page_title: Mexican immigration to Spain
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Mexican immigration to Spain / History
caption_attribution_description: Español: Palacio de Moctezuma, en Ciudad Rodrigo. (Salamanca).
context_page_description: Mexican immigration to Spain refers to the Mexican population in Spain and their Spanish-born descendants. The Mexicans living in Spain are composed primarily of students, skilled professionals, spouses of Spaniards, as well as Mexican citizens who also have Spanish nationality. In December 2008, the National Statistics Institute in Spain had 14,399 registered Mexicans within its territory, of which 7,210 hold other nationalities of the European Union or are family members of EU citizens. To this number must be added those with dual nationality, who are not in Spanish records as foreigners. Mexican and Spanish laws allow dual citizenship, and many Mexicans who have asked for it, whether they are residents in Spain as grandchildren or they are children of Spanish migrants to Mexico. In 2010, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico recorded 21,107 Mexicans living in Spain, who became the third largest Mexican community residing abroad, after the United States and Canada; and the largest Mexican community in Europe.
  The main destinations of the Mexican community according to the INE, are the autonomous communities of Madrid with 4,138; Catalonia with 4,482 and Andalusia with 2,822.
context_section_description: After Spain completed the conquest of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the first marriages between the daughters of the Emperor Moctezuma Ilhuilcamina and the Spanish soldiers of Extremadura were carried out.
  The first Spanish-born Mexicans to arrive on their native soil were the children of soldiers in Hernán Cortés's army who returned to Seville and Extremadura and the descendants of Aztec royalty which included the titled Duke of Moctezuma de Tultengo and in Granada, the Counts of Miravalle.
  At the end of the sixteenth century, after Mariana de Carvajal married Juan de Toledo Toledo-Moctezuma, who was a descendant of Juan Cano de Saavedra and Isabel Moctezuma, daughter of the Aztec emperor Moctezuma II, who built his palace in Cáceres with a coats of arms incorporating those of the families of Toledo Carvajal as well as Moctezuma.
  During the early twentieth century, there was already a permanent Mexican community in Spain, many of whom were exiled during the Mexican Revolution. Some Porfirian families chose to be exiled rather than continue to live under the new government.
  At the beginning of Spanish Civil War, many Mexicans were part of the armed movements in the territory of Spain, supporting the Republican fighters.
  In the twentieth century, the causes of migration are different, mainly marital links with citizens of Spain, student exchanges or university graduate, which the labor supply and naturalization arises; and the existing economic dynamism between Mexico and Spain, thus achieving the establishment of numerous Mexican companies in the Iberian peninsula.
  In 2015, a legislation conferring Sephardic Jews the right to get Spanish citizenship under the right of return principle was approved in Spain; within a year 88 Mexican Jews were granted Spanish nationality.
caption: The palace of Moctezuma in Ciudad Rodrigo, one of the palaces of Spanish descendants of the Aztec emperor Moctezuma II.
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