Afro-Spaniards are Spanish citizens of

Sub-Saharan African Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. These include West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the African ...

descent. The term may include Spaniards of

Afro-Caribbean Afro-Caribbean people or African Caribbean are Caribbean people who trace their full or partial ancestry to Sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of the modern African-Caribbeans descend from Africans taken as slaves to colonial Caribbean via the ...

and

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

descent, but often excludes Black Spaniards of

Latin American Latin Americans ( es, Latinoamericanos; pt, Latino-americanos; ) are the citizens of Latin American countries (or people with cultural, ancestral or national origins in Latin America). Latin American countries and their diasporas are multi-eth ...

origin. It almost always excludes Spaniards of

North African North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...

origin. The specific number of Spaniards of Sub-Saharan Africa origin is unknown due to the fact that the Spanish government does not collect data on ethnicity or racial self-identification.

Defining Afro-Spaniards

There are currently 1,301,296 people residents in Spain who were born in countries of the African continent, excluding the 1,802,810 born in

Ceuta Ceuta (, , ; ar, سَبْتَة, Sabtah) is a Spanish autonomous city on the north coast of Africa. Bordered by Morocco, it lies along the boundary between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. It is one of several Spanish territorie ...

Melilla Melilla ( , ; ; rif, Mřič ; ar, مليلية ) is an autonomous city of Spain located in north Africa. It lies on the eastern side of the Cape Three Forks, bordering Morocco and facing the Mediterranean Sea. It has an area of . It was par ...

and the

Canary Islands The Canary Islands (; es, Canarias, ), also known informally as the Canaries, are a Spanish autonomous community and archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, in Macaronesia. At their closest point to the African mainland, they are west of Morocc ...

which are Spanish provinces or part of Andalucia such is the case with Ceuta and Melilla. They are geographically located in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

. Out of these, 294,343 are Spanish citizens and 1,006,953 are foreign residents. The large majority of these originate in

Morocco Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to ...

. There are 934,046 Moroccan born residents in Spain of which 223,590 are Spaniards and 710,457 are foreign residents. However, Moroccans being North Africans, they are usually not considered as Afro-Spaniards unless they are Black Moroccans, or have visible physical features usually associated with Black peoples. Non-Moroccan African-born residents in Spain thus number 367,250 of which 70,753 are Spanish citizens and 296,497 are foreign residents. According to the national statistics agency, in 2019 there were 361,000 residents in Spain whose mother was born in an African country excluding Morocco. Out of these 91,000 were Spanish citizens.

History

African populations have known to exist continuously in what is now Spain since pre-Roman times, with a major influx of Africans occurring during the Islamic period. African admixtureprimarily

Berber Berber or Berbers may refer to: Ethnic group * Berbers, an ethnic group native to Northern Africa * Berber languages, a family of Afro-Asiatic languages Places * Berber, Sudan, a town on the Nile People with the surname * Ady Berber (1913–196 ...

admixture from

North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...

is dated to the Muslim period of the

Middle Age In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

, and averages from 10 to 12% in the south and west to ~3% in the northeast, dropping to close to 0% in a cluster found in the Basque region. Canary Islander Spaniards have significantly higher levels of both North African and Sub-Saharan ancestry, ranging from averages of 14% to 35% and which originates both in the indigenous Guanche people and the subsequent slave trade.

Notable people

Artists and writers

Juan Latino Juan Latino (born Juan de Sessa; Ethiopia c. 1518 – Granada, c. 1594/1597) was a Spanish professor of Ethiopian descent at the University of Granada during the sixteenth century. He could be considered the first African who studied at a Europea ...

, poet and

Renaissance humanist Renaissance humanism was a revival in the study of classical antiquity, at first in Italy and then spreading across Western Europe in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. During the period, the term ''humanist'' ( it, umanista) referred to teache ...

Juan de Pareja Juan de Pareja (c. 1606 in Antequera – 1670 in Madrid) was a Spanish painter and slave, born in Antequera, near Málaga, Spain. He is known primarily as a member of the household and workshop of painter Diego Velázquez, who freed him in 1650. ...

, painter of Morisco origin born in Antequera. *

Elvira Dyangani Ose Elvira Dyangani Ose (born 1974) is a Spanish art curator who has been serving as the director of MACBA Contemporary Art Museum in Barcelona. Dyangani's family comes from Equatorial Guinea, and she was born and raised in Spain. From 2018 to 20 ...

, curator

Explorers and conquistadores

Juan Valiente Juan Valiente (1505? - † 1553, Tucapel) was a Spanish black conquistador who participated in the expeditions of Pedro de Almagro in present-day Guatemala and Chile. Taken into captivity as a slave in Africa, he was transported to Mexico, where ...

Juan Garrido Juan Garrido (– c. 1480 – c. 1550) was a black African-Spanish conquistador. Born in West Africa, he went to Portugal as a young man. In converting to Catholicism, he chose the Spanish name, Juan Garrido ("Handsome John"). Juan Garrido joined ...

* Beatriz de Palacios

In entertainment and media

Philanthropists

Bisila Bokoko Bisila Bokoko (born June 26, 1974) is a Spanish-born American businesswoman. She is the founder and CEO of BBES (Bisila Bokoko Embassy Services) a New York-based business development agency that represents, promotes and markets brands internatio ...

Politicians

* Dolores Johnson Sastre * Rita Bosaho * Ignacio Garriga * Luc André Diouf

In sports

Sources

* Appiah, Kwame Anthony; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.(1999). Africana: the Encyclopedia of African and African American Experience.

Basic Civitas Books Basic Books is a book publisher founded in 1950 and located in New York, now an imprint of Hachette Book Group. It publishes books in the fields of psychology, philosophy, economics, science, politics, sociology, current affairs, and history. H ...

, pp. 1769–1773. .

References

{{Immigration to Spain

Spaniard Spaniards, or Spanish people, are a Romance ethnic group native to Spain. Within Spain, there are a number of national and regional ethnic identities that reflect the country's complex history, including a number of different languages, both ind ...

Ethnic groups in Spain Spanish people of African descent African diaspora in Europe