Crime
🚨 Crime
Offences known to the National Police, the Guardia Civil, the Mossos d'Esquadra, the Ertzaintza, the Foral Police of Navarre and local police forces, according to the Ministry of the Interior.
Trend · per 1,000 inhabitants
Trend · per 100,000 inhabitants
Trend · percent
Intentional homicides: Spain 0.7 EU 1 (2015)OECD 4.5 (2015)France 1.3Portugal 0.7 (2022)Germany 0.9Italy 0.6Morocco 1.7US 5.8China 0.5 (2020) per 100,000 inhabitants · 2023 · World Bank (WDI, UNODC) All countries →
All figures are given per inhabitant so that trends do not simply reflect population growth (Spain gained around 2 million inhabitants between 2019 and 2025); the total appears as a secondary figure. These are recorded offences (reported to or discovered by the police), not all crimes committed: an increase may be due to more reporting (as has happened with sexual offences and online fraud). The rate per inhabitant does not take into account tourists and visitors, who also suffer and commit crimes: that is why it comes out high in the most touristic areas.
Which offences and how they are changing
2020 was the year of the lockdown. Since 2019 the Ministry has counted cybercrime (fraud and other offences committed online) separately; it has grown far faster than the rest.
Logarithmic scale, so that offences of very different frequency can be seen together: the same slope means the same rate of growth. Online fraud has multiplied since 2016, burglaries of homes have fallen and recorded rapes (sexual assaults with penetration) have risen, partly because more are reported.
Spain in Europe and the world
Homicide is the figure that compares best between countries, and Spain is among the countries with the fewest cases in the world: 0.7 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023 (EU median: 0.8). That is number 21 out of 149 countries, and number 6 in the EU, counting from the lowest. For the other offences the police record, Spain is below the EU median in 6 and above it in 8. It has 124 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants (EU median: 114).
Per 100,000 inhabitants, latest year for each country within the last seven. Rank 1 = the country with the lowest figure. Offences recorded by the police that each country reports to the United Nations (UNODC; in Europe this is the same data collection as Eurostat's); homicides from the World Bank, based on UNODC data; prisoners from UNODC.
Why these comparisons need care
- Homicides are the most reliable figure: almost all are recorded, and the definition is similar everywhere.
- The rest are recorded offences, not committed ones. They depend on how many are reported, which is more where people trust the police or insurance requires a report (this is why the Nordic countries record many thefts), and on how each country counts them.
- Definitions differ. In Spain, robbery with violence or intimidation includes bag snatching, which other countries may count as theft. Sweden has one of the broadest definitions of rape in Europe. Spain records every report of online fraud as a fraud offence, and these have grown a lot since 2019.
- Few recorded cases of corruption or money laundering do not mean little corruption: they mostly measure how much is investigated.
- There is no total number of offences that can be compared between countries: each one includes different minor offences. This is why the comparison is made offence by offence.
By area
Municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants (2025)
The top of the list is made up of municipalities with an airport, a port or heavy tourism (El Prat de Llobregat, Adeje, Sant Josep de sa Talaia, Calvià...): many offences against visitors and passengers are reported there, but the rate is divided only by registered residents. Rates per 1,000 registered residents.
Convictions by nationality
According to the INE's Convictions Statistics, in 2025 214,875 adults of Spanish nationality and 91,362 of foreign nationality received a final conviction (30 % of the total), while foreign nationals make up 14 % of adult residents.
How to read this comparison
- The rate for foreign nationals is overestimated. Those convicted with foreign nationality include tourists and people passing through who do not live in Spain: they are in the numerator but not in the denominator, which counts only residents. Foreign nationals in an irregular situation, on the other hand, are usually in the denominator, because the municipal register does not ask for a residence permit.
- Age and sex matter a great deal. In every country the vast majority of those convicted are young men, and the foreign population has more young men than the Spanish population. That is why men are compared with men and women with women here (26.3 versus 9.9 per thousand among men; 5.1 versus 2.5 among women). Further down, the rate is also adjusted for age and for foreign nationals who do not live in Spain.
- Other factors not captured by these statistics, which studies find explain part of the difference: income level, employment, educational attainment and neighbourhood of residence.
- These are people who have been convicted, not arrested or investigated: a trial has already taken place. They are counted in the region of the convicting court.
Adjusting for age, sex and non-resident foreign nationals
The INE does publish convictions by sex, age and nationality together, so each group can be compared with its peers. With every possible adjustment, in 2025 the conviction rate of foreign adults goes from 2.5 times that of Spanish nationals to 1.5 times.
At every age the rate for foreign nationals is higher, but the gap is widest among young people and narrows with age. 25 % of foreign adults are aged 18 to 30, compared with 16 % of Spanish adults.
What was adjusted and how
- Unadjusted (2.5 times): people convicted among residents aged 18 or over at mid-year (15.3 per thousand foreign nationals versus 6.1 per thousand Spanish nationals). This is the figure above, but with the population at mid-year instead of 1 January, because convictions are counted over the whole year and the foreign population is growing fast.
- Age and sex (1.8 times): the rate is calculated for each sex and age group (men aged 18 to 20, women aged 21 to 25...) and then recombined as if Spanish and foreign nationals had the same age pyramid, that of the whole adult population of Spain in 2025. This gives 11.5 versus 6.4 per thousand. This adjustment only removes the part of the difference that is due to foreign nationals being younger and including more men.
- Non-resident foreign nationals (1.5 times): the foreign visitors who are in Spain on an average day are added to the denominator, since they can be convicted but are not on the municipal register. Using Frontur, the nights that all non-resident visitors spend in Spain over the year are added up and divided by 365: this gives about 1.7 million adults present on an average day, compared with 6.0 million foreign adults on the register. The result is 9.3 per thousand. Data are only available from 2016.
Assumptions of the third adjustment
- Frontur gives how many visitors stay 1 night, 2 to 3, 4 to 7, 8 to 15 or more than 15. The midpoint of each band is used, 25 nights for "more than 15" and half a day for those who do not stay overnight.
- Frontur does not publish the age of visitors: 85 % are assumed to be adults, spread by sex and age like the adult population of Spain.
- Each day of a visitor counts the same as a day of a resident. A tourist staying a week probably has fewer opportunities to commit an offence (and to be tried here) than a resident, so this adjustment may come out too high.
- Frontur counts by country of residence, not by nationality: it includes Spanish nationals who live abroad and come to visit. That is another reason it may come out too high.
- In the opposite direction, foreign nationals who live in Spain without being on the register are in no denominator. There is no official figure. The estimate of about 840,000 foreign nationals in an irregular situation on 1 January 2025 (Funcas) is made precisely from the registered population, so those people are already counted.
With these data, the conviction rate of foreign nationals is between 1.5 and 1.8 times that of Spanish nationals, depending on how much visitors are counted. What these statistics cannot adjust for: income, employment, educational attainment or neighbourhood of residence, which studies find explain another part of the difference, or possible differences in treatment during arrest, investigation or trial.
Offences for which convictions were handed down in 2025 (one person may be convicted of several offences) and the percentage in which the convicted person had foreign nationality. Naturalised Spanish citizens count as Spanish.
By origin
Not all immigration is the same. With the same three adjustments, in 2025 the conviction rate of resident Africans goes from 4.0 to 2.1 times that of Spanish nationals; for Americans, from 2.6 to 1.7; for citizens of other EU countries, from 2.0 to 1.1; and for the rest of Europe (including the United Kingdom), from 1.7 to 1.0. Asians come out below Spanish nationals (0.5 times).
INE convictions statistics, which only group by continent: "América" puts Latin America together with the US and Canada (few residents), and "África" puts North Africa together with the rest of the continent. Visitors are split by origin according to the country of residence of the tourists in Frontur. European Union and Rest of Europe, from 2020.
By country: arrests and people investigated
To separate North Africa from the rest of the continent, or Latin America, we have to use the arrests and investigations of the Ministry of the Interior, which do give the country (but they count arrests, not convictions). In 2025 there were 40 arrests or investigations per 1,000 foreign nationals aged 15 or over and 10 per 1,000 Spanish nationals. Adjusted for age and sex, the rate for foreign nationals is 2.8 times that of Spanish nationals: 5.1 times for North Africans, 2.3 for sub-Saharan Africans, 2.6 for Latin Americans and 1.0 for Asians. For Europeans, counting tourists, it is 1.5 times.
How to read arrests by country
- These are arrests and investigations, not convictions or people. The same person can count several times in a year, and not all end in a conviction. Foreign nationals are more over-represented in arrests than in convictions.
- They include people who do not live here. Tourists, people passing through and newly arrived foreign nationals who are not yet on the register count in the arrests but not in the population. For nationalities with many recent irregular arrivals, such as Algerian, or with a lot of daily crossings through Ceuta and Melilla, such as Moroccan, the rate is more overestimated. The "And with tourists" column only exists for the countries that Frontur separates.
- Adjustment for age and sex: since the Interior Ministry does not give the age of those arrested, the curve of convictions by age and sex for Spain is applied to the age pyramid of each nationality, and what is observed is compared with what is expected.
- Latin America means the Americas minus Brazil. In the arrests it includes the US and Canada, which the Interior Ministry does not separate, but they are removed from the population: about 100,000 residents against almost 4 million Latin Americans. Only countries with at least 15,000 residents aged 15 or over are shown.
- In 2020 the Mossos d'Esquadra entered the statistics and in 2025 so did those investigated by the Ertzaintza: the figures jump in those years for all nationalities.
Spain in Europe
Eurostat brings together the convictions by nationality that about twenty European countries publish. In 2024 the conviction rate of foreign nationals in Spain was 2.6 times that of Spanish nationals, and 1.9 times when adjusted for age and sex. Of the 15 countries with at least 5 % foreign population, 5 have a bigger gap than Spain (the median is 1.8 times).
How the European comparison was made
- Eurostat convictions by nationality (crim_just_ctz) divided by the population aged 15 or over of the same nationality (migr_pop1ctz). The comparison is "how many times" within each country, because each country counts convictions in its own way (in Germany, for example, they include immigration offences that only a foreign national can commit; in Spain being in an irregular situation is not an offence).
- Eurostat does not give the age of those convicted. To adjust for age and sex, the curve of convictions by age and sex for Spain is applied to the age pyramid of nationals and foreign nationals in each country. This gives how many convictions would be expected in each group just because of its age and sex. For Spain, this method gives 1.9 times, almost the same as the direct adjustment with the full INE data.
- There is no adjustment for tourists in any country. Spain, Austria, Greece or Portugal receive many visitors per inhabitant, so their figure is somewhat more inflated than that of others.
- Only countries with at least 5 % foreign nationals and with data since 2018. Latvia is left out: there, most of the "foreign nationals" are lifelong residents without Latvian citizenship. "Prisoners: times" compares prisoners (including those on remand) in the same way, without adjusting for age.
- Countries such as Sweden or the Netherlands do not publish this figure in Eurostat. In addition, many immigrants there become citizens early and stop counting as foreign nationals, just as those naturalised in Spain count as Spanish.
Sources and notes
- Ministry of the Interior – Crime Statistics Portal: annual series of recorded criminal offences by region and province since 2010, and the quarterly Crime Report (Balance de Criminalidad) covering municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants (full year since 2019). The Crime Report classification changed in 2019, so it is not compared with earlier years.
- INE – Convictions Statistics: adults (tables 25704 and 49050), based on the Central Register of Convicted Persons, and INE – Convictions by sex, age and nationality (table 25645) for the age adjustment, and INE – Continuous Population Statistics (table 56942) for population by nationality, sex and age at 1 January. Population aged 18 or over and of each age band approximated from five-year age groups.
- INE – Frontur (tables 23987 and 23984): non-resident visitors by length of stay and tourists by country of residence, used to estimate how many are in Spain on an average day and where they come from.
- Ministry of the Interior – Arrests and people investigated (tables 03007 and 03001): foreign nationals arrested or investigated by nationality, and the total, and INE – Population by country of nationality (table 56936) for the denominator.
- United Nations – UNODC: offences recorded by the police by type, and prisoners, in every country that answers the UN-CTS survey, and intentional homicides from the World Bank based on UNODC data.
- Eurostat: convictions (crim_just_ctz) and prisoners (crim_pris_ctz) by nationality in each European country, and population by nationality, sex and age (migr_pop1ctz).
Data updated 7 minutes ago