DANIEL VIAÑA
@DanielVianaR
MARÍA HERNÁNDEZ
@maria__hdez
Updated on Monday, 2August2021-19: 34
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Urban Planning Wave of complaints about the new regulations on tourist apartments in Madrid: "The prices of low and first floors are going to skyrocket"
Private salaries in Madrid and Barcelona, explains the Bank of Spain in a report published yesterday, are "45% higher than in the rest of the cities." However, when those same wages are adjusted for purchasing power,
the difference decreases by half
. In fact, to a little more than half, because the data remains at 21%, thus significantly reducing the economic benefit of residing and working in the big city.
And a good part of this difference is explained by the cost of housing, a fact that is reflected in a data as striking as it is revealing contained in the aforementioned document: «The cost
of housing rental in the urban areas of Madrid and Barcelona was in 2020 82%
higher than the average for the rest of the urban areas ». In this same sense, the BdE points out that "spending on housing explained in 2020 more than two-thirds of the difference in prices between Madrid-Barcelona and the rest of the urban areas of the country."
But there are more reasons.
"There are also significant differences in the prices of some services, such as
hospitality or health services,
" explains the supervisor.
Why?
Because these services include "a very important component of labor and, therefore, their costs are highly influenced by the cost of living faced by workers in these branches."
That is, the prices of services and wages "feed back".
In contrast, price differences in other consumer goods and services such as "food, clothing and footwear or communication are less relevant."
The reason is that "the products consumed in an urban area need not have been produced in that place, and therefore their prices in different areas tend to equalize."
With all this, the report exemplifies that "the average citizen of Madrid or Barcelona would need
1,200 euros to have the same purchasing power as the average citizen in the rest of the cities would enjoy 1,000 euros
."
The prices of these two urban areas, therefore, are 20% higher than those of the rest of the conurbations of Spain.
That same data shoots up to 31% if the most expensive areas of the country face the urban area with the lowest cost of living, which, according to the BdE, is Elda-Petrer (in Alicante).
And if the comparison is made between areas such as Santa Cruz de Tenerife or Burgos ("75th percentile"), and Badajoz or Albacete ("25th percentile"), the additional cost of residing in the first group of cities is 7%.
Cost of living index
The body led by Pablo Hernández de Cos provides these conclusions after developing a "price index for Spanish urban areas", an aspect on which there is very little information available and which makes it possible to know how beneficial it is to reside in a large city.
The document does not address aspects beyond the economic sphere, that is, it does not analyze variables such as quality of life.
Among other things because that is a point that may seem somewhat more subjective.
But it does offer these figures at a time when, as a consequence of the pandemic and the lockdowns, there is a debate, at least in part of society, about the benefits of living in a big city.
And what the text does clearly point out is that "the well-being of citizens depends
both on their income levels and on the cost of living
that they have to face depending on their place of residence."
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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