Mortality rate increases by 23% in Catalonia in 2020, by 17.7% in Spain as a whole and by 41.2% in Madrid

MadridLast year in Spain, the pandemic produced levels of mortality unimaginable since the post-war period. The National Institute of Statistics (INE) has released the provisional data on deaths, provisional births and marriages last year and has counted nearly half a million deaths in the State (492,930), the highest figure since 1941. Although the Ministry of Health closed 2020 with an added 51,078 deaths from coronavirus, the excess mortality was much higher: in total there were 75,303 deaths compared to 2019, 17.7% more. The most important increase is in the Community of Madrid, where mortality grew by 41.2%. As for Catalonia, it grew by 23.5%, in the Valencian Country by 10.4% and in the Balearic Islands by 7.1%.

In addition to this, births in the State as a whole fell by 5.9%, which meant that the vegetative growth of the population had a negative balance of 153,167 people, while in 2019 it was 57,355 people less. In Catalonia they fell in a similar way, by 5.7%; while in the Valencian Country by 4.7%, in the Balearic Islands by 3.1% and in Madrid by 6.9%.

The increase in deaths has caused life expectancy to fall by 1.24 years to 82.34 years. It is among the group of people between 75 and 79 years of age where there was the highest increase in mortality, 24%. For men in this age group, it rose by 25%, and for women by 22.4%.

Marriages plummet

Marriage rates also plummeted by 45.7% last year. There were 1.9 marriages per 1,000 population, the lowest rate since 1976, and in April and May alone the declines in the number of marriages were more than 90%. In April, for example, there were just 294 unions compared to 10,505 in the same month last year and in May 1,268 marriages compared to 16,232 in the same period in 2019.