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MINIMUM WAGE

Spain approves guaranteed minimum income scheme for struggling families

Spain's leftwing government approved a minimum basic income scheme on Friday to tackle a spike in poverty stemming from the virus crisis that has forced many families to rely on food aid.

Published: 29 May 2020 16:28 CEST
Spain approves guaranteed minimum income scheme for struggling families
Photo: AFP

“Today a new social right has been created in Spain,” said Pablo Iglesias, a deputy prime minister and head of the hard-left Podemos after the measure was approved by the cabinet.

It will guarantee an income of €462 ($515) per month for an adult living alone, while for families, there would be an additional €139 per person, whether adult or child, up to a monthly maximum of 1,015 euros per home.

The funds will be allocated in line with other income, so anyone with a low-paid job would have their salary topped up to meet the threshold outlined on Friday.

The ministry for inclusion and social security said it would mean “that every home would have a guaranteed average annual income of €10,070 ($11,200)”.

The government said the measure was expected to benefit some 850,000 homes, affecting a total of 2.3 million people — 30 percent of whom were minors.

Around 100,000 families would begin receiving the money next month, it said.

The basic minimum income scheme was a pledge made by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's leftwing coalition government, which took office in January, bringing together his Socialist party with Podemos as the junior partner.

Iglesias said the crisis unleashed by the epidemic had forced the government “to speed up its implementation” of the measure.

The economic stoppage which kicked after Spain went on lockdown in mid-March to slow the spread of the virus, has left hundreds of thousands of people jobless, triggering a rapid rise in poverty that has outstripped that of 2008 when the property bubble burst.

Many families, particularly in Madrid, have for the first time found themselves forced to stand in line for food handouts at local churches and neighbourhood organisations.

The government said the measure, which is expected to cost an annual €3 billion, is aimed at ending extreme poverty, which affects some 600,000 homes and 1.6 million people.

Even before the epidemic took hold, UN poverty expert Philip Alston, who visited in February, said Spain was “utterly failing” its poorest citizens who were living in some of the worst conditions in Europe, describing levels of inequality as “shockingly high”.

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POVERTY

Queuing for food handouts: How the pandemic has left thousands more going hungry in Spain

A year after the pandemic hit Spain, the need for food handouts has soared in the country, especially by workers in the sectors hit hardest by the economic crisis that followed.

Published: 19 March 2021 09:22 CET
Queuing for food handouts: How the pandemic has left thousands more going hungry in Spain
Reina Chambi, 39, queues to receive food aid outside San Ramon Nonato parish in Madrid. Photos: Oscar del Pozo/AFP

Although her face is covered by a black mask, Rita Carrasco still wears bright red lipstick. But her easy smile faltered when she had to join Madrid’s “hunger lines” for food aid.

“It was a hard moment. I felt shame,” says the 41-year-old Mexican, who lost her job as a theatre teacher when Spain’s tight lockdown began in March 2020.

Since then, she has not been able to find work and has used up all her savings.

Over the past year, the demand for food packages has soared in Spain, especially among those employed in sectors worst-hit by the resulting economic crisis.

Last year, the Catholic charity Caritas said it helped half a million people who had never before asked for food packages.

Since December, Carrasco (pictured above) has been going every Friday to a soup kitchen in Carabanchel, a working-class neighbourhood in southern Madrid, to collect a box of groceries.

She also helps distribute food as a volunteer.

“Giving and receiving changes your perspective,” she says.

Beans and fruit

Wearing yellow vests, the volunteers hand out fruit, cereal and beans at a church building to those lining up in a narrow street outside.

The neighbourhood has a high immigrant population and many in the queue are Latin American women.

People used to be able to eat a hot meal onsite, but virus restrictions now mean they can only serve food to take away.

It is one of four soup kitchens opened last spring by the Alvaro del Portillo charity.

Before the pandemic, there was only one, which served around 900 people.

Since then the number of people using the soup kitchens has soared to around 2,000.

“As the months have gone by, we’ve noticed things easing,” says Susana Hortigosa, who runs the charity.

“Although the level of demand is still higher than before the pandemic, it has dropped slightly because people have started getting their furlough payouts or have found a few hours of work” as the economy has picked up, although most still need help, she says.

The leftwing coalition government of Pedro Sanchez has unblocked €40 billion ($48 billion) since the start of the crisis to fund the furlough scheme.

But with the administration overrun with claims, it has often taken months for the payouts to materialise.

‘A great help’

Such was the case with Reina Chambi (pictured below), a 39-year-old carer for the elderly whose husband was employed at a hotel. When the pandemic hit, they were both left jobless.

“My husband stopped working completely and they took a long time to make the furlough payment so we had to turn to the church for help,” says the mother-of-two, waiting outside a soup kitchen in the freezing wind in the Vallecas district.

While the payout has given the family some breathing room, the couple are still jobless, meaning they still need food packages.

“It’s a great help because we don’t have to buy milk, chickpeas, noodles, those things at least. And we can spend (the payout) on detergent or meat,” says Chambi, who misses the “stable life” she enjoyed after arriving from Bolivia 15 years ago.

Even before 2019, official figures showed more than one in four people in Spain were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, one of the highest rates in Europe.

And the pandemic has left the most vulnerable even more at risk.

“It’s so frustrating. Each time I try to escape this situation, something else happens,” sighs Amanda Gomez, 53.

Divorced just before the pandemic, she is raising two children on her own, one with Down’s Syndrome, on a cleaner’s tiny salary.

But she’s not ready to give up — a keen cook, she’s looking up recipes online to “make the most” of the food she’s got, and she is also beginning to bake cakes to order and deliver them to people’s homes.

The hope is that one day she might be able to open her own bakery.

“You dream big because dreaming doesn’t cost anything,” she says.

“What I want is to be able to go to the local church without asking for anything. Just to help out.”

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