Remittances to Spain by overseas workers at record high

The amount of money sent by emigrants into Spain from overseas reached a record high last year. Some 5.701 billion euros were transferred into the country from abroad in 2011 - an almost six-percent rise on the previous year. Apart from a small decline in 2009, the figure has not stopped growing, despite the global economic downturn, says the Bank of Spain.

The number of Spaniards living abroad has increased by 23 percent since the start of the crisis - from 1.4 million in 2009 to 1.8 million in January 2012, the most recent figure available from the National Statistics Institute.

Spain's immigrant population, whose fortune was so closely linked to the construction boom, was hit first and most severely by the crisis. However, the money sent out of Spain by immigrants increased slightly in 2011 after three straight years of decline. Even so, total remittances last year fell over a billion euros short of the high of 8.448 billion reached in 2007.