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Spanish wealth gap biggest in Europe, says charity
Top 20% of Spanish society now seven and a half times richer than bottom fifth, with number of millionaires up 13% in year
Paul Hamilos in Madrid
The Guardian, Thursday 10 October 2013 16.53 BST
A beggar in central Madrid. Photograph: Susana Vera/Reuters
Spain is the most unequal society in Europe, according a report that says three million people in the country now live in conditions of "extreme poverty", while another study says the number of Spanish millionaires has grown.
A report by the Catholic charity Caritas said that more than 6% of the country's population of 47 million lived on €307 a month or less in 2012, double the proportion in 2008 before Spain was hit by a recession that has left 26% of its workforce unemployed.
A separat§e study by Credit Suisse found that the number of millionaires in Spain rose to 402,000 last year, an increase of 13% on 2011, emphasising the ever-widening gap between rich and poor.
Announcing the findings of the Caritas report at a press conference in Madrid, Sebastian Mora, general secretary of the charity's Spanish arm, warned of "a situation of neglect, injustice and the dispossession of people's most basic rights".
He said that while "poverty is widespread in Spain, it mainly affects the most vulnerable", and the ongoing economic crisis had "produced a weakening of family ties and other safety nets, particularly in the public sector".
The top 20% of Spanish society is now seven and a half times richer than the bottom fifth, the biggest divide in Europe, according to Caritas.
"The report paints a picture of a more fractured, more divided society, where the middle class is disappearing and a minority has access to wealth, goods and services while the majority sits outside," Mora said.
The governing rightwing People's party has introduced a series of austerity measures in an attempt to deal with a public debt that is nearly 100% of GDP, but many fear that these are hitting the poorest sectors of society disproportionately hard.
Six years ago Spain's economy was heralded as one of Europe's great success stories, and in 2007 it created nearly half the new jobs in the eurozone, but its unemployment rate is now second only to that of Greece, and economists see little light at the end of the tunnel.
This week the Council of Europe's commissioner for human rights, Nils Muižnieks, said a report that "cuts in social, health and educational budgets have led to a worrying growth of family poverty in Spain. This has had a particularly negative impact on the enjoyment of human rights by children and persons with disabilities."
The OECD's first global study of adult skills revealed that levels of literacy and numeracy were worryingly low, with Spain coming bottom of a list of 24 countries, raising concerns about its ability to emerge successfully from the crisis in the near future. The OECD survey found that one in four Spaniards between 16 and 65 scored the lowest levels of literacy and one in three the lowest levels of mathematical proficiency.
The Spanish government argues that it has stabilised the economy after years of recession, but economists believe a complete overhaul is necessary, as any recovery remains vulnerable to internal and external changes of fortune.
