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The Region of Murcia has the highest proportion of inactive residents of any part of Spain, with 34.1% of people aged 16 and over doing absolutely no physical exercise in their leisure time, according to the latest Living Conditions Survey from Spain's National Institute of Statistics (INE).

 

That puts Murcia firmly at the bottom of the national rankings on physical activity, well behind the most active regions. In Navarra, just 14.9% of residents admit to doing no exercise at all, while in the Balearic Islands the figure is 19.5%. That contrast is pretty stark.

 

The figures aren't entirely negative for Murcia though. The current 34.1% is actually an improvement on 2022, when 38.2% of residents reported doing no exercise, suggesting things are at least moving in the right direction, if slowly.

 

Among those who do exercise, 27.5% work out between one and three times a week, 15.4% exercise once a day and 12.1% get active between four and six times a week.

 

The inactivity figures are reflected in the Region's weight statistics. Two thirds of adults in Murcia are currently overweight or obese, with 39.8% classified as overweight and 26.6% as obese according to the Regional Ministry of Health's DICA study. Obesity rates have risen sharply since 2002, when the figure stood at 22.4%.

 

Diet is adding to the picture too. Daily fruit consumption among Murcianos has dropped from 67.1% in 2022 to 63.2% in 2025, while the proportion eating vegetables, salads or legumes every day has also fallen, down 3.3 percentage points to 47.7%.

 

Across all of these measures, people on lower incomes tend to fare worse than those on higher incomes, a pattern that holds true nationally as well as in Murcia specifically.

 

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