Introduction

The arrival of significant immigration flows to Spain in the last two decades has been identified by many scholars as the factor with the greatest potential to trigger social and political transformations in Spain (Cebolla & González-Ferrer 2008; González-Enríquez 2009; Reher & Silvestre 2009).

Two traits characterise the way in which Spain has become a country of immigration: intensity and speed. This has created challenges in a number of areas, such as the design of public policies, provision of public services and absorption of a new labour force by the economy. A third trait worth mentioning is that Spain, in addition to being the destination of migrants from less developed countries seeking a job and better living conditions, has also been chosen as a (semi) permanent home by a considerable number of people from developed countries, primarily from the European Union. These are mostly retired persons and they are concentrated on the Mediterranean coast and the Canary Islands.

Immigration has also had an impact in the field of social and political surveys. As the presence of immigrants in Spain has grown, so too has interest in knowing the attitudes and opinions of Spaniards regarding this new phenomenon. More recently, there has been a rising demand for more knowledge about the socio-demographic profile, values and attitudes of the immigrant population.

Unlike other chapters in this book, which focus on surveys specifically addressed to immigrants and ethnic minorities, the main objective of this chapter is to analyse the extent to which the growing presence of a foreign or foreign-born population is affecting the work of a large institution which carries out a range of different types of surveys and has research goals not related to immigration. It reviews how the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS, Sociological Research Centre) has faced the implications of the presence of significant numbers of immigrants in general population surveys. CIS is a public institution whose main task for more than thirty years has been to carry out public opinion surveys. Every year it carries out more than thirty surveys on different topics. Among these, there are regular surveys such as monthly public opinion barometers which have a series of fixed questions that are repeated, evaluating the political and economic situation and identifying what is perceived to be the three most important problems Spain faces.