*4.2. Demographic Evolution and Modification of Immigrant Stocks According to Nationality*

In a city of 379,925 inhabitants in 2019, the census sections corresponding to the Santa Catalina-Canteras neighborhood showed a population figure of 21,732 inhabitants, that is, 5.7% of the municipal population, with one fifth being foreigners (21.6%).

When we compare these data with those of the population 15, 10, and five years ago (Table 2), we can see that the growth rate was very intense between 2004 and 2009 (5.93% over five years), when tourism obsolescence confirmed the trend towards a housing supply that reused the old non-hotel accommodation, at a time of great immigration attraction, linked to the years of the real estate boom in the Spanish economy.

Therefore, the growth of this neighborhood was due to the contribution of the foreign population, whose number increased by 3.9% per year in those five years. Since the crisis, the population drastically reduced its growth rate as a result of the retraction in migratory flows and, in the incipient phase of economic recovery, negative rates have been recorded, as there has been a revaluation of tourism use, a trend that is affecting especially the population of foreign origin.


**Table 2.** Population of Santa Catalina-Canteras. Source: Own elaboration based on the Continuous Population Register, INE (National Statistics Institute).

Regarding the composition of the foreign population and its evolution in relative terms, Figure 4 shows that the participation of foreigners from the European Community has been gaining weight, stabilizing at around 37%, and that the population from Africa has lost presence, and that the population of Asian origin has reinforced its importance, with the population of American origin remaining at around 18%.

**Figure 4.** Evolution of the foreign population in Santa Catalina-Canteras. Source: Own elaboration based on the Continuous Population Register (National Statistics Institute).

Among the nationalities with a number above 150 people in 2019, there is a continued decrease of Moroccan, Colombian, and Cuban residents, an increasing evolution of Italians and an increase of Germans and Chinese between 2009 and 2014 and a subsequent decrease between 2014 and 2019. All of this reports a modification of the neighborhood in terms of elitization processes, due to the foreseeable correlation between nationality and income.

In the case of El Terreno, the little more than 5600 inhabitants of the neighborhood represent only 1.35% of the population of Palma. Of these, 29.5% have foreign nationality, a percentage clearly higher than that of the municipality (15.84%). However, the socialurban behavior of this small part of the city is an example of the processes of social, economic, landscape, and cultural transformation that are affecting mature tourist nuclei that, after successive stages of splendor and degradation, are reinventing themselves through gentrification.

The evolution of population in the last fifteen years in El Terreno was opposite to that in Santa Catalina Las Canteras. The urban degradation of the neighborhood in its stage of tourist obsolescence retracted the number of inhabitants, especially those of foreign nationality. This drop in the number of inhabitants from 2009 onwards in the case of non-Spaniards can be explained mainly by the consequences of the economic crisis and the impact of unemployment on the immigrant labor population. This explains why, in just five years (2009–2014), foreigners reduced their representation by almost 27%. On the contrary, the last five years, when the effects of the crisis had been significantly mitigated in the Balearic tourist economy, the population recovered its dynamism supported by a growing arrival of foreigners. However, these were foreigners of another origin. As in the case of Santa Catalina-Canteras, we are facing a first indicator of the socio-urban transformations of the district in the postcrisis stage (Table 3).

**Table 3.** Population of El Terreno. Source: Own elaboration based on statistics data from the Statistical Institute of the Balearic Islands (IBESTAT).


This trend is supported by the analysis of the evolution of the foreign population according to origin (Figure 5). As in the case of the Canary Islands, the representation of foreigners from the European Union is increasing (almost 50% of the total in 2019) and, to a lesser extent, that of Asians (mainly Chinese and Filipinos). This relative growth occurs mainly at the cost of a loss of representation of Americans. The latter have gone from almost 40% in 2004 to less than 25% in 2019.

**Figure 5.** Evolution of the foreign population in El Terreno. Source: Own elaboration based on the Continuous Population Register, INE (National Statistics Institute).

If we take as a reference the more numerous nationalities in 2019, the evolution points to an increase of Germans, Italians, and, to a lesser extent, British and French people, and a fall of Bulgarians and Colombians. The case of Bulgarian nationals is an indicator of the social and economic changes in the neighborhoods: in only ten years, they have gone from leading the number of foreigners to occupying the fourth position and, more importantly, showing a clearly downward trend.

In short, from opposed population evolutions (increase of the population in El Terreno and decrease in Santa Catalina-Las Canteras), the two neighborhoods go in the same direction: that of elitization. A gentrification where the foreign groups of the North play a fundamental role in the two neighborhoods under study. In these, the European Community Members progressively replace the up to recently majority of labor immigrants from the South.
