Press release 25/05/2020
There were 1,672 marriages registered in the fourth quarter of 2019 in the Basque Country, up 0.7% on the previous year
In contrast, in the balance for 2019, the number of marriages in the Basque Country fell by 4.2%
In the fourth quarter of 2019, 1,672 marriages were registered in the Basque Country, which was an increase of 0.7% compared to the same quarter in 2018. Of the total number of marriages, 45 were between people of the same sex (15 between men and 30 between women) and the remaining 1,627 were heterosexual marriages.
The percentage of civil weddings stood at 87.7%, up 3.1 points on the same quarter of 2018, and 7.7 points up on the third quarter of 2019. This percentage refers only to heterosexual marriages, to which a further 2.7 points should be added for marriages between people of the same sex, all of which were civil.
1,573 men and 1,600 women resident in the Basque Country entered into marriage. For 1,302 spouses (82.8%) this was their first marriage, whilst 18 widowers and 253 divorcees remarried. The percentage of women entering into marriage for the first time was similar to that of men, with single women who married representing 82.0% of the total (1,312 women); 18 widows and 270 divorcees also remarried.
The percentage of married women of foreign nationality rose by 2.7 points
In the fourth quarter of 2019, 13.2% of new husbands and 20.5% of new wives were foreign nationals. The percentage of foreign wives was 2.7 percentage points higher than the same quarter of the previous year (17.8%) and the percentage of foreign husbands also increased (0.9 percentage points).
Taking the province into account, 227 couples fixed their residence in Álava, 534 in Gipuzkoa and 809 in Bizkaia. The number of couples who fixed their residence outside of the Basque Country stood at 102.
Regarding the distribution of married couples according to the age of the spouses, in the fourth quarter of 2019, 90.9% of recently married men were over 30 years of age, whereas amongst recently married women this percentage stood at 84.4%. In men this proportion was slightly higher than that of the same quarter of the previous year, when it stood at 90.2%, while it increased by 3.4 points among women (81.0%).
BALANCE FOR 2019
In the provisional data for 2019, the number of marriages for individuals resident in the Basque Country fell by 4.2% with regards to the previous year. The proportion of civil marriages exceeded the figure for 2018 by 2.2 percentage points, reaching 87.6% of the total, which included homosexual marriages.
For 2019 as a whole, 90.3% of husbands and 82.7% of wives entered into marriage at the age of 30 or over, a slightly higher percentage than in 2018 in both cases (89.7% and 81.2%, respectively).
For further information:
Eustat - Euskal Estatistika Erakundea / Basque Statistics Institute
C/ Donostia-San Sebastián, 1 01010 Vitoria-Gasteiz
Press Service: servicioprensa@eustat.es Tel: 945 01 75 62