Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, gives a press conference in Madrid, on February 7, 2020. (Photo by AFP)

Spain is utterly failing its poorest citizens who are living in some of the worst conditions in Europe, despite its strong post-recession recovery, a UN expert said on Friday.

Speaking at the end of a 12-day fact-finding mission, Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, said he had visited areas many Spaniards would not recognize as part of their country.

Spain is utterly failing people in poverty whose situation now ranks among the worst in the EU, Alston wrote in the 20-page report, pointing to shockingly high levels of inequality within the country.

But at the same time, he hailed Spain’s new left-wing coalition government as the bright spot, and lauded its commitment to achieving social justice.

Speaking to reporters, Alston said he had met Roma people living on rubbish dumps, families fighting eviction or struggling with the dilemma of heating or eating and migrant workers living in probably the worst conditions I’ve ever seen.

The levels of poverty that exist in Spain reflect a political choice that has been very clearly made over the past decade, Alston told a news conference.

When the global property bubble burst in 2008, it sent shock-waves through the Spanish economy which fell into an almost five-year recession. It returned to growth at the end of 2013 and since then its economic output has outpaced much of the rest of Europe.

But though Spain was thriving economically, the post-recession recovery had left many behind, the report found, pointing to deep widespread poverty, high unemployment, a housing crisis of stunning proportions and a completely inadequate social protection system.

It’s clear there are two very different Spains, Alson said, pointing out that the recovery benefits had largely gone to corporations and the wealthy.

Between 2007 and 2017, the incomes of the top 1.0 percent grew by 24 percent while those in the bottom 90 percent were below 2.0 percent growth.

At the same time, the Spanish state opted to collect something like 5.0 percent less in taxation than almost any other European nation and that meant it had less money to spend on social protection.

A broken system

Spain’s National Institute of Statistics (INE) says one in four people are at risk of poverty or social exclusion which, at 26.1 percent, is 5.0 percentage points above the average in the European Union.

And unemployment remains sky-high at 13.78 percent, more than double the EU average.

The bottom line is that you get what you pay for: if the Spanish state is not investing in social protection, you get these types of statistics, he said.

If Spain’s high poverty rates were to be significantly reduced, there was no alternative to major additional spending to fix a broken social assistance system, the report said.

And the IMF reached a surprisingly similar conclusion last week, he said, saying a very significant part of their report was about the problems in (Spain’s) social protection system with a clear implication the government should be spending a lot more.

There was no immediate response to the report from the Spanish government.

’Daunting challenges’

Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government faced daunting challenges but it was critical to prioritize issues like establishing a national minimum income scheme, revamping its tax policies and urgently addressing the housing crisis, he said.

Sanchez took the reins of a new coalition government last month that includes the radical left-wing Podemos, a party with its roots in the anti-austerity movement that emerged in 2011 and which has pledged to embrace social rights, fiscal justice and help the most vulnerable.

One of its first acts was to raise the minimum wage by 5.5 percent to €1,108 ($1,230), which follows a 22-percent hike last year.

The new government’s message is a welcome one, but its actions must live up to that rhetoric, Alston said.

His final report will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in June.

SOURCE: PRESS TV