Canary Islands is the Spanish region with the highest percentage of population in severe poverty, with 15% of the population affected. Severe poverty measures the percentage of people living in households whose total equivalent disposable income is less than 40% of the median income.
Next is Andalusia, with 10.3% of its inhabitants in this situation, and Murcia, which shows a percentage of 10.2%.
According to data released by the State Association of Directors and Managers in Social Services, which points out how, in addition to these communities, Catalonia and Madrid also have high numbers of affected population.
In the case of Catalonia, 9% of its population is in this alarming situation (almost 700,000 people). In the case of Madrid, the percentage drops to 7.4%, although the absolute figure, given the large number of inhabitants in this community, amounts to almost half a million Spaniards.
Navarra and the Basque Country, with percentages of 3.4% and 4.6%, are the best positioned in this order.
"Meager and slow" aid
The report from which these data are extracted focuses on emergency aid from local entities, one of the three types of aid that people in severe poverty receive in our country.
The almost four million Spaniards in severe poverty aspire to receive state aid (Minimum Basic Income); regional aid (Minimum Integration Income) or aid that, theoretically, is for emergencies and granted by city councils, provincial councils or island councils. The report points out a problem regarding these last local aids, which should cover a sudden vulnerability for a few months: their slowness.
Despite the meager amounts involved, 172 euros on average per year per recipient, local aid follows a bureaucracy typical of a subsidy and not of urgent aid that the families who request it should receive within weeks and not months, according to José Manuel Ramírez Navarro, president of the aforementioned association.
