Salaries in the Canary Islands have multiplied by 8.8 in 44 years of democracy, going from 3,596 euros of gross annual salary to 31,495 euros, but they have done so at a slower rate than the national average, so they have fallen six positions among the regions of the country.
The average gross salary in 1978 in the Canary Islands (3,596) was higher than that of Extremadura (2,714) and Murcia (3,041), as it is today, but it was also higher than that in what is now La Rioja (3,567), Valencian Community (3,134), Balearic Islands (3,554), Castilla-León (3,557), Castilla la Mancha (2,967) and Galicia (3,444).
Currently, the average salary in the archipelago (31,495 euros) is below all those territories: La Rioja (33,261), Valencian Community (32,983), Balearic Islands (32,636), Castilla-León (33,141), Castilla la Mancha (32,373) and Galicia (33,581).
However, at the national level, the salary gap between territories, the difference between the remuneration of workers in the autonomous communities with the highest and lowest average salaries, has narrowed since the approval of the Constitution in 1978 by more than 15 percentage points, to just under 24%.
The long series of economic and demographic aggregates of the Spanish regions during the last seven decades, recently updated by Fedea with data from 2022, reveal that the average salary of Spanish workers has multiplied almost by 10 in the current democratic period and has done so in such a way that, despite maintaining differences between the different territories, these are significantly smaller than those at the beginning of the Transition.
This reduction of the territorial wage gap is a continuation of what had been occurring previously during the stage of "developmentalism" of the second half of the dictatorship and that the Fedea data allow to quantify in another 15 %.
Adding the reductions of the gap of 15.5 percentage points between 1955 and 1978 and another 15.2 points between this last date and 2022, in the entire period for which the Fedea analysis offers data, in 67 years, the distance between the highest and lowest average salary -taking as a reference the current autonomous communities, slightly different from the regions of the Franco regime- has been reduced to less than half.
Basque Country and Madrid, compared to Extremadura and Murcia
In 1978, the highest average salary was 4,460 euros in Madrid, 1,746 euros more than the 2,714 in Extremadura, which meant that the inhabitants of this community earned 39.1% less than those.
After 44 years of democracy, in 2022, the average salary in Madrid was still the highest of all the autonomous regions, with 40,605 euros, 9,709 more than in Murcia, with 30,896, so Murcian workers received an average remuneration of 23.9% less than those in the capital and its region.
Analyzing the three years prior to the last one included in the Fedea series, that is, from the year prior to the pandemic, 2019, the wage gap between territories was 25.4% in 2019 -between 27,319 in Murcia and 36,613 in Madrid-, and 23.26% in 2020 -between 30,260 in Murcia and 39,435 in Madrid-, to rebound momentarily in 2021 to 24.02% -between 29,841 in Extremadura and 39,276 in Madrid-.