And Spain takes our retirees

MANY of the Britons who live in Spain have gone there to retire – while many Spaniards resident in the UK are young people who have come to work, official figures show.

The Office for National Statistics put the number of Britons living in Spain last year at 296,600, using estimates based on state censuses and surveys. It said 121,000, or around four in ten, British residents in Spain were aged 65 and over. Census figures from 2011 showed only 69,305 of the Britons settled in Spain were working.

Nearly six out of ten of the 116,000 Spaniards in Britain were working. Spanish workers in Britain totalled 68,200, almost as many as Britons working in Spain. Around half of the Spaniards in the UK were aged 20 to 39.