As you may know, my maternal grandfather was born in Asturias and came to Cuba with his brothers in the 1920’s. My other 3 grandparents were born in Cuba but they were the offspring of the many Spanish immigrants who settled the island. In other words, I’ve always had a special love for Spain and those traditions, specially Navidad, that I grew up with.
Over in Spain, they are trying to form a governing coalition. They call it a triumph but time will tell.
However, putting together a government may be the least of Spain’s worries.
We are witnessing the change of a country and continent.
The statistics are stunning:
The figures from the National Institute of Statistics showed that the number of babies born in Spain last year was 6.1 percent down on the previous year.But the stand-out figure was that births in Spain have dropped by an eye-opening 40.7 percent over the last decade, according to the study titled The Natural Movement of the Population.In 2018 there were 369,302 babies born in Spain, some 23,879 fewer than in 2017.In the same year there were 426,053 deaths recorded in Spain, which was a slight rise (0.4 percent) on 2017.Those figures meant the Spanish population had dropped for the fourth consecutive quarter.In other words Spain has 56,262 fewer citizens than it did 12 months ago.
Why does it matter? Why do we care about birth rates?
The answer is that babies are the future and the ones who will carry the culture forward.
At these rates, are we confident that it will be Spain in 50 years? Who is going to stand up for its history or even language?
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