LIFE expectancy in Spain rose by 1.17 years on average in the last decade, according to the ministry of health and the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
Both organisations are researching the effects of the financial crisis on how long people live – a period of recession and relative poverty lasting from approximately late 2008 until around 2013.
The study, however, takes figures from 2010 to 2018 inclusive – as yet, statistics for the last full year, 2019, are not available.
Data show that the highest life expectancy increase was in the Spanish-owned city-province of Ceuta on the northern Moroccan coast, directly opposite Gibraltar, rising by two years and three months from the start of the last decade – but, curiously, its near-neighbour Melilla, a Spanish enclave immediately south of Almería and close to the Algerian border, was the only region in Spain where life expectancy fell in that time, by 0.67 years.
The Balearic Islands saw the second-highest rise, by 1.55 years, with the greatest leap seen on the mainland being in Asturias, where inhabitants now live 1.45 years longer, followed by Madrid (1.44).
It was, in fact, the capital and its wider region where the highest life expectancy was recorded in the most recent figures to date, in 2018 – it had risen to 84 years and just under 10 months, on average, across both genders, even though the difference is usually around three years with women's being the highest.
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