Galicia’s population growth and job creation hinge on foreign workers, reshaping demographics, productivity and regional sustainability in 2026. Galicia’s contemporary demographic and economic trajectory reveals a paradoxical renaissance predicated upon migratory dynamism rather than endogenous renewal.
With foreign residents surpassing 182,000 and constituting 6.7 per cent of the population, the region’s modest population growth is decisively underwritten by exogenous demographic inflows, compensating for structural ageing and subdued natality. Concurrently, six out of every ten newly created jobs are occupied by foreign workers, signalling a profound labour market recomposition in which migrant participation has evolved from peripheral supplementation to systemic indispensability. This phenomenon illustrates a broader European pattern whereby peripheral regions mitigate demographic contraction through strategic incorporation of migrant labour into construction, hospitality, manufacturing, and care services. The Galician case synthesises this transformation with particular clarity: Social Security affiliations among foreign nationals have risen sharply, with construction and hospitality registering the most substantial increments, thereby reinforcing fiscal sustainability and pension solvency. Crucially, this influx does not merely fill vacancies; it recalibrates the region’s productive architecture, sustaining local enterprises and mitigating rural depopulation. Yet such reliance necessitates deliberate governance—integrative housing policies, credential recognition frameworks, and social cohesion strategies—to prevent segmentation and precarity. Ultimately, Galicia exemplifies how migratory capital—understood as the aggregation of human skills, entrepreneurial initiative, and demographic vitality—can revitalise ageing territories. Far from constituting a transient adjustment, this reconfiguration heralds a structural realignment in which immigration functions as the linchpin of economic resilience, demographic continuity, and long-term regional sustainability within an increasingly competitive European milieu.