Chapter 330: High Birth, High Death

If it were in later generations, there would be world-famous music like the "Concierto de Aranjuez" to increase the fame of Aranjuez. But now, the Aranjuez Palace indeed had no sense of existence in the whole of Spain, and there were only scattered Spaniards in the town.

Such a quiet environment was a good tourist destination for Gao Da. The identity of royal family members was special, and this quiet environment was not only the protection of the privacy of royal family members but also could ensure that the travel of royal family members would not disturb the lives of ordinary Spaniards.

It was indeed so; after Gao Da arrived at the Aranjuez Palace, he immediately felt the quietness and peace of this palace and the surrounding towns.

For royal family members, this was absolutely a precious environment. Several little guys could play here leisurely, and Gao Da could also enjoy a period of relaxed and leisurely time without having to worry about Spain's government affairs.

Gao Da was quite at ease handing over state affairs to Prime Minister Canovas to handle. Perhaps his ability was not as excellent as Prime Minister Pulimo's, but fortunately, his loyalty to Gao Da was higher, and he was also more obedient.

After living in the Aranjuez Palace for half a year to spend the hot summer, Gao Da took his family back to the Royal Palace of Ma Deli.

Although the scenery of the Aranjuez Palace was indeed good, Gao Da could not stay away from Ma Deli, the political center of Spain, for a long time.

Starting from 1886, Spain's work focus on colonization changed from colonial territory development to the development of colonies.

A large number of immigrants were transported from all over Europe and Spain to the colonies, and there were also individual colonial populations who passed the assessment and were transported to the Spanish mainland, becoming true Spaniards.

In the whole of 1885, Spain's local population net growth was nearly 700,000. The most gratifying thing was the birth rate of newborns; after the statistics of newborn population by Spanish governments at all levels, Spain had about 920,000 newborns in 1885, and the newborn birth rate was as high as 40‰.

Just newborns were 920,000, and it could already be expected how exaggerated Spain's population growth was in 1885.

Of course, before calculating population growth, it was also necessary to calculate population inflow and outflow and population death scale.

Because of the relatively poor medical technology of this era, all European countries showed the characteristics of high population birth rate and high population death rate.

Especially agricultural countries, under the premise that the population birth rate was among the best in the world, the population death rate was also among the best in the world.

Spain before the reform and industrial revival was indeed like this, but after the reform and a series of medical subsidies issued by the government, Spain's population death rate, especially the newborn death rate, had already had a significant decline.

According to the retrospective statistics of the government on infants born in 1885, among these 920,000 newborns, more than 800,000 infants survived, and the newborn survival rate was as high as 87%.

Although there were still 120,000 newborns who unfortunately died prematurely due to various reasons, in this era of relatively backward medical technology, being able to survive nearly 90% of infants was already quite not easy.

It is worth mentioning that the death scale of the elderly population over 65 in Spain was even less than the death scale of infants.

The main reason was also that the average life expectancy of this era was not long, and only 3 or 4 out of 100 people could live to over 60 years old.

Because of industrial pollution and poor medical conditions, Spain's population death rate was also as high as 21.7‰, and the total number of deaths was nearly 500,000.

Newborn population minus the number of deaths, Spain's local population growth was only about 420,000. Don't look at the fact that 920,000 people were born and there was only 420,000 population growth; in fact, such a situation was already quite excellent looking at the whole of Europe.

Even for other European countries with a population as high as 30 or 40 million, the net population growth was not necessarily comparable to Spain.

The main reason was that other European countries had more developed industries, so their number of workers was also more. European countries had a clear characteristic, that is, the population growth of agricultural countries was more than that of industrial countries.

The main reason was that farmers, in addition to planting, could manage themselves most of the time. In other words, they could choose a relatively relaxed way to spend their time outside of work, among which having children was a very important entertainment method.

But workers were different. Although the income of workers was higher than that of farmers, the working hours of workers were also longer than those of farmers. Plus, workers had fixed workplaces and needed to stay away from their hometowns, and even stay away from their families to go to big cities to work.

This also meant that workers of this era had no free time to dominate, and it was very tiring to work all day, so they had no mood to have children.

In addition to the net population growth of 420,000 in the mainland, in terms of foreign immigrants, Spain also obtained a large amount of population inflow.

With Spain's development of colonies, many Spaniards chose to go to colonies to find more opportunities to make a fortune. This also made Spain's per capita arable land become more while the local population grew.

The local economic prosperity increased immigration appeal, and just Italy, Germany, and Austria provided a large number of immigrants to Spain.

These countries wanted to go to Africa or the Americas, they had to pass through the Mediterranean exit and cross the Atlantic to go.

This also meant that Spain was their necessary stop, and many people, because they saw various welfare conditions regarding immigration in the local area when staying at Spanish ports, finally chose to immigrate and join Spanish nationality.

Because of the population trade with Russia at that time, Spain attracted a wave of transport fleets. Don't look at the fact that there were only a few military shipyards that Spain could bring out, in fact, there were quite a few civilian shipyards.

Plus Spain was located at the western exit of the Mediterranean, having natural advantages in geographical location. Currently, among the transport fleets going to North America and South America along the Mediterranean coast, Spain controlled about one-third.

This also led to these transport fleets under Spanish control staying at Spanish ports many times, and they basically had cooperation with the local government, with the purpose of attracting a part of immigrants to stay in Spain and finally become Spain's population.

Since Spain's administrative division reform, the cabinet government and parliament had become stricter in the performance assessment of governments at all levels.

From the cabinet government to the state and municipal governments, they would experience performance assessments every year, among which the most important assessment conditions were the growth of population scale, industrial scale, and total economic amount.

Although these assessment conditions were a bit general, for this era, officials who could make population, industry, and economy achieve growth at the same time, even if they were not particularly excellent officials, were at least above the passing line.

In such a big environment, governments at all levels became very concerned about the population growth within their own land. However, the Spanish government also had relatively strict restrictions on population introduction, and governments at all levels could not introduce population at will.

First of all, all Black people were not within the scope of Spain's population introduction. Of course, currently, this regulation was only limited to the Spanish mainland, and Black people still had the opportunity to join Spain's colonies and become local residents.

It was just that even in colonies, the introduction of Black population was also quite strict. If a Black person wanted to become a colonial resident recognized by Spain, they either had to create huge economic value for Spain or be a technical talent needed by Spain itself.

In the ten-plus years since Gao Da became the King of Spain, the Black people who truly had the opportunity to become residents of Spanish colonies could be counted on one hand.

The reason why these Black people could become residents of Spanish colonies was because of their special status. For example, some chieftains and Emirs of African indigenous states could obtain the status of Spanish colonial residents.

This was also to divide the local Black class, letting Black people split into two factions: those who had common interests with Spain and those who were opposed to them.

These Black people who became colonial residents recognized by Spain wanted to maintain their rights, and they had to promote Spain's colonial rule and reduce local resistance.

If an entire indigenous state clearly opposed Spain's colonial rule, then there was naturally no need for the Emir or chieftain of this indigenous state to exist.

From this point, it could also be seen that even if Black people could be recognized by Spain, Spain was mostly using them.

When these Black people lost their use value, Spain would still not continue to recognize their rights, and the master of this land was always only the Spanish people.

According to the results summarized from various cities, in the whole of 1885, the cumulative number of immigrants obtained by all cities in the Spanish mainland exceeded 300,000.

According to the relevant information registered by the immigration departments of various cities, among these 300,000 immigrants, Russia and Italy ranked in the top two respectively, contributing 120,000 and 80,000 immigrants to Spain.

Immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire ranked third, with a total scale of only about 30,000. Then there were immigrants from many countries in the Balkan Peninsula, which added up to about 20,000 in total.

Then there were immigrants from Germany and France, and the immigrants from the two countries combined were only over 10,000, from which it could also be seen that Spain's immigration population appeal to Germany and France was insufficient.

The remaining European countries combined contributed thousands of immigrant populations, among which the most was Portugal, contributing more than 3,000 immigrants.

If it weren't for the Portuguese government issuing policies related to restricting immigration, I am afraid that just one Portugal could contribute more than 2,000 immigrants again.

For powerful countries, the loss of thousands or tens of thousands of immigrants would not hurt their bones. But for Portugal, a country with a population of only a few million, the loss of thousands of people every year would have a relatively large impact on the country's development.

In fact, applying Spain's population growth rate and death rate formula to calculate Portugal's actual population growth, one could understand that for a country like Portugal with a population of less than 5 million, the actual annual population growth was less than 100,000.

Considering that Portugal's medical level and economic environment were worse than Spain's, perhaps Portugal's population growth was even less.

Under such circumstances, losing thousands of population every year was enough to make the Portuguese government feel pain. Moreover, these thousands of populations flowed to its only neighbor, Spain; did this not mean that the Portuguese government was disguisedly helping the enemy?

Although they issued corresponding policies to restrict immigration, due to the power of the Spanish government, the Portuguese government still dared not openly restrict immigration to Spain and could only carry out relevant obstruction in various policies.

This was also the reason why the Portuguese government issued policies to restrict immigration, but there were still more than 3,000 immigrants going to Spain every year.

The reason why these Portuguese people went to Spain was also very simple, and that was that they could obtain jobs with higher income in Spain, and the difficulty for Portuguese people to join Spanish nationality was not high.

Portuguese people could understand Spanish, and there was no big gap between the two sides in terms of appearance and cultural differences.

This also led to the Portuguese people turning into Spaniards with almost no big cost, which was also the reason why Portuguese people chose to go to Spain one after another.

Perhaps the Portuguese government should be glad that Spain's Extremadura state was an administrative region with a small population and not much industry.

If France and Portugal swapped positions, if Portugal were adjacent to Spain's Catalonia, just a Barcelona industrial base would be enough to attract a large number of Portuguese people to swarm in.

Spain's current per capita income was in the middle to upper reaches of Europe, which was higher than Portugal's per capita income.

And the income of Spanish workers was higher than the per capita income, but as long as there was a large industrial base on the border between Spain and Portugal, these Portuguese people could not bear the temptation of high-income jobs.

All European countries provided nearly 270,000 immigrants to Spain, and the remaining 30,000 immigrants were provided by Spain's colonies.

These 30,000 immigrants were mainly composed of Moroccans, and also mixed with a small amount of Philippine colonial indigenous people and Lanfang people.

Spain established Spanish language schools in the Philippines and Lanfang, and also had corresponding immigration introduction plans.

Currently, these two regions could also provide thousands of immigrants to Spain every year; although not many, they could be considered relatively stable sources of immigrants.

The main reason was that these two regions were too far from the Spanish mainland, and immigration required bearing the ship fare by themselves. Unless they met Spain's talent introduction plan, Spain would not provide ship tickets to the mainland.

But being able to attract thousands of immigrants to the Spanish mainland every year under the premise of bearing the ship fare by themselves, this could also see Spain's appeal to the population of these two regions.

Although there was a population inflow of 300,000, this did not mean that Spain had no population outflow.

According to customs and statistics from various cities, just in 1885, Spain lost about 30,000 population.

However, nearly 20,000 of them were actively transported out by Spain, and a considerable part of them were Catalans or Basques.

Transporting them to Spain's colonies could not only fill the vacancy of Spain's insufficient population in the colonies but also solve the problem of the two ethnic groups wanting independence in Navarre and Catalonia, which was simply killing two birds with one stone.

In addition to these 20,000 people who were actively transported out by Spain, the remaining more than 10,000 people were true immigrants who actively chose to immigrate to other countries.

For these people who wanted to leave Spain and go to other countries and lands, Gao Da would neither retain nor stop them.

The inflow and outflow of immigration in this era were very normal; for Gao Da, only those who were willing to stay in Spain and love and recognize this country were his subjects.

Naturally, Spain's various welfare policies and subsidies were only aimed at these true Spaniards who belonged to Gao Da's subjects.

Those immigrants who chose to leave Spain and go to other countries were naturally unable to enjoy Spain's various policies and subsidies anymore.

(End of this chapter) ===== CHAPTER 331 =====