensioners having their State Pension paid in Spain not also fallen sharply, why is IDS so exercised about the increasing number of Brits receiving the WFA in Spain, and why the reports only this week that the UK is now paying £230M per year to Spain in healthcare costs for its citizens who live here?
And has it not been common knowledge for many years that many foreigners (not just the British) neither sign on the padron nor the register of foreigners when they come to live here?
I believe quite a few people have left since the recession began- affected by the fall in the value of sterling, worried about property prices, those of working age couldn't find jobs, plus all the reasons which have always led to a certain proportion going back like ill health and missing their families. They might or might not add up to 90,000 in total, but I simply don't believe they represent one in four of all British expats in Spain as claimed in the media this week.
actually I think the figure is probably wrong, Spanish stats usually are...did you see the news yesterday that they have been fiddling Er. understating the unemployment figures. Although one happy clapper reckons the unemployment rate is only about 10% because of people working illegally....still, if it makes him happy to believe it 
and if we moan about it then we are perfectly entitled to without being labelled .