Top of the Pops

5 million people

Populations that is. It's that time when all the statistics of the year come flooding in and we've just received the population figures for the area from the National Institute of Statistics.

Alicante province, with 1,825,264 residents, remains 5th in the population charts for all Spain – behind Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Seville – though the gap between Alicante and Seville is steadily growing smaller.

This is because of the enormous number of foreigners who come to live on the Costa Blanca where 21% of the population is not Spanish as compared with the 2% in Seville.

Benidorm's population grew by 1,431 to 69,058 in 2007 which seems incredibly small when you think that up to 5 million people spent their holidays here last year.

7 January 2008 Stephen White.