Over the last two decades, Spain has evolved rapidly from a classic labour exporter to a labour importer. Until the 1930s Spain's migration history was predominantly marked by emigration to the Americas, and from the end of World War II until the early 1970s by emigration to some industrialized countries in Western Europe. For the first time in modern times, Spain is now the second country in the world with large-scale immigration. Its strategic location, a relatively permissive immigration policy and economic opportunities derived from Spain's entry into the European Community have positioned this country as a major destination for immigrants. Additionally, since the mid-1990s international migration in Spain has dramatically changed in origin composition. Despite the common perception of Africa as the most important source of immigration, some Latin American countries, in a very short time, have become some of the major sources of immigration to Spain; indeed, the term "Latin-Americanization" has been coined to describe this process. This being so, the aim of this article is twofold. First, we examine the main reasons behind the extremely rapid increase of Latin American migration to Spain during the last decade. Then we briefly discuss some future perspectives.

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This paper aims to analyse the role played by internal migration of the foreign-born population in the process of income convergence at provincial level in Spain over the period 1996-2005. First, it examines, using both classical and recent analytical approaches, the provincial income convergence process. Second, the paper gives a succinct description of recent trends in foreign-born internal migration. Third, the influence of these migration flows on provincial income convergence is addressed by estimating several convergence equations. The results of this analysis seem to reject the hypothesis that foreign-born internal migration exerts a strong influence on the income convergence process.JEL classification: F22, O15, R23, C23

This paper tries to ascertain whether spatial contagion operated in international migration across neighbouring provinces in Spain during the 1998–2009 period. After a general depiction of the international migration distribution in Spain, the study focuses on the role played by space and, particularly, on the possible existence of geographical contagion effects. For this aim, two novel indexes of spatial contagion, based on a spatial Markov chain approach, are proposed. Two main results are drawn from the analysis: first, that spatial clustering exists in the distribution; second, that there are contagion effects, positive contagion among provinces surrounded by high‐immigration provinces being the most significant.