Where Do the Most Spaniard Americans Live?

Spain meets Argentina in the World Cup final on July 19 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, which makes it a fair moment to ask where the descendants of Spain actually live in the United States. The answer is more surprising than for most origin groups, because two very different histories are folded into one number. The U.S. Census Bureau counts 1,001,966 people who identify their specific origin as Spaniard, meaning from Spain itself rather than from a Spanish-speaking country in the Americas. Some are recent immigrants in the big coastal cities. Many more are the descendants of settlers who arrived four centuries ago and never thought of themselves as Mexican at all.

Largest Spaniard populations by state

New Mexico is the tell

The four biggest states are no shock: California, Texas, and Florida are the three most populous places in Sun Belt America and lead almost every origin ranking. Then comes New Mexico, with 75,758 people of Spaniard origin. New Mexico is the 36th-largest state by population. Its appearance in fourth place, ahead of New York, is the single most revealing number in this data.

It reflects the Hispanos of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, descendants of Spanish colonists who settled the upper Rio Grande beginning in 1598, generations before the United States existed. For centuries these communities were relatively isolated, and many families have always described their heritage as Spanish rather than Mexican, tracing an unbroken line to Spain through the colonial province of New Spain. That self-identification is exactly what the Spaniard category captures, and it is why Colorado, the 21st-largest state, ranks sixth with 56,056. The San Luis Valley straddling the two states is the historic heart of it.

The metros split the two stories cleanly

Largest Spaniard populations by metro area

The New York metro leads with 77,479, and together with Los Angeles at 46,436 and Miami at 34,255 it represents the immigrant-and-cosmopolitan side of the group: people who came from Spain in the twentieth century for work, study, or family, or who are a generation or two removed from that arrival.

Then, wedged between them at number three, is Albuquerque with 38,147. No other metro of its modest size comes close on any Hispanic-origin ranking, and the reason is the same colonial history. The city of Albuquerque counts 22,485 Spaniards on its own, second among all cities in the country behind only New York at 28,269. A mid-sized Southwestern city outranking Los Angeles, Miami, and Houston at the city level only makes sense once you know the population there predates all of them.

Where the numbers land by city

Largest Spaniard populations by city

San Antonio at 12,328 is the fourth-largest city for the group, another old Spanish colonial foundation, established as a presidio and mission settlement in 1718. The rest of the city list, Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, Denver, and San Diego, tracks the large Southwestern metros where both the historic and the modern populations overlap. Every one of these cities carries a Spanish place name, which is its own quiet record of who got there first.

Why this group is different

Most of the origin groups we cover trace a single migration stream, one country to a handful of American cities over a few decades. The Spaniard count does not work that way. At a million people it is modest next to the Mexican or Puerto Rican populations, but it is unusually spread out, and it braids together the newest arrivals with the oldest continuously settled European-descended communities in the country. That is why a state as small as New Mexico can rank fourth, and why the map of Spanish America looks nothing like the map of, say, Argentine America or Cuban America. Fittingly, Sunday's final lands in one of the few states where those maps overlap: New Jersey is home to 36,051 people of Spaniard origin and a sizable Argentine community of about 19,839, so both finalists will have a genuine home crowd in the stands at MetLife.

To see the full ordering, compare the largest Spaniard population metros, the largest Spaniard population cities, and the largest Spaniard population states. The highest Spaniard share cities surface the small northern New Mexico towns where the group makes up the largest slice of all. You can also read the fuller national profile on the Spaniard Americans origin page.

Sources

Population figures are for Spaniard origin from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, which records specific Hispanic origin and counts people from Spain separately from those of Latin American origin. Rankings referenced: largest Spaniard population metros, largest Spaniard population cities, and largest Spaniard population states.