«Please don’t put my name, because I have to make a living with pirate jobs. With a pension of 798 euros, I have no other choice,” cries Juan Manuel – it is not, by express request, the name that appears on his ID. A retired bricklayer who arrived at just six years old from Marinaleda to Torreblanca, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Seville whose neighbors have the dubious honor of being the poorest in Spain. This is clear from the statistics of Personal Income Tax (IRPF) filers by postal code for the year 2022. Torreblanca represents an extreme case, but not an isolated one. Andalusia does not fare well on the urban map of economic inequality drawn by this report from the Tax Agency that compares the declared income of residents in more than 800 postal codes in 65 municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Five of the ten poorest neighborhoods in Spain are located in this autonomous community and no Andalusian postal code has made it into the ‘top ten’ of the districts with the highest average disposable income – once taxes are deducted – in the country. Torreblanca is followed by two districts of Alicante, which are Nou Alacant (13,962 euros), in this city, and Carrús, in Elche (14,812 euros); the neighborhoods of San Matías, Los Andenes and Las Chumberas in Santa Cruz de Tenerife (15,889 euros), and Ciudad Jardín (15,964 euros), in the capital of Alicante. The list of the ten poorest is completed by the neighborhoods of the South Sector and the Guadalquivir Industrial Estate, in the capital of Córdoba, whose residents declared an average income of 16,222 euros in 2022; El Alquián, in Almería, with 16,444 euros; Garrapilos (16,448 euros), in Jerez de la Frontera (Cádiz); the Santa Engracia, El Gurugú, Los Corolines, Cerro La Muela and San Fernando neighborhoods (16,449 euros), in Badajoz and, in tenth place, the Norte and Beiro districts (16,582 euros), in Granada. The ‘cushion’ of the underground economyAt the top of this onerous classification is Torreblanca, where its neighbors survive with 9,693 euros of average income per year. Surviving is literal. Juan Manuel attests to this. Now he is 65 years old and has sciatica that leaves him bedridden for several days when he exerts himself physically. Despite the ailments of age, he does not even remotely consider hanging up the masonry trowel that has accompanied him for more than 40 years. ex officio. He would like to, but the underground economy constitutes an indispensable underground cushion “to continue moving forward.” For him and for numerous inhabitants of this neighborhood on the outskirts of Seville that emerged in the 1950s as an alternative solution to the shanty town of El Vacie. This retired laborer—retired is, logically, a saying—does not have figures to support what drives the clandestine economy, but his social thermometer allows him to attest that a large part of his neighborhood has to resort, like him, to the black market of moonlighting at a low price and without Social Security to escape poverty. Otherwise, a social breakdown would occur. Juan Manuel’s own family is an archetype of the average home in this Sevillian neighborhood. His wife is unemployed and has three children, two of them with precarious jobs and one, in turn with three children, who subsists as best he can thanks to the ‘float’ of the Minimum Living Income of just over a thousand euros per month because « “things are very bad.” “Sometimes not even botch work comes out here,” he complains. «I try to move. It is the only way to live with less than 10,000 euros. If you don’t wake up, they will eat them,” reasons this neighbor. Within the city there are also borders. The A92 highway that crosses Torreblanca from east to west, and the Bajo Guadalquivir canal, which fences it from north to south, not only mark physical barriers, there are also insurmountable economic and mental walls. The seven kilometers that separate this district in the southeast of Seville from Casco Antiguo and Nervión Sur (postal code 41004) represent the two extremes of wealth that coexist within the same city. In this last area, the average disposable income is almost quadruple that of Torreblanca: 36,959 euros. The wealthiest neighborhood in Andalusia is, according to the Tax Agency, La Malagueta and Monte Sancha, in the capital of Costal del Sol, where its residents declare an average of 44,649 euros. Up to 35,000 euros separates the richest area from the poorest. The contrast is overwhelming between the richest and poorest areas of Spain. The exclusive urbanization of La Moraleja, in Alcobendas, where celebrities and footballers have their residences, is, according to the latest data from the Tax Agency, the most opulent district in Spain. The average disposable income reaches 136,703 euros, which is fourteen times more than the income declared by the residents of Torreblanca, at the opposite end of the list. Without leaving Andalusia, the wealthiest postal code is La Malagueta and Monte Sancha, in Malaga, where its neighbors have an average income of 44,649 euros. The gap that separates the Costa del Sol neighborhood from Torreblanca is close to 35,000 euros. Torreblanca is, to make matters worse, one of the few neighborhoods in which residents have lost purchasing power compared to 2021. The average disposable income plummeted by 2 .1% in this area, while in almost all postal codes income grew, an average of 4.7%, although they did so at a slower rate than inflation (8.4%). The chronic crisis in the south of Córdoba Sixth place on the list of the poorest neighborhoods is reserved for another Andalusian district, which includes the areas of Sector Sur and Polígono del Guadalquivir, in the capital of Córdoba. The crisis has become chronic in this area separated from the rest of the city by the river. The brick explosion crashed the domestic economy of the workers and bricklayers who lived in this district and sent them into unemployment. Some have not come out of the hole, as revealed by the 16,222 euros of income declared by their neighbors in 2022. Within the same area, Torremolinos street is a black spot, credited to the chronicle of events due to drug dealing or episodes violent In El Alquián, the next on the list of the poorest, the low income of its neighbors is associated with the decline of fishing activity. Agricultural greenhouses have become an escape route from the old economic engine of this area of Almeria. South Sector, in Córdoba; El Alquián, in Almería; Norte, in Granada, and Garrapilos, in Jerez, among the most humble Garrapilos, in Jerez de la Frontera, is the eighth poorest neighborhood. The average income, which stands at 16,448 euros, is the combination of several factors: high unemployment rates, low pensions for older residents, irregular housing and a shortage of services. The Norte-Beiro district, in the capital of Granada, closes the list from more impoverished Andalusian areas, after another district of Badajoz. In this isolated area of the city they have become accustomed to power outages, partly caused by illegal staking for marijuana plantations. Drug trafficking is rampant in an urbanization that concentrates a large number of social housing. Around half of the population lacks resources to cover basic needs. Lack of income also takes its toll on health. According to a recent study, their neighbors suffer twice as many serious illnesses as someone from Granada who lives in the city center.
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