How many older people live alone in Spain

There are 2.13 million households in Spain made up of a single person aged 65 or over, according to the INE. That figure is for 2020 and is the most recent published in that series. Measured another way, the share of people aged 65 or over living alone in Spain was 22.8% in 2025, according to Eurostat: a little over one in five. The two figures describe the same reality from different angles, and the difference between them explains much of the confusion around this question.

Two ways of counting the same reality

The question looks simple, but it admits two correct answers at once, because the official statistics count different things.

The INE counts households

The INE indicator refers to single person households aged 65 and over: homes in which one person of that age lives on their own. Each of those households corresponds to one older person living alone, so the figure reads as a count in absolute terms, in millions of cases.

One limitation is worth noting from the outset: the most recent data available in this series is for 2020, because the survey that fed it ceased publication after that year. The series is frozen there. That does not mean the situation halted in 2020, only that this particular source has not measured it since.

Eurostat calculates a proportion

Eurostat publishes a different quantity: what percentage of people aged 65 or over lives alone. In Spain that percentage was 22.8% in 2025. It is not a count but a share of a total, and for that reason it can move in the opposite direction to the absolute number without either source being wrong.

How the number of households has changed

The INE series from 2013 to 2020 shows sustained growth:

• 2013: 1.81 million
• 2014: 1.85 million
• 2015: 1.86 million
• 2016: 1.93 million
• 2017: 1.96 million
• 2018: 2.04 million
• 2019: 2.01 million
• 2020: 2.13 million

The path runs from 1.81 million in 2013 to 2.13 million in 2020. The only interruption is in 2019, at 2.01 million, below the previous year. A single year of decline in a survey is worth reading with caution: it may reflect a real change or the ordinary variability of the sample, and the source offers no explanation.

The jump from 2019 to 2020 is the largest in the whole series. It coincides with the pandemic year, although the figure alone does not establish a relationship between the two: the statistic records how many households there are, not why.

The percentage describes a different path

The Eurostat series is longer, beginning in 2004, and its shape does not resemble the INE's.

It began at 23.4% in 2004 and held steady through the early years, with 23.8% in 2007 as the peak of that period. It then fell to 21.7% in 2011, the lowest value in the whole series. From there it rose again, with a pause at 24.6% in 2017, up to 25.2% in 2018, which is the maximum of the series.

It has not returned to that maximum since, although the descent has not been linear: 24.4% in 2019, 23.4% in 2020, 24.0% in 2021, 24.9% in 2022, 23.6% in 2023, 23.1% in 2024 and 22.8% in 2025. The most recent figure is the lowest since 2013.

What happens when the count and the proportion do not agree

In the years both series cover, 2013 to 2020, the two rise together: the INE count goes from 1.81 to 2.13 million and the Eurostat share from 22.5% to 23.4%. The fall in the share comes later and begins at the 2018 maximum. Because the INE series ends in 2020, these two sources cannot show what the count has done since.

A count rising while a percentage falls would not be a contradiction but arithmetic.

The Eurostat proportion is a quotient: older people living alone divided by the total number of older people. If the total number of people aged 65 or over grows quickly, the quotient can fall even as the numerator keeps rising. Put another way: there can be more older people living alone every year and, at the same time, a smaller share of the whole, simply because there are more older people than before.

Both readings matter, and they serve different purposes. The absolute count is what interests anyone planning services, because resources are sized by number of cases, not by percentages. The proportion is what allows Spain to be compared with other countries, or with its own past, without the size of the population distorting the comparison.

Living alone and feeling lonely are not the same thing

The two figures in this article measure a residential situation: how many older people have a home to themselves. They do not measure wellbeing, isolation, or unwanted loneliness.

The distinction is not an academic nicety. Someone who lives alone may have daily visitors, close ties and a full social life. Someone else may live with company and feel profoundly alone. Studies of unwanted loneliness work with subjective indicators, based on what people report feeling, and those indicators do not coincide with a count of single person households.

That is why these statistics answer the question in the title well, and answer badly the one usually asked next, which is how many older people feel lonely. They are different questions and they need different sources.

What these figures do not tell us

It is worth listing the limits of what has been cited here, because a figure without its limits easily becomes something it is not:

• They say nothing about the health of those living alone, nor about their functional independence.
• They do not show how much time those people spend alone during the day, which is a different quantity from living without company.
• They do not describe their support networks: close family, neighbours, social services and home care all fall outside the indicator.
• They are not broken down here by sex, age or region. The original sources do allow those breakdowns, but the figures cited in this article are totals.
• They are not current to the same year. The INE count ends in 2020 and the Eurostat share runs to 2025.

Frequently asked questions

How many older people live alone in Spain?

The official reference in absolute terms is the 2.13 million single person households aged 65 and over recorded by the INE in 2020, which are also the most recent data available in that series. Each household of that kind corresponds to one older person living alone.

Why do the INE and Eurostat give different figures?

Because they do not measure the same thing. The INE publishes a count of households, and Eurostat publishes the percentage of people aged 65 or over who live alone, which was 22.8% in 2025. An absolute number and a proportion can move in opposite directions when the reference population grows.

Is the number of older people living alone in Spain rising?

In the INE series, yes: it goes from 1.81 million in 2013 to 2.13 million in 2020, with a single reversal in 2019. The Eurostat share, by contrast, reached its maximum at 25.2% in 2018 and stood at 22.8% in 2025, the lowest value since 2013.

Does living alone mean being lonely?

Not necessarily. The indicators cited describe who a home is shared with, not how the person living there feels. Unwanted loneliness is measured with subjective indicators that do not coincide with a count of single person households.

Sources

• INE. Single person households aged 65 and over. Series from 2013 to 2020; the survey ceased publication after 2020.
• Eurostat. Share of people aged 65 or over living alone. Series from 2004 to 2025 for Spain.