You Have The Poor Always With You

What does the Spanish region of Extremadura have in common with Ethiopia? (And don’t say that both start with an “e”.)

The two share a strikingly similar percentage in terms of their respective rates of poverty. The measures are different, as greatly different factors come into play, but the percentage of the population of Extremadura currently in poverty is 38%. In 2005, according to figures released by the CIA, Ethiopia, only six notches above the poorest two countries in the world in terms of per capita income, had a poverty rate of 38.7%.

Don’t let us confuse the two figures. Local standards of living mean that the poverty rates are calculated quite differently, but even so, if African poverty is considered a bad thing, which it is, should we not be somewhat alarmed by a level of poverty in Spain that, in relative terms, is equally as bad?

Extremadura, as revealed by new figures from the INE (the Spanish national statistics office), is Spain’s poorest region. And the Spanish are getting poorer. Provisional figures for 2011 suggest that there has been an increase of just over one percentage point, to 21.9%, of people in Spain who live below the breadline, defined in terms of a two-child family with an income of less than 15,820 euros a year.

The Balearics sit in the middle of the league table of rich and poor parts of Spain;20.6% of the population in 2010 existed in poverty, almost exactly the same as the national average of 20.7% last year. Taking the CIA’s statistics, Spain, to put it bluntly, is the poorest country in western Europe. It is poorer than many countries in eastern Europe, and the Balearics are pretty much bang on the same mark.

National and regional wealth do paint a different picture. The Balearics, by GDP per head of population, is one of the wealthiest parts of Spain, and Spain is rated by the IMF as the twelfth richest nation in the world. Not that this necessarily counts for much when a country can get itself into such a crisis of debt. And there is no getting away from the fact that economic crisis has added to the level of poverty and from the fact that, regardless of GDP figures, there is real hardship in the Balearics and an increasing inequality in the distribution of wealth.

Among the various statistics that inform the INE’s report is a measure of “delays in payments related to the main dwelling” (by which is meant ability to meet mortgage or rent payments, among others). On this measure, the Balearics are by far the worst region in Spain, by almost five percentage points more than the next poorest performing region, the Canary Islands.

Such a finding can be interpreted in different ways. It could be that people have overstretched themselves where mortgage commitments are concerned – which has certainly been the case – but it might also suggest that the Balearics, and property values in particular, are too expensive, relative to general earnings capacity.

If this is so, and one is inclined to believe it to be so, then the regional government’s decision to unblock projects for more luxury property development and the fact that the luxury real-estate market is relatively buoyant at present (buoyant especially where overseas buyers are concerned) put the situation into sharper relief, and it borders on the obscene.

The national government and the regional government in the Balearics operate, by comparison with other European countries, from a low base when it comes to provisions of a welfare state. But what provisions there are, are due to fall to an even lower base. The Bauzá administration is entirely mute on the subject of welfare, save for its wishes to make cuts. And these cuts have so far been more drastic than in any other part of Spain, and we yet to have revealed the full horrors that await under a national Partido Popular government.

In a few days time, we will witness the physical manifestation of the absurdity that is the local economy. The dole queues will be snaking along streets, miles upon miles of humanity, looking for its annual handout from a government that is in no position to make it. Unemployment, greater levels of poverty, cuts to services, cuts to assistance, while all the time the government abrogates responsibility to the private sector and shows not the slightest interest in any form of welfare policy.

One in five people in the Balearics living in poverty, and rising. Two in five in Extremadura. And this is meant to be a wealthy country.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Another Day In Paradise: Homelessness

He had a pretty impressive suntan. His feet, open to the elements thanks to the flip-flops, were a mahogany colour. He wasn’t doing anything. Just sitting there on a wall by the Eroski supermarket in Can Picafort. His company was a plastic bag. Inside which was a bottle. I knew who he was. Or at least he fit the description. He’s the German who lives in an abandoned house. To be more accurate, a house that the family which owns it cannot agree as to what to do with it. Somehow, he had come to be living there. When a member of the family had been to the house, she had been shocked to find it inhabited. Along with all the junk that had come to be stored in it was this German, together with no electricity and no water.

He wasn’t doing any harm, so he stayed on. Maybe it was an advantage. Someone to watch over the place. To stop youths getting in. Having a “botellón”, taking drugs. It didn’t really matter how he had come to be in the house. He couldn’t exactly go back. Back to Germany, that is. His passport had long expired. He was a non-person. Time was when he used to work over in Alcúdia. But now he had no bike, and when the weather was bad that was a nightmare to use anyway. He might occasionally get some work around and about. Otherwise, he would wash in a bar in the morning. And in the evening he would be at another bar to take the odd coffee and a leak before bedtime. And at other times he would sit on a wall.

Outside a different Eroski, one in Alcúdia, a gaggle of the outer edges of society gathers to pass the time of day, to shout, to bring the dogs, to raise the plastic bags. Strictly speaking, it is an offence to drink alcohol on the streets. Sometimes they are a nuisance, but there’s not trouble like that elsewhere: at the derelict, former nightspot palace of Es Fogueró, the imposingly mysterious ruin by the industrial estate in Alcúdia that gives a similar impression as to having been abandoned, despite its being new.

In Es Fogueró there was a body back in the summer. “El Gallego” was dead. He’d been killed, so the Guardia were to reveal. A brother and sister, also “residents” of the ruin, face a homicide charge. In the building where Julio Iglesias had once performed, the dance had stopped for the Galician. When you end the beguine.

It was a perishing late afternoon in January. Outside yet another Eroski. He was crouching in the walkway to the supermarket. You can forget just how cold it can get during a Mallorcan winter. A coin or a few. What does it take? How utterly merciless I had been. It would have taken very little. Little to shrug off a foul mood and a memory of the “aggressive begging” of London. Because his hadn’t been.

While there isn’t much overt evidence as to homelessness in places such as Alcúdia, it exists all the same. It is the lie to the nonsensically unthinking rote-speak of “this paradise island”. Paradise found and paradise lost.

No one much talks about or wants to know about poverty and homelessness in Mallorca. It’s not what the brochures would have you think about. The exact scale of homelessness is hard to put a finger on, in Mallorca and across Spain. Some town halls are now conducting censuses. What is reckoned is that a half of the homeless are foreigners. But not all are recent immigrants. The German has been in Can Picafort for years.

In addition to much low-paid employment in Mallorca, there is now the issue of reductions in assistance from the state. Compounding this are the increased costs of energy – electricity and butane both on the rise again. How many live in fuel poverty in Mallorca? A Mediterranean climate might make you believe such a thing couldn’t exist. It does. In housing wholly inadequate in terms of insulation, draught exclusion and damp-coursing. Where the housing exists of course. Because not everyone’s that lucky. So they end up on the streets and, in the case of Palma, have a council that wants to impound their consolatory alcohol.

Much of the help extended to the homeless comes through the offices of the Cruz Roja (Red Cross). In 2009 the level of help it gave in the Balearics rose by 38%. Back in 2007, the number of individuals either socially excluded or at risk of being so that it assisted was 697. The actual homeless figure it dealt with then amounted to 547 people. With the withdrawal of much state-based “ayuda”, the 2009 percentage rise is unlikely to fall.

The numbers may not sound as though there is a crisis. But these scratch the surface of poverty and of those at the breadline. To whom you have to add the homeless. The soup kitchens of Mallorca have already announced a marked rise in “business” this autumn.

There is an unedifying aspect to Mallorca. It is one of real-estate division. In winter you can walk past the second homes, the villa rentals and hotels of Playa de Muro. You can repeat the exercise elsewhere. Empty. They aren’t of course about to be opened up to the homeless. This isn’t the point. What is, is the insult of so much land in non-productive use for so long a period. Through the winters.

At least in an abandoned house in Can Picafort, the German has a roof over his head.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.