A/HRC/44/40/Add.2 9. Behind these numbers are real people experiencing serious hardship. Across Spain, the Special Rapporteur met with a great many people who were barely scraping by. Many had lost their savings during the crisis and others have had to choose between putting food on the table and heating a home. Far too many were staring down the prospect of eviction, unable to find affordable housing. Almost everyone was avidly seeking decent work. One widowed single mother in Andalusia said she could only find 18 hours of work a week, not enough to provide for her children. A man in Bilbao, abused as a child and subsequently homeless, had been denied social assistance because he could not get municipal registration (empadronamiento) and a woman on the outskirts of Madrid was raising children in an area deemed hazardous to human health, amidst the smell of nearby waste incinerators and in a house at risk of collapse. 10. The Special Rapporteur visited areas that many Spaniards would not recognize as a part of their country. A shanty town with far worse conditions than a refugee camp, without running water, electricity or sanitation, where migrant workers have lived for years without any improvement in their situation. Closed-off neighbourhoods of concentrated poverty, where families are raising children with a dearth of State services, health clinics, employment centres, security, paved roads or legal electricity. A segregated school in a poor neighbourhood with a 100 per cent Roma student body and a 75 per cent rate of early leaving. 11. The single word heard most over the two-week visit was “abandoned.” People felt abandoned in a rural town without public transportation to visit the doctor and no money to pay for private transport. Abandoned in a stigmatized low-income suburb that the police avoid. Abandoned to unscrupulous landlords, unconscionable rent raises or unmaintained public housing and abandoned to an arbitrary bureaucratic system that denies vital support without explanation. The common thread was an absence of government support to ensure that people do not needlessly experience the worst effects of poverty, a situation many face because of phenomena largely beyond their control, such as job loss, structural discrimination or illness. 12. People feel abandoned for good reason. The benefits of the economic recovery have largely flowed to corporations and the wealthy, while many of the public services and protections that were severely curtailed after 2008 have not been restored. Income growth has been primarily captured by those at the top: between 2007 and 2017, the incomes of the top 1 per cent grew by 24 per cent, while the bottom 90 per cent experienced below-average income growth of 2 per cent. 13 Corporate profits have largely recovered since the crisis but corporate tax revenue fell by half between 2007 and 2019, from 22.3 per cent of total tax revenue to 11.9 per cent.14 Prior to the crisis, Spain had been relatively immune to the rising inequality afflicting so many other countries, but inequality has exploded since 2010.15 With deregulation and hefty corporate tax cuts, it is hardly surprising that the wealthy and corporate interests have fared so well. 13. In comparison, people in poverty have been largely failed by policymakers. It is abundantly clear that social and economic rights are rarely taken seriously, even if they are frequently invoked rhetorically. People face skyrocketing housing costs, privatization of apartment blocks and aggressive evictions, yet low cost social housing is almost nonexistent, despite widespread agreement on the necessity for it. The system for providing social assistance is broken. It ought to play a significant role in reducing poverty but is remarkably ineffective, with wealthy families benefiting more from cash transfers than poor families.16 The system is fragmented, impossible to navigate and is not reaching the poor 12 13 14 15 16 4 poverty is the second highest among reporting EU countries, at 12.9 per cent as of 2018, Eurostat, “Social scoreboard of indicators”. Eurostat: “Income quintile share ratio (S80/S20) by sex” and “Gini coefficient of equivalised disposable income – EU-SILC survey”. Amory Gethin, Clara Martínez-Toledano and Marc Morgan, “Rising inequalities and political cleavages in Spain”, World Inequality Database (April 2019), pp. 2–3. Information provided by the Ministry of Treasury, 4 February 2020. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), “Income inequality”. OECD Economic surveys: Spain (November 2018), pp. 43–44 (citing 2013 data).