The report showed that the four poorest neighbourhoods in Spain can all be found in the cities of Seville and Alicante.
The barrios (neighbourhoods) are Polígono Sur and Los Pajaritos y Amate in Seville and Juan XXIII in Alicante.
Those in Seville’s Polígono Sur earned the least amount with an average of just €5,666 per year. In fact, other areas in both Seville and Alicante appeared again on the list of the ten next poorest neighborhoods in the country with those in Seville being listed six times out of the top 15.
All but four of the poorest ones were located in Andalusia, with the others are found in Alicante, Madrid and Murcia.
This is the complete list of the 15 neighbourhoods with the lowest income per capita in Spain, according to the latest available data, collected in 2019:
- Polígono Sur (Seville) – €5,666
- Los Pajaritos y Amate (Sevilla) – €6,042
- Juan XXIII (Alicante) – €6,272
- Torreblanca (Seville) – €6,801
- San Cristóbal (Madrid) – €6,955
- Azahara-Palmeras (Córdoba) – €7,361
- Polígono del Guadalquivir (Córdoba) – €7,380
- Alicante Distrito 5A (Alicante) – €7,425
- Palma-Palmilla (Málaga) – €7,683
- Palmete-Padre Pío (Seville) – €7,724
- Sector Sur (Córdoba) – €8,100
- Olivia-Letanías (Seville) – €8.111
- Norte-Bazorla-Villegas (Seville) – €8,112
- Murcia Distrito 8 (Murcia) – €8,385
- Moreras-Huerta de la Reina (Córdoba) – €8,556
Sevillian towns such as Los Palacios – Villafranca and Lebrija and Alicante towns such as Torrevieja and Crevillente were also included in the top 20 poorest places with over 20,000 inhabitants.
Interestingly, both provinces are among those that received the least investment in infrastructure from the General State Budget (PGE) between 1985 and 2018, according to a list of the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF), which takes into account the number of inhabitants for its calculation.
This may be about to change in Seville capital, however, which has received investments for the SE-40 ring road, the Centennial bridge and metro line 3 as part of the 2023 State Budget.
No extra investments have been given out to Alicante though, which “has one of the lowest per capita incomes in Spain, occupying position 44 out of 52,” the document stated. In terms of investment, the Alicante province receives less than de €85.40 per inhabitant.
“This investment places us in the last place of investments per inhabitant, far from the penultimate province, which is Jaén with €110 per inhabitant,” residents of Alicante complained.
The correlation between low investment and poor towns also occurs in Andalusian provinces such as Cádiz and Huelva, which are also among those that have received the least investment in infrastructure from the PGE between 1985 and 2018, according to AIReF.
Towns in Cádiz and Huelva are also among the INE’s list of places with the poorest neighbourhoods, in addition to Almería, which received a mediocre amount of investment.