This way, about 75% of the Spanish community in São Paulo was concentrated in the region of Araraquara and in the Northwest and in those areas the towns with most Spaniards were Tanabi, Mirassol, Nova Granada (named after the Spanish city of Granada), São José do Rio Preto and Olímpia. The city of São Paulo had 50,000 Spaniards. The 1913 census in Santos found a population of 8,343 Spaniards out of a population of 39,802 people. In 1931 there were 11,982 Spaniards in that city, out of a population of 125,941 people (or 9.51% of the total population). Reports that Spanish immigrants were living in appalling conditions in Brazil made Spain, in 1909, sent to Brazil the Inspector Gamboa Navarro in order to assess the situation of the Spaniards in the country. Navarro made a report, which showed that employment contracts were "illusory", because they were not respected. In coffee plantations, he wrote that the immigrants slept on the floor and in tiny houses and also reported that the abuses in labour relations were frequent. He concluded that 98% of the Spaniards in Brazil would return to Spain if they could. Three weeks after the publication of that report, Spanish newspaper Gaceta de Madrid proposed a ban on Spanish emigration to Brazil. The newspapers remembered that Italy and Germany had already passed laws on the subject and that Portugal was trying to conduct its immigrants to other countries rather than Brazil. Finally, on August 26, 1910 Spain issued a royal decree prohibiting the free emigration to Brazil. The decree did not have any effect and, curiously, the Spanish immigration to Brazil peaked after it was issued. Other reports suggest that there was a thriving Spanish community in Brazil, particularly those who were able to leave the coffee plantations and to buy their own lands. It is estimated that since Brazil's independence (1822) some 750,000 Spaniards have entered Brazil. This figure represents between 12.5% and 14% of all foreigners entering Brazil since its independence and puts the Spaniards in the third place among immigrants in Brazil, behind the Portuguese and Italians. Immigrants of Spanish origin were among those who had a higher rate of permanent residence in Brazil, overtaken by the Japanese but above nationalities such as Portuguese, Italian or German. This may be due to the large number of families traveling with passage paid by the Brazilian government that left their native Spain to work on coffee plantations of the state of São Paulo.